Disk I/O as a bottleneck?

[guy keren]

On Sun, 2011-05-08 at 00:21 +0300, Elazar Leibovich wrote:
> 
> 
> On Sun, May 8, 2011 at 12:20 AM, guy keren <choo at actcom.co.il> wrote:
>         
>         
>         are you talking about using a low-end SSD?
> 
> 
> I'm actually not a big SSD expert, but I'm talking about relatively
> cheap SSD you can find in Ivory/Ksp, for instance Intel's
> http://www.zap.co.il/model.aspx?modelid=751136
>  
>         
>         the problem with them, is that often their throughput for
>         sequential
>         operations is lower then that of normal hard disks.
> 
> 
> Yeah, but what matters for the average user's computer speed is the
> random access speed, even if copying the 1Gb file will be a bit
> slower, when using the computer it'll be much faster, wouldn't it?

i guess the answer will be "it depends" :0

the fact is that a desktop user still does a lot of sequential I/O - so
the sequential I/O speed still matters.

another thing to note - the SSDs tend to start performing much worse if
you fill them up to their max capacity. better use them in a lower
capacity (e.g. 70-80% fill-factor), to keep their performance sane.

i suggest that, once you get this drive, you come and tell us if you
feel an improvement. then, once year after that - tell us again.

--guy