Hard drive performance

[Pijotre]

<p>First of all I'm sorry if this has been discussed, but reading through the first posts, checking the search of forums and KB and checking the headlines of the rest of the first 100 topics in this forums I couldn't  anything.</p><p>I'm currently thinking about upgrading my hard drives (since my 750GB Spinpoint F1 seems to slow me down the most). I'm thinking of a pair of 32GB - 64GB SSDs in a raid0. My question now is, what I shall look most for, latency (which shouldn't be the issue [Removed for Content] 0.1ms SSDs), read performance or write performance? Furthermore do I need a lot of cache (>16MB ?). How is the average amount of writing overall, since SSDs have a limited amount of read/write cycles (~100000 cycles per block). If (against my expectaitons) the generally lower write rate (compared to drives such as the WD VelociRaptor) I would reconsider. And finally would it be a good idea to have windows running on a seperate single drive or have it together with EQII on the raid0? I would appretiate any adivce.</p><p>Best regards</p><p>Pijotre Kajek</p><p><span><span style="font-size: xx-small;">Disclaimer: If you find spelling mistakes, be proud, grab a cookie and then spent a thought about me being german and typing this in a lecture that I'm actually lending my ear too <img src="../../station/images/smilies/69934afc394145350659cd7add244ca9.gif" border="0" /></span></span></p>

[asmiro]

<p>SSD drives are much faster for reading from them than standard hard drives, HOWEVER, be WARNED... they have a far more limited write capacity than standard hard drives.</p><p>by write capacity, i mean the number of writes to each "sector" of the drive that the drive can sustain before the drive starts producing errors and generally corrupting data. even the fast ones have this limitation.</p><p>if you really want to try them, i suggest getting one, putting the game on the drive, and then creating a FULL immage of that drive as it sits in case the drive becomes unreadable in a year or two.</p><p>SSD drives really are only designed for READ performance, not WRITE performance, and unfortunately, this game has frequent updates, requiring frequent writes to the drive.</p><p>you would be better off getting one of the new 300GB "velociraptor" drives from Western Digital. these are 10,000 RPM hard drives, so you get server drive performance at consumer drive prices.</p>

[Pijotre]

<p>Thank you very much but I know all that already and that wasn't my question. My question was EQII specific towards what are the specfic needs of EQII, my suspicion is that its heavy on reading (many small files = low latency is goody) but doesn't require much writing, if thats the case then I would as we both know be better off with the SSD, if it however is heavy on writing to larger files (the logfiles come to mind) then I would prefer the raptor.</p><p>Best regards</p><p>Pijotre Kajek</p>

[asmiro]

<p><cite>Pijotre@Lucan DLere wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>Thank you very much but I know all that already and that wasn't my question. My question was EQII specific towards what are the specfic needs of EQII, my suspicion is that its heavy on reading (many small files = low latency is goody) but doesn't require much writing, if thats the case then I would as we both know be better off with the SSD, if it however is heavy on writing to larger files (the logfiles come to mind) then I would prefer the raptor.</p><p>Best regards</p><p>Pijotre Kajek</p></blockquote><p>there are log files, though i do not believe alot of them, however, some of those same log files are *constantly* being written to, such as the chat logs, as many of you who use programs like ACT can testify to.</p><p>for an MMO, i would not recommend an SSD drive, there are just far too many files being written to, too often. for a game such as call of duty 4, when played *ONLY* in single player mode, this is where the SSD drives come in handy as there really isnt anything (that i know of) that gets written in the background, other than maybe a save file when/if you save your game progress, which is not too terribly often.</p>

[vochore]

<p>head over to <a href="http://www.guru3d.com">www.guru3d.com</a></p><p>they have a few articals on some of the new ssd drives. here is 1 artical</p><p><a href="http://www.guru3d.com/article/silicon-power-32-gb-solid-state-disk-review/">http://www.guru3d.com/article/silic...te-disk-review/</a></p>

[Pijotre]

<p><cite>asmiro wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>for an MMO, i would not recommend an SSD drive, there are just far too many files being written to, too often. for a game such as call of duty 4, when played *ONLY* in single player mode, this is where the SSD drives come in handy as there really isnt anything (that i know of) that gets written in the background, other than maybe a save file when/if you save your game progress, which is not too terribly often.</p></blockquote><p>Do you have data about how much EQII really writes? Cause thats what would interest me!</p><p>@vochore Thx for the link, but as already stated above my problem is definately not what a SSD can do (and while guru is generally a great source that article is not even scraping the surface properly). I'm interested in EQII read/write performance data to decide between a velociraptor raid0 and an ssd raid0.</p>

[Arwin]

<p><cite>asmiro wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>there are log files, though i do not believe alot of them, however, some of those same log files are *constantly* being written to, such as the chat logs, as many of you who use programs like ACT can testify to.</p></blockquote><p>This is only the case when logging is enabled.</p><p>For the cost one SSD you could buy two WD Velociraptors in Raid 0 and end up with better I/O performance and throughput.</p>

[Pijotre]

<p>The question was neither the cost nor SSD vs. Raid0 ... if at all I would consider a SSD Raid0 vs. a VelociRaptor Raid0 ... which would negate any Raid0 performance advantage. A Sharkoon Drive with 6 SDHC Class 6 cards together in a Raid0 is an additional alternative but imho to costly for not much (if at all) gain. But AGAIN I only want to know data of read and write behavior of EQII assuming that logging is enabled for different scenarios (raiding, grouping, soloing, crafting etc.). I'm purely interested in the data not in the hardware side which I'm (imho) knowlegdeable enough in as long as I have data on what EQII needs.</p><p>Best regards</p><p>Pijotre Kajek</p><p><span ><span><span style="font-size: xx-small;">Disclaimer: If you find spelling mistakes, be proud, grab a cookie and then spent a thought about me having german as mothertongue <img src="../../station/images/smilies/69934afc394145350659cd7add244ca9.gif" border="0" /></span></span></span></p>

[piesang]

<p>I would say try to find a way (registry key or option or something) to move the logfile away from the SSD's, then the writes to the drive should be minimal, updates are not close to taxing the possible write limit of the SSD's I think. For the reading I think the SSD's are going to be incredible. EQ2 without log files seems to favour much more reading than writing so (sounds like you have the cash) I would splurt it on the ssd's <img src="/smilies/3b63d1616c5dfcf29f8a7a031aaa7cad.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" />  (provided you can do the above though)</p>

[Pijotre]

<p>Finally someone who understood what I want hehe. Thanks for the tip with the logfiles piesang. I have been thinking of exact the same thing as well, but haven't deleved into it other than checking the *.ini's briefly, which seem to not have an option for it. If I go this way I'll surely try to move the logs to the Windows-harddisk (which will prolly be a VelociRaptor).</p><p>Best regards</p><p>Pijotre Kajek</p>

[TSR-DanielH]

<p>The log files aren't a major issue unless you depend on them.  You can trigger them on and off by using the /log command.  While logging will write a lot of information, it is all text and doesn't take up much disk space overall.  Generally the game does a lot more reading than writing. </p><p>That said, I'd still stay clear of SSD drives for gaming at the moment.  They're coming along nicely but I don't think the technology is quite 'there' yet.  Hopefully we'll see some nice steps forward soon.</p>

[Pijotre]

<p><cite>TSR-DanielH wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>Generally the game does a lot more reading than writing. </p></blockquote><p>First of all thank you for that comment, thats what I expected but its good to hear it from the official side.</p><p><cite>TSR-DanielH wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>The log files aren't a major issue unless you depend on them.  You can trigger them on and off by using the /log command.  While logging will write a lot of information, it is all text and doesn't take up much disk space overall.</p></blockquote><p>My ACT usage and roughly 6GB of Logfiles disagree <img src="/smilies/69934afc394145350659cd7add244ca9.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" /></p><p><cite>TSR-DanielH wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>That said, I'd still stay clear of SSD drives for gaming at the moment.  They're coming along nicely but I don't think the technology is quite 'there' yet.  Hopefully we'll see some nice steps forward soon.</p></blockquote><p>I generally agree with you but the new Intel SSD's (<a href="http://download.intel.com/design/flash/nand/mainstream/mainstream-sata-ssd-datasheet.pdf">DataSheet</a>) are now at a competitive performance level, where I think its worth it.</p>