[clue-talk] Benefits of SSDs : was new processors

[Nate Duehr]

On 1/5/2010 2:00 PM, NICK VERBECK wrote:
> This may be covered in the links that have been provided, but in
> regards to the 1st email. If you can avoid it don't mount your swap to
> an SSD. Yes you will receive better speeds, but at the cost of the
> life of your drive.
By exactly how long?  Months?  Years?  Without that objective 
information, this is just an opinion.  I can't form my own without the 
necessary details.

If it lowers the life of the drive from say, 10 years to 5 years... then 
I say, "Who cares?"

By then I'll want a bigger/faster SSD, and I'm not building a system 
that needs to survive on-orbit where maintenance can't be accomplished 
or something like that.  Drive dies, I have backups...

This is of course, talking about my desktop machines.  For a server, 
sure I'd follow the manufacturer's advice about how to use their fancy 
server-class SSDs.  Following manufacturer's advice is just a standard 
CYA in system design/admin roles.  (Most of the time, our products 
already have the hardware design finished before they hit my desk 
anyway, so I really don't care as much as I used to when I custom-built 
or spec'ed boxes for a datacenter environment.)

>   By the nature of how SSD work, the constant
> writing&  rewriting of data to the drive degrades the life of the
> drive as well as speed overtime. There have been firmware updates to
> improve the life and speeds of the drives, but it is still suggested
> to reduce that kind of work if you can.
>    

Or just plan for it. It's going to die.  Okay, worst-case scenario... I 
have working/tested backups that take X minutes to recover from, and a 
new one costs Y.  Done.  I am not going to keep/run the same desktop 
(without upgrades/replacement parts) for 10 years, so... time to move on 
and find something more useful/fun to analyze than whether I should use 
the SSD for swap.

It's a pragmatic question, really.  Knock a couple of years off the life 
for big performance gains? Losing a drive a couple of years early for a 
30% performance increase?  I'll take it.  Kinda like souping up an 
engine in a car... it won't last as long, but you'll have a heck of a 
lot more fun getting there -- for the years it's running! Then you get 
to soup it up again.

:-)

Nate