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Solid State Drive

15 REPLIES 15
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Message 1 of 16
tcorey
960 Views, 15 Replies

Solid State Drive

Hello all,

 

I recently obtainined a new laptop with a Solid State Drive and, holy smokes, it's seems at least twice as fast as another laptop with comparable specs like RAM and processor. I used a stopwatch. It was incredible.

 

Things like opening the program, opening drawings and re-loading Xref's are all way way way faster than without the SSD.

 

To those of you who have added SSD, are you seeing the same boost? This appears to be an easy way for Civil 3D users to increase speed tremendously, without purchasing a whole new system.

 

Best regards,

 

Tim

 



Tim Corey
MicroCAD Training and Consulting, Inc.
Redding, CA
Autodesk Gold Reseller

New knowledge is the most valuable commodity on earth. -- Kurt Vonnegut
15 REPLIES 15
Message 2 of 16
Jeff_M
in reply to: tcorey

I concur, Tim. Although I have just a 128gb SSD so I use it for the OS and Programs only. All data, including my Users and Temp folders, is on a 7200RPM SATA2 drive. It's still far faster than my desktop which has similar specs, but no SSD.

Jeff_M, also a frequent Swamper
EESignature
Message 3 of 16
TerryDotson
in reply to: tcorey

I put a SSD into my 2007 model workstation and bumped the memory to 12 gb (from 4) and it breathed new life into it.  Highly recommend SSD in new machines and as an upgrade.

Message 4 of 16
AllenJessup
in reply to: TerryDotson

Terry,

 

Are you using it for OS and programs, Data or Both?

 

Allen



Allen Jessup
Engineering Specialist / CAD Manager

Message 5 of 16
AllenJessup
in reply to: tcorey

Now I'm interested. What IOPS does everyone's SSD have?

 

Allen



Allen Jessup
Engineering Specialist / CAD Manager

Message 6 of 16
tcorey
in reply to: AllenJessup

IOPS?



Tim Corey
MicroCAD Training and Consulting, Inc.
Redding, CA
Autodesk Gold Reseller

New knowledge is the most valuable commodity on earth. -- Kurt Vonnegut
Message 7 of 16
AllenJessup
in reply to: tcorey


@tcorey wrote:

IOPS?


IOPS - In-out Operations Per Second. It looks like the equivalent of Write Speed for a hard disk. I found 2 1TB SSDs on my favorite hardware site. One sold for $320 and had an IOPS of 28,000. The second one sold for $2,200± and had an IOPS of 120,000. So, judging by price, I guess it matters.

 

Allen



Allen Jessup
Engineering Specialist / CAD Manager

Message 8 of 16
rkmcswain
in reply to: tcorey


@tcorey wrote:

 

To those of you who have added SSD, are you seeing the same boost?

 


I really don't see a noticeable boost. I think it _is_ faster, but not to the point where if you gave me an identical machine except with the old SATA drives, that I would notice a difference. 

 

I can say this because we do have several machines here identically configured except that some have SATA drives and others have an SSD primary drive. (Mine is one of the latter)

 

The problem we have --- is that we adopted this pretty early and only got 75GB primary SSD's. So after the O/S, MS Office, and a couple of versions of C3D, the HHD is about full. We had to reduce the swap size on the SSD drive and create a larger one on the 2nd drive (300GB SATA). I know this defeats the purpose of having all the swap space on the SSD, but it is what it is right now. 

R.K. McSwain     | CADpanacea | on twitter
Message 9 of 16
tcorey
in reply to: rkmcswain

What I take away from this thread is if you're buying a new system and you want to know where spending money will provide the biggest speed increases, put in an SSD. I haven't done comprehensive tests, but I would wager a small sum (like a refreshement at AU) that having an SSD would give more speed increase over a hard drive than going to an i7 processor over i5 or choosing 32gb RAM over 16.


Tim Corey
MicroCAD Training and Consulting, Inc.
Redding, CA
Autodesk Gold Reseller

New knowledge is the most valuable commodity on earth. -- Kurt Vonnegut
Message 10 of 16
Cadguru42
in reply to: tcorey

I have a 256GB SSD as my primary drive. It has Win7-64bit and all my programs.  I have a 2nd 600gb 10k rpm HDD that has all my drawings.  My machine is smoking fast compared to my home rig.  C3D starts up in about 5 seconds for me and whole machine boots up in around 20 seconds.

 

Having a SSD as your primary drive where C3D is installed is a huge boost in performance for a small price.  Oh, and make sure you get SATA3 as long as your motherboard supports it.

C3D 2022-2024
Windows 10 Pro
32GB RAM
Message 11 of 16
TerryDotson
in reply to: AllenJessup

Are you using it for OS and programs, Data or Both?

 

I replaced the boot drive C: with an SSD and use it only for boot and programs.  I think I read that SSD is faster for read operations than write.  I even moved all my TEMP and Windows huge cache file to a second drive and keep data on secondary drives.   So while I can't prevent an application from writing back to the SSD I treat it like a read-only drive from my standpoint until it's time to install an application.

 

I noticed a significant improvement in boot time, but keep in mind I was coming from about a four year installation so just a clean OS would have brought a little bit.  It's been about 18mo since the addition and it still boots fast.   All I know is that I couldn't afford a new workstation (lousy recession) and a couple hundred extended the life of this machine.

Message 12 of 16
tcorey
in reply to: TerryDotson

Terry, I read that, too. Write operations won't be as fast as read. That means opening drawings will blaze while saving them might not seem quite so much faster. Still....



Tim Corey
MicroCAD Training and Consulting, Inc.
Redding, CA
Autodesk Gold Reseller

New knowledge is the most valuable commodity on earth. -- Kurt Vonnegut
Message 13 of 16
Sinc
in reply to: tcorey

Keep in mind that there are still VERY significant differences between various brands of SSDs.  I think Intel is still leading the pack, so their SSDs deliver by far the best performance/buck, and are reliable.  Some others deliver either worse performance, or show a high rate of failure after usage.  For example, I'm not impressed with Kingston.

 

The big problem with SSDs is that they are still rather expensive, considering how much memory current apps expect to use on your C: drive.  If you have the money, go for it, but try for at least a 256GB drive.  Where they really make a difference is on the laptops, since they not only work really fast, they also use less power, saving you battery usage, and run cooler without a cooling pad, letting your Intel 2nd-Gen CPU ramp up to the highest speed possible.  I highly recommend an SSD as primary drive on laptops, preferably a 120GB or greater drive, because Win7 x64 really lets apps eat up your main drive, but if you can afford better, go for it.

Sinc
Message 14 of 16
Cadguru42
in reply to: Sinc


@Sinc wrote:

Keep in mind that there are still VERY significant differences between various brands of SSDs.  I think Intel is still leading the pack, so their SSDs deliver by far the best performance/buck, and are reliable.  Some others deliver either worse performance, or show a high rate of failure after usage.  For example, I'm not impressed with Kingston.

 

The big problem with SSDs is that they are still rather expensive, considering how much memory current apps expect to use on your C: drive.  If you have the money, go for it, but try for at least a 256GB drive.  Where they really make a difference is on the laptops, since they not only work really fast, they also use less power, saving you battery usage, and run cooler without a cooling pad, letting your Intel 2nd-Gen CPU ramp up to the highest speed possible.  I highly recommend an SSD as primary drive on laptops, preferably a 120GB or greater drive, because Win7 x64 really lets apps eat up your main drive, but if you can afford better, go for it.


I've got a Crucial M4 256GB drive that works great.  When I ordered my computer I spec'd a 128GB SSD and it came with a Corsair Force3 that had to be recalled and the replacement didn't work either.  That's when I went to Newegg.com and purchased the Crucial.  I've been extremely pleased with this drive as the Sandforce controller SSDs (like the Corsair) have had problems.

C3D 2022-2024
Windows 10 Pro
32GB RAM
Message 15 of 16
AllenJessup
in reply to: TerryDotson

Yes. Read speed seems to be generally twice write speed. Both speeds seem to vary between manufacturers. The top one in the image below sells for $2,500 the bottom one sells for $320 yet the $320 looks faster. So how do you make a decision other than believing you get what you pay for?

 

ssd.PNG

 

Allen



Allen Jessup
Engineering Specialist / CAD Manager

Message 16 of 16
AllenJessup
in reply to: AllenJessup

I answered my own question. The $320 is a Hybrid HDD/SSD, didn't get good reviews anyway.

 

It looks like you can get a decent half-gig± SSD for $400 to $500. But there is still a big performance jump if you spend over $1000.

 

Allen



Allen Jessup
Engineering Specialist / CAD Manager

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