FreeBSD and SSD drives

[Frank Shute]

On Sat, Feb 12, 2011 at 07:12:08PM +0300, Odhiambo Washington wrote:
>
> On Sat, Feb 12, 2011 at 6:50 PM, Adam Vande More <amvandemore at gmail.com>wrote:
> 
> > On Sat, Feb 12, 2011 at 6:14 AM, Dave <dave at g8kbv.demon.co.uk> wrote:
> >
> > > Define "a *lot*".   If you look up the spec's on the common (currently)
> > > available SSD systems, it's only in the 10's of 1000's writes.  Pittiful
> > > compared to magnetic media.
> > >
> >
> > Chances are on many setups, by the time you've written enough data to
> > significantly wear out the drive your magnetic media would died of
> > mechanical failure long before.  Purchase what you need MLC/SLC.
> >
> >
> > > The way they work too, if you write one "sector" you actualy re-write a
> > > much larger block of memory.
> >
> >
> > Depends on full setup, the write amplification effect on the X-25's is
> > about
> > 1.1x.  Recent SSD's all are much more efficient compared to when these were
> > large, legitimate concerns.
> >
> >
> > > Wear leveling, not that common with SSD
> > > Hard Drives, but very common with USB (Flash) memory sticks,
> > >
> >
> > Completely wrong even the first gen modern SSD's had wear leveling built
> > in.
> >
> >
> > > SSD's have a place, but not for things like swapfiles or working data
> > > that changes a lot..
> > >
> >
> > I guess ZIL's wouldn't be a good use for such devices either.  Perhaps you
> > can inform FS designers that they are doing it wrong.
> >
> >
> While my tech mind cannot comprehend all these arguments, there are laptops
> which come with SSD as primary drives and are running Windows or even
> Apple's OS X.
> I fail to understand why manufacturers would let people install SSDs on
> machines when their life is so much in question.
> 
> Can someone please enlighten me on the dangers faced by those who opt to get
> their laptops installed with SSDs?
> 
> I personally have one, with a Toshiba 128GB SSD (THNS128GG4BAAA-NonFDE). I
> am running Windows 7 on it.
> 
> Should I stop and buy a SATA disk?:)
> 

No you shouldn't but you should run FreeBSD on it ;)

There's a lot of FUD talked about SSDs.

All I know is that I've been using one in my workstation for coming up
to a year with no problems so far.

Take it from a mechanical engineer that SSDs are much more robust than
HDDs, which is one reason they (HDDs) are going the way of the dodo.

I recommend that people should use SSDs for their workstations. Makes
a big difference in performance and makes the computer much more
pleasant to work on.


Regards,

-- 

 Frank

 Contact info: http://www.shute.org.uk/misc/contact.html


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