RamDisk(software) vs. HDD, performance bonus?

Trip · Post by **Trip** » Tue Mar 16, 2004 9:14 am

Should there be any performance gain when using Cenatek's software program over a regular IDE HDD?

(for running folding@home)

haysdb · Post by **haysdb** » Tue Mar 16, 2004 9:20 am

Trip wrote:Should there be any performance gain when using Cenatek's software program over a regular IDE HDD?

I wouldn't expect very much since F@H doesn't access disk very often. With 8 clients running, the hard drive on my Linux server runs only intermittently, and then for only a couple of seconds.

David

Trip · Post by **Trip** » Tue Mar 16, 2004 9:24 am

i was using it earlier to fold and the system crashed (outdated software) lost ~50 WU of a 400 WU

if there isn't much performance gain then I won't use it

By the way, I'm using the trial version - there's NO WAY I'd pay $70 for the RAMDisk software

haysdb · Post by **haysdb** » Tue Mar 16, 2004 10:05 am

Trip wrote:i was using it earlier to fold and the system crashed (outdated software) lost ~50 WU of a 400 WU

That's the biggest concern I have with ram disks - they don't survive crashes and reboots, plus you'd have to finish a wu before you could shut down, for doing maintenance or whatever.

David

Gnerma · Post by **Gnerma** » Tue Mar 16, 2004 10:28 am

I've tried this, it gets you about 2 seconds a frame. Cenatek's RAMdisk can save to the HDD on shutdown, whenever the disk is updated, or by time intervals. Using a ramdisk to fold is too risky for it to be worth the miniscule performance gains.

Post by **Rusty075** » Tue Mar 16, 2004 10:31 am

I've used Cenatek's software on folding nodes before, and it does have one distinct advantage: It allows the HDD to be spun down most of the time.

On mine I set the entire F@H directory to live on the ramdisk, and had it backup the contents to the HDD every 12 hours.

After killing off all the unnecessary (ie: nearly all of them) windows services I ended up with machines that would only spinup the HDD's for 3 minutes every 12 hours.

As for data loss, its no different than running without a ramdisk. The software caches itself at shutdown, so you'd only lose whatever segment of the WU was "in process", just like when you shut down F@H on a normal machine.

haysdb · Post by **haysdb** » Tue Mar 16, 2004 10:36 am

OK, I'll buy that, as long as there is a hard drive to back up the ram disk. I was thinking of another thread, where someone was talking about running a CD-ROM based Linux. The ram disk technique would allow the use of noisy hard drives that would otherwise drive a person insane. I don't see the 2 seconds per frame being worth the trouble.

David

Post by **Rusty075** » Tue Mar 16, 2004 10:43 am

Yeah, the performance wouldn't be the reason to do it. Unless you had a HDD that was so slow that it was taking a lot of time to write each segment to disk. (This might apply to people who use CF cards as HDD's, it would also minimisie the number of writes to them as well)

I had a couple of nodes running that without the ramdisk the HDD noise would have stopped me fdrom running them at all. I just scheduled it to spinup the Bigfoot when I wasn't home.

NoahJ · Post by **NoahJ** » Tue Mar 16, 2004 1:37 pm

Well if you bought higher quality HDD's the noise would not be as much of an issue.

haysdb · Post by **haysdb** » Tue Mar 16, 2004 2:14 pm

NoahJ wrote:Well if you bought higher quality HDD's the noise would not be as much of an issue.

I'm thinking of someone using second-hand drives, whatever they could get cheap. If one were buying new drives, I agree that it would not be an issue.

For example, I am using a 120GB Western Digital drive on my "bench system", and the sound it makes is more annoying than my desktop, Linux server, and 8 blades combined.

David

Trip · Post by **Trip** » Tue Mar 16, 2004 4:39 pm

I had mine set to backup - it must not have saved when the computer had to reset. Rock solid system but was running some Win98 software...

I remember reading about software to allow the HDD to spindown in WinXP (prob. doesn't work in OSX

). It should make a noticeable drop in noise with this cudaV of mine - which I doubt I could even hear in a G5, soooo glad I didn't buy one of those noisy beasts.

TRC-13 · Post by **TRC-13** » Tue Mar 16, 2004 8:05 pm

Rusty075 wrote:After killing off all the unnecessary (ie: nearly all of them) windows services I ended up with machines that would only spinup the HDD's for 3 minutes every 12 hours.

Which ones were left running, if you don't mind me asking?

I am thinking of doing a similar project on my farm but with fast (9MB/sec) CF cards in 3.5" internal USB 2.0 card readers. That way I can reduce power draw, heat and noise on most of my folders with the drives spun down!

Plus too I won't have to worry about data loss since the data is on non-volatile media.

Post by **Rusty075** » Tue Mar 16, 2004 8:46 pm

I don't remember exactly what my setup was. Most of my folding farm is long since gone. (As you can tell from my team rank..I used to be #1!!

)

But I do know that if was based on knowledge I gleaned from Black Viper's excellent site For a machine that's just connecting to the internet once a day, there's lots of stuff that you can get rid of. You can also install something like XP-Lite, and uninstall alot of the "uninstallable" MS stuff. (do your folding nodes really need Paint?)

Hope that helps.

RamDisk(software) vs. HDD, performance bonus?

RamDisk(software) vs. HDD, performance bonus?

Re: RamDisk(software) vs. HDD, performance bonus?