[gentoo-user] SDD, what features to look for and what to avoid.

[gentoo-user] SDD, what features to look for and what to avoid.

[Dale]

Howdy,

Tuxic's recent thread brought me back to looking at SDDs again.  I
recently learned about HDDs having SMR instead of PMR and how that can
be a negative in some situations.  I've since found out that one of my
/home drives is a SMR.  I didn't know to look at that when I bought it. 
So, before I find a SDD to buy, what are some things I should look for
it to have and what are things I should avoid?  I'm sure SMR and PMR
doesn't apply here but I bet you gurus have ran up on things the hard
way to either avoid or make sure SDDs have. 

As is, the OS itself is on sda.  That includes everything except /home
which is on two drives using LVM.  It's about 9TBs or so I think.  One
6TB drive, SMR I'm afraid to admit, and a 3TB drive that I'm pretty sure
is PMR. I may put /var on a HDD since it changes a good bit.  Everything
else, except /home, would be on the SDD. 

Anyone care to share? 

While at it, if I look for a NAS type HDD, would all those be PMR
instead of SMR?  From my understanding that should be correct.  Mostly I
buy WD, Seagate and Samsung.  I've had a WD fail, I've had a Seagate
fail. I'm not looking for a HDD flame up.  O_o  I'm starting to look at
HGST.  I think I got the spelling correct.  Never had one tho.

Thoughts?

Dale

:-)  :-) 

Re: [gentoo-user] SDD, what features to look for and what to avoid.

[Andrea Conti]

> So, before I find a SDD to buy, what are some things I should look for
> it to have and what are things I should avoid?

I think the single most important thing is buying stuff from a reputable 
brand (there's quite a number of those by now). Look at reviews. 
Top-tier performance probably isn't going to matter much for daily use, 
but I'd still look for a drive with a good warranty and a high write 
endurance rating, even if it commands a premium.

Avoid drives based on QLC flash (they still have reliability and 
performance issues, and frankly prices aren't that great either).

Most NVMe drives can only be booted from in UEFI mode (*), so if for any 
reason you still need to boot from an SSD in legacy BIOS mode -- stay 
safe and go for SATA or be sure to buy from a place with a good return 
policy.

(*) boot-time NVMe access relies on a boot ROM carried on the drive, and 
most (all?) drives only have a UEFI ROM. While some UEFI firmwares claim 
to have a "universal NVMe driver", my experience with those has not been 
good.

> While at it, if I look for a NAS type HDD, would all those be PMR
> instead of SMR?

I would expect any SMR drives sold at retail (i.e. not in USB boxes or 
the like) to be clearly marked as such, since they are a niche product 
with abysmal performance on common workloads.

You're not going to silently get SMR drives in a NAS product line.

>  From my understanding that should be correct.  Mostly I
> buy WD, Seagate and Samsung.  I've had a WD fail, I've had a Seagate
> fail. I'm not looking for a HDD flame up.  O_o  I'm starting to look at
> HGST.  I think I got the spelling correct.  Never had one tho.

While Seagate seems to be the current leader in selling crap, I've had 
all kind of drives die on me. Most notable are a couple of high-end WDs 
literally going up in smoke some years ago, and an HGST going belly up 
with a good impression of a machine gun just the other day.

In general I've had good luck with 3TB HGST and Toshiba drives, though 
the Toshibas I have are really HGST drives rebranded following a round 
of company mergers and subsequent antitrust-driven spinoffs.

WD Enterprise drives are quite good, but they do command a sizable premium.

I've not had any experience with "NAS" drives, nor with modern 
helium-filled high-capacity drives. Apart from the unit price, I don't 
need that much space and I'm not particularly keen on having that much 
data go poof if a single device decides to stop working.

andrea

Re: [gentoo-user] SDD, what features to look for and what to avoid.

[Dale]

Andrea Conti wrote:
>> So, before I find a SDD to buy, what are some things I should look for
>> it to have and what are things I should avoid?
>
> I think the single most important thing is buying stuff from a
> reputable brand (there's quite a number of those by now). Look at
> reviews. Top-tier performance probably isn't going to matter much for
> daily use, but I'd still look for a drive with a good warranty and a
> high write endurance rating, even if it commands a premium.
>
> Avoid drives based on QLC flash (they still have reliability and
> performance issues, and frankly prices aren't that great either).
>
> Most NVMe drives can only be booted from in UEFI mode (*), so if for
> any reason you still need to boot from an SSD in legacy BIOS mode --
> stay safe and go for SATA or be sure to buy from a place with a good
> return policy.
>
> (*) boot-time NVMe access relies on a boot ROM carried on the drive,
> and most (all?) drives only have a UEFI ROM. While some UEFI firmwares
> claim to have a "universal NVMe driver", my experience with those has
> not been good.

My mobo is just old enough to not support NVMe drives.  I checked on
that a while back.  It'll be old school SDDs, well, the ones that mount
hardware wise like HDDs anyway.  It's not like SDDs are really that old. 

Avoid flash.  Got it.  A couple I looked at mentioned NAND.  I'm
somewhat familiar with AND/NAND gates so I think those are different
from flash.  That helps.


>
>> While at it, if I look for a NAS type HDD, would all those be PMR
>> instead of SMR?
>
> I would expect any SMR drives sold at retail (i.e. not in USB boxes or
> the like) to be clearly marked as such, since they are a niche product
> with abysmal performance on common workloads.
>
> You're not going to silently get SMR drives in a NAS product line.
>

That's why I'm searching for a NAS drive.  I figure that should weed out
SMR drives pretty quickly.  I don't mind it to much on my backup drive
but I'm hoping to get rid of the one I have for /home and expand a bit. 
I may buy a 8TB drive and replace the 6TB drive that I currently have
that is SMR.  Later, I'll replace the 3TB with either a 6TB or 8TB
drive.  Since my external drive is 8TBs, I may have to recompute my
backup drive situation.  I'm likely to hit a few walls on that. 

Plus, NAS drives are designed more for my usage anyway.  I have my
system on 24/7.  It's rare that I reboot since I run my TV off this rig
plus am always downloading stuff.  Heck, if it wasn't for updates to KDE
and friends, I wouldn't even logout very often. 


>>   From my understanding that should be correct.  Mostly I
>> buy WD, Seagate and Samsung.  I've had a WD fail, I've had a Seagate
>> fail. I'm not looking for a HDD flame up.  O_o  I'm starting to look at
>> HGST.  I think I got the spelling correct.  Never had one tho.
>
> While Seagate seems to be the current leader in selling crap, I've had
> all kind of drives die on me. Most notable are a couple of high-end
> WDs literally going up in smoke some years ago, and an HGST going
> belly up with a good impression of a machine gun just the other day.
>
> In general I've had good luck with 3TB HGST and Toshiba drives, though
> the Toshibas I have are really HGST drives rebranded following a round
> of company mergers and subsequent antitrust-driven spinoffs.
>
> WD Enterprise drives are quite good, but they do command a sizable
> premium.
>
> I've not had any experience with "NAS" drives, nor with modern
> helium-filled high-capacity drives. Apart from the unit price, I don't
> need that much space and I'm not particularly keen on having that much
> data go poof if a single device decides to stop working.
>
> andrea
>
>

Yea, I've experienced the same here.  What I've learned about hard
drives is this, they break, regardless of brands.  That said, there is
some batches that prove to be problems but other than that, it's just a
matter of time.  None of them are designed to last forever.  Even tho
I've had a WD fail before, I still think they are very good.  I just
avoid those that are not made to handle my usage, being on 24/7 plus
lots of read/writes.

Thanks much for the info.  Avoid flash.  NAS should avoid SMR drives. 

Dale

:-)  :-) 

Re: [gentoo-user] SDD, what features to look for and what to avoid.

[Andrea Conti]

> My mobo is just old enough to not support NVMe drives.  I checked on
> that a while back.  It'll be old school SDDs, well, the ones that mount
> hardware wise like HDDs anyway.  It's not like SDDs are really that old.
We're talking about interface standards here, not form factors. SATA 
drives use the good old SATA interface and for all intents and purposes 
look just like HDDs to the BIOS and OS.
NVMe drives have an onboard controller that attaches directly to the PCI 
express bus and use a completely different programming model for access.

Most consumer-grade 2.5" SSDs (those that "mount like HDDs") are SATA, 
while board-mounted M.2 ("gumstick") drives can be either SATA or NVMe, 
as the M.2 connector supports both standards.

If you have no M.2 connectors, you're safely stuck with SATA drives.

> Avoid flash.  Got it.  A couple I looked at mentioned NAND.  I'm
> somewhat familiar with AND/NAND gates so I think those are different
> from flash.

"NAND flash" (as opposed to "NOR flash") refers to the way memory cells 
are organized and connected. See for example 
https://www.embedded.com/flash-101-nand-flash-vs-nor-flash/

AFAIK all SSDs use some variant of NAND flash.

andrea

[gentoo-user] Re: SDD, what features to look for and what to avoid.

[Grant Edwards]

On 2020-03-17, Andrea Conti <alyf@alyf.net> wrote:

> "NAND flash" (as opposed to "NOR flash") refers to the way memory cells 
> are organized and connected. See for example 
> https://www.embedded.com/flash-101-nand-flash-vs-nor-flash/
>
> AFAIK all SSDs use some variant of NAND flash.

Correct.  NOR flash density is far lower than NAND flash.  NOR is only
used for small applications (e.g. BIOS, small embedded systems).
Anytime you see sizes quoted in 'Gb' rather than 'Mb', you're
certainly talking about NAND.

--
Grant

Re: [gentoo-user] Re: SDD, what features to look for and what to avoid.

[Dale]

Grant Edwards wrote:
> On 2020-03-17, Andrea Conti <alyf@alyf.net> wrote:
>
>> "NAND flash" (as opposed to "NOR flash") refers to the way memory cells 
>> are organized and connected. See for example 
>> https://www.embedded.com/flash-101-nand-flash-vs-nor-flash/
>>
>> AFAIK all SSDs use some variant of NAND flash.
> Correct.  NOR flash density is far lower than NAND flash.  NOR is only
> used for small applications (e.g. BIOS, small embedded systems).
> Anytime you see sizes quoted in 'Gb' rather than 'Mb', you're
> certainly talking about NAND.
>
> --
> Grant

Thanks for the additional info.  As I figured, they got most of the
kinks worked out by now and we got some dependable SSDs to buy.

I found a 240GB for a little over $42.00 USA.  Not bad at all.  For
those curious:

Sandisk SDSSDA240GG26

Should last me a good long while.  It's the /home that keeps growing.  o_O

Filesystem                                   Size  Used Avail Use%
Mounted on
/dev/mapper/Home2-Home2        8.1T  5.4T  2.7T  68% /home

Dale

:-)  :-) 

[gentoo-user] Re: SDD, what features to look for and what to avoid.

[Grant Edwards]

I've put five Samsung SATA drives into various things in the past few
years with flawless results.  Samsung is one of the big manufacturers
of flash chips, so I figure they should always end up with 1st choice
quality chips in their own drives...

-- 
Grant Edwards               grant.b.edwards        Yow! Where's the Coke
                                  at               machine?  Tell me a joke!!
                              gmail.com            

Re: [gentoo-user] Re: SDD, what features to look for and what to avoid.

[Mark Knecht]

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 596 bytes --]

On Tue, Mar 17, 2020 at 12:33 PM Grant Edwards <grant.b.edwards@gmail.com>
wrote:
>
> I've put five Samsung SATA drives into various things in the past few
> years with flawless results.  Samsung is one of the big manufacturers
> of flash chips, so I figure they should always end up with 1st choice
> quality chips in their own drives...
>
> --
> Grant Edwards               grant.b.edwards        Yow! Where's the Coke
>                                   at               machine?  Tell me a
joke!!
>                               gmail.com
>

I've had similar results with Crucial SSDs.

Mark

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Re: [gentoo-user] Re: SDD, what features to look for and what to avoid.

[David Haller]

Hello,

On Tue, 17 Mar 2020, Grant Edwards wrote:
>I've put five Samsung SATA drives into various things in the past few
>years with flawless results.  Samsung is one of the big manufacturers
>of flash chips, so I figure they should always end up with 1st choice
>quality chips in their own drives...

And they produce and use their own controllers, so they additionally
know the ins and outs of those, i.e. they can easily optimize the
whole SSD from Flash-Chip over controller up to the firmware...

Dunno if the same is true for Micron+Intel (IM Flash) / Crucial. Seems
no, as e.g. the Crucial MX500 uses a Silicon Motion controller, even
though Micron does (or did) produce controllers. Nor does WD, it seems.

AFAIgathered, Samsung is the only one producing the whole product.
Albeit, I heard rumours, that the various divisions of Samsung could
as well be different manufacturers[1], but how far apart the
Flash/Controller/SSD parts I have not an inkling ;)

HTH,
-dnh

[1] well, considering that includes washing-machines, ships and
    whatnot ... ;)

-- 
May I ask a question?

[gentoo-user] Re: SDD, what features to look for and what to avoid.

[Grant Edwards]

On 2020-03-17, David Haller <gentoo@dhaller.de> wrote:

> And they produce and use their own controllers, so they additionally
> know the ins and outs of those, i.e. they can easily optimize the
> whole SSD from Flash-Chip over controller up to the firmware...

Yep, that was definitely the gist of my (wishful) thinking when I
decided on Samsung.

> AFAIgathered, Samsung is the only one producing the whole product.
> Albeit, I heard rumours, that the various divisions of Samsung could
> as well be different manufacturers[1],

I've worked with smaller corporations where various seemingly
closely-related divisions might as well be on different planets.  But
at least there's chance that Samsung products can benefit from the
vertical/horizontal integration.

As it says on the coffee mug my neice gave me for christmas:

      Hold on, let me overthink this.

--
Grant

Re: [gentoo-user] Re: SDD, what features to look for and what to avoid.

[David Haller]

Hello, an addendum without digging up the details ...

On Tue, 17 Mar 2020, David Haller wrote:
>On Tue, 17 Mar 2020, Grant Edwards wrote:
>>I've put five Samsung SATA drives into various things in the past few
>>years with flawless results.  Samsung is one of the big manufacturers
>>of flash chips, so I figure they should always end up with 1st choice
>>quality chips in their own drives...
>
>And they produce and use their own controllers, so they additionally
>know the ins and outs of those, i.e. they can easily optimize the
>whole SSD from Flash-Chip over controller up to the firmware...
[..]
>AFAIgathered, Samsung is the only one producing the whole product.

I guess Intel did (still does?) that too, but you'll have to check
that, ISTR that Intel now sells SSDs with non-Intel controllers and/or
non-Intel/"IM-Flash" flash-chips... Oh, wait, yes, Intel still does,
but those "pure Intel" SSDs come with a *very* hefty price (like 4
times as much) and all the "normal" priced ones are those with either
and/or non Intel flash-chips and/or -controllers... But please go
check that yourselves though!

The second thing I remembered: the german "c't"[2] magazine did a
torture test in late 2018 (IIRC), basically grabbing a few then
current SSDs and run their own testtool[1] on them until they died. Or
so was the plan. That was a "write till it dies" test.

First of all: all SSD exceeded their specs, some IIRC just barely. The
bulk by a factor of 2 or more. ISTR some of those "just barely", but
wont name them without digging out the actual results, which I'll do
upon requests.

The test had one problem though: a (IIRC) Samsung 850 Pro just refused
to die ;) They aborted the test after something like over 4 months
(all other drives had died inside of about a month) of _continous_
writes (or write-verify cycles) to that one remaining SSD, which was
still happily chugging along...

I do remember though, that even the Samsung EVO came out at the top of
the bunch

(Note: c't does not award a "test-winner" or anything. Just data and
an conclusion aka "Fazit", the reader has to digest the data and make
up his own mind for _her/his_ own usecase).

All IIRC, I can dig out and translate the details though! (and it's
month's later followup on what became of that Samsung ;)

HTH, and please do PM (no need to clog the ML) if you want me to go
digging for the details,
-dnh

[1] which name escapes me ATM, but tried and tested since 199[0-5] or
    so ;)

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C%27t (that page is sadly woefully
    outdated)

-- 
"If you are using an Macintosh e-mail program that is not from Microsoft,
we recommend checking with that particular company. But most likely other
e-mail programs like Eudora are not designed to enable virus replication"
     -- http://www.microsoft.com/mac/products/office/2001/virus_alert.asp

Re: [gentoo-user] Re: SDD, what features to look for and what to avoid.

[Dale]

David Haller wrote:
> Hello, an addendum without digging up the details ...
>
> On Tue, 17 Mar 2020, David Haller wrote:
>> On Tue, 17 Mar 2020, Grant Edwards wrote:
>>> I've put five Samsung SATA drives into various things in the past few
>>> years with flawless results.  Samsung is one of the big manufacturers
>>> of flash chips, so I figure they should always end up with 1st choice
>>> quality chips in their own drives...
>> And they produce and use their own controllers, so they additionally
>> know the ins and outs of those, i.e. they can easily optimize the
>> whole SSD from Flash-Chip over controller up to the firmware...
> [..]
>> AFAIgathered, Samsung is the only one producing the whole product.
> I guess Intel did (still does?) that too, but you'll have to check
> that, ISTR that Intel now sells SSDs with non-Intel controllers and/or
> non-Intel/"IM-Flash" flash-chips... Oh, wait, yes, Intel still does,
> but those "pure Intel" SSDs come with a *very* hefty price (like 4
> times as much) and all the "normal" priced ones are those with either
> and/or non Intel flash-chips and/or -controllers... But please go
> check that yourselves though!
>
> The second thing I remembered: the german "c't"[2] magazine did a
> torture test in late 2018 (IIRC), basically grabbing a few then
> current SSDs and run their own testtool[1] on them until they died. Or
> so was the plan. That was a "write till it dies" test.
>
> First of all: all SSD exceeded their specs, some IIRC just barely. The
> bulk by a factor of 2 or more. ISTR some of those "just barely", but
> wont name them without digging out the actual results, which I'll do
> upon requests.
>
> The test had one problem though: a (IIRC) Samsung 850 Pro just refused
> to die ;) They aborted the test after something like over 4 months
> (all other drives had died inside of about a month) of _continous_
> writes (or write-verify cycles) to that one remaining SSD, which was
> still happily chugging along...
>
> I do remember though, that even the Samsung EVO came out at the top of
> the bunch
>
> (Note: c't does not award a "test-winner" or anything. Just data and
> an conclusion aka "Fazit", the reader has to digest the data and make
> up his own mind for _her/his_ own usecase).
>
> All IIRC, I can dig out and translate the details though! (and it's
> month's later followup on what became of that Samsung ;)
>
> HTH, and please do PM (no need to clog the ML) if you want me to go
> digging for the details,
> -dnh
>
> [1] which name escapes me ATM, but tried and tested since 199[0-5] or
>     so ;)
>
> [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C%27t (that page is sadly woefully
>     outdated)
>


I wouldn't mind seeing the info posted to the list myself.  I'm
interested and I suspect some others may be as well.  After all, several
people have SSDs now and buying good ones is something we all are
interested in. 

Dale

:-)  :-) 

P. S. Sorry for the typo in the subject line.  I just noticed I typed it
in as SDD instead of SSD.  I generally proof the body part but given my
age, eyes getting bad, plus just being me, I may need to proof the
subject line as well.  o_O 

Re: [gentoo-user] Re: SDD, what features to look for and what to avoid.

[Frank Steinmetzger]

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On Tue, Mar 17, 2020 at 02:22:36PM -0500, Dale wrote:

> Thanks for the additional info.  As I figured, they got most of the
> kinks worked out by now and we got some dependable SSDs to buy.
>
> I found a 240GB for a little over $42.00 USA.  Not bad at all.  For
> those curious:

Careful, you get what you pay for.

When I built my first PC from scratch (had laptops before that), I bought a
128 GB Sandisk SDSSDP128G. I didn’t have a lot of money back then, it was
relatively cheap, but not the very cheapest. It doesn’t even have real
branding to speak of. No series or model name, just a label with “Sandisk”.

I’ve been using it for 5 years for a dual-boot system (2×64 G for Windows
and Gentoo). By the end of last year it became slower and slower when
writing. Especially eix-update became sloooow. My main suspicion is that it
was quite full and there probably is no overprovisioning for wear-leveling
built into the drive. So it was writing the same cells over and over when I
did my world updates.

> Sandisk SDSSDA240GG26
>
> Should last me a good long while.  It's the /home that keeps growing.  o_O

When I built my NAS 2 years ago, I wanted the cheapest (but still from a
notable brand) SSD for the OS. So I bought a Sandisk SDSSDA120G, so
apparently from the same series you mentioned.

A simple read test with hdparm -t reveals:
500 GB Crucial from 2016: Timing buffered disk reads: 1596 MB in  3.00 seconds = 531.46 MB/sec
128 GB Sandisk from 2014: Timing buffered disk reads: 1532 MB in  3.00 seconds = 510.60 MB/sec
120 GB Sandisk from 2017: Timing buffered disk reads: 968 MB in  3.00 seconds = 322.42 MB/sec

The theoretical maximum of SATA-III is around 550 MB/s. As you can see, even
a very simple read test already shows a considerable performance drop, even
though it is the newest in the bunch (by date of purchase).
A good SSD should always be able to saturate SATA-III when reading. Most do.
Sequential writing on the cheap Sandisk topped off at around 90 MB/s, IIRC.
This is slower than an HDD. For a NAS system drive this is enough, but not
for a desktop, methinks.

So my message is: don’t by the cheapest.

-- 
Gruß | Greetings | Qapla’
Please do not share anything from, with or about me on any social network.

A good position is better than any job.

[-- Attachment #2: signature.asc --]
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Re: [gentoo-user] Re: SDD, what features to look for and what to avoid.

[Dale]

Frank Steinmetzger wrote:
> On Tue, Mar 17, 2020 at 02:22:36PM -0500, Dale wrote:
>
>> Thanks for the additional info.  As I figured, they got most of the
>> kinks worked out by now and we got some dependable SSDs to buy.
>>
>> I found a 240GB for a little over $42.00 USA.  Not bad at all.  For
>> those curious:
> Careful, you get what you pay for.
>
> When I built my first PC from scratch (had laptops before that), I bought a
> 128 GB Sandisk SDSSDP128G. I didn’t have a lot of money back then, it was
> relatively cheap, but not the very cheapest. It doesn’t even have real
> branding to speak of. No series or model name, just a label with “Sandisk”.
>
> I’ve been using it for 5 years for a dual-boot system (2×64 G for Windows
> and Gentoo). By the end of last year it became slower and slower when
> writing. Especially eix-update became sloooow. My main suspicion is that it
> was quite full and there probably is no overprovisioning for wear-leveling
> built into the drive. So it was writing the same cells over and over when I
> did my world updates.
>
>> Sandisk SDSSDA240GG26
>>
>> Should last me a good long while.  It's the /home that keeps growing.  o_O
> When I built my NAS 2 years ago, I wanted the cheapest (but still from a
> notable brand) SSD for the OS. So I bought a Sandisk SDSSDA120G, so
> apparently from the same series you mentioned.
>
> A simple read test with hdparm -t reveals:
> 500 GB Crucial from 2016: Timing buffered disk reads: 1596 MB in  3.00 seconds = 531.46 MB/sec
> 128 GB Sandisk from 2014: Timing buffered disk reads: 1532 MB in  3.00 seconds = 510.60 MB/sec
> 120 GB Sandisk from 2017: Timing buffered disk reads: 968 MB in  3.00 seconds = 322.42 MB/sec
>
> The theoretical maximum of SATA-III is around 550 MB/s. As you can see, even
> a very simple read test already shows a considerable performance drop, even
> though it is the newest in the bunch (by date of purchase).
> A good SSD should always be able to saturate SATA-III when reading. Most do.
> Sequential writing on the cheap Sandisk topped off at around 90 MB/s, IIRC.
> This is slower than an HDD. For a NAS system drive this is enough, but not
> for a desktop, methinks.
>
> So my message is: don’t by the cheapest.
>


I generally go by the model number.  If a model number is the same
between two different sellers but one has a better price, I'll go for
the better price.  If it's the same model, it shouldn't matter.  One
thing I did try to do, avoid the much older versions.  I found some
older models that were cheaper but I wanted a newer model since most of
the kinks and quirks should be fixed in the newer ones, according to
what folks posted on here anyway. 

I still haven't bought it yet.  I ordered some toner cartridges a while
back for my printer.  The site said that the ones I ordered fits my
printer.  Well, it appears they found out that was a error because they
removed that page and relisted it but did not include my printer model. 
So, I had to order a whole new set, at about $100.00 each for high
yield.  Needless to say, I'll be paying on that for a while.  I'll try
to sell the wrong ones later.  I only opened one color so the others are
still sealed. 

BTW, next time I'll find a printer that allows refilling and such too. 
I don't like that chip thing.  It counts against my page count on color
even if I print a black and white page.  Still, printer does a awesome
job.  Beats those ink jet thingys by a country mile. 

Dale

:-)  :-) 

Re: [gentoo-user] Re: SDD, what features to look for and what to avoid.

[Michael]

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On Wednesday, 1 April 2020 22:25:08 BST Frank Steinmetzger wrote:

> I’ve been using it for 5 years for a dual-boot system (2×64 G for Windows
> and Gentoo). By the end of last year it became slower and slower when
> writing. Especially eix-update became sloooow. My main suspicion is that it
> was quite full and there probably is no overprovisioning for wear-leveling
> built into the drive. So it was writing the same cells over and over when I
> did my world updates.

With SSDs it is important you overprovision your partition(s) in terms of 
individual partition size so they don't fill up.  I tend to always leave a 
little empty space on an SSD device when I create partitions, which may be 
unnecessary these days, because the OEMs tend to do the same themselves:

https://www.kingston.com/us/ssd/overprovisioning


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Re: [gentoo-user] Re: SDD, what features to look for and what to avoid.

[antlists]

On 01/04/2020 22:46, Dale wrote:
> I still haven't bought it yet.  I ordered some toner cartridges a while
> back for my printer.  The site said that the ones I ordered fits my
> printer.  Well, it appears they found out that was a error because they
> removed that page and relisted it but did not include my printer model.
> So, I had to order a whole new set, at about $100.00 each for high
> yield.  Needless to say, I'll be paying on that for a while.  I'll try
> to sell the wrong ones later.  I only opened one color so the others are
> still sealed.

I know you're not UK, but under European rules you'd be able to return 
that opened cartridge at their expense - "not as described" and it's 
their problem even if you had to open it to find out.
> 
> BTW, next time I'll find a printer that allows refilling and such too.
> I don't like that chip thing.  It counts against my page count on color
> even if I print a black and white page.  Still, printer does a awesome
> job.  Beats those ink jet thingys by a country mile.

My HP laser is like that. Mind you, my colour cartridges "ran out" at 
about 1900 pages. They're still going fine (well, the yellow got 
replaced) at 4000 pages. But HP do say that a cartridge running empty 
won't damage the printer - all the vulnerable parts are in the cartridge.

Cheers,
Wol

Re: [gentoo-user] Re: SDD, what features to look for and what to avoid.

[Dale]

antlists wrote:
> On 01/04/2020 22:46, Dale wrote:
>> I still haven't bought it yet.  I ordered some toner cartridges a while
>> back for my printer.  The site said that the ones I ordered fits my
>> printer.  Well, it appears they found out that was a error because they
>> removed that page and relisted it but did not include my printer model.
>> So, I had to order a whole new set, at about $100.00 each for high
>> yield.  Needless to say, I'll be paying on that for a while.  I'll try
>> to sell the wrong ones later.  I only opened one color so the others are
>> still sealed.
>
> I know you're not UK, but under European rules you'd be able to return
> that opened cartridge at their expense - "not as described" and it's
> their problem even if you had to open it to find out.
>>
>> BTW, next time I'll find a printer that allows refilling and such too.
>> I don't like that chip thing.  It counts against my page count on color
>> even if I print a black and white page.  Still, printer does a awesome
>> job.  Beats those ink jet thingys by a country mile.
>
> My HP laser is like that. Mind you, my colour cartridges "ran out" at
> about 1900 pages. They're still going fine (well, the yellow got
> replaced) at 4000 pages. But HP do say that a cartridge running empty
> won't damage the printer - all the vulnerable parts are in the cartridge.
>
> Cheers,
> Wol
>
>

I did try to contact them but have not heard back, either way.  They may
be closed or something tho.  No idea.  Some businesses are closed due to
the bug thingy. It may be that later on they allow me to return it. 

From my understanding, when it reaches zero pages, it stops that
cartridge from working.  In other words, even if there is toner in the
cartridge, it won't feed it into the printer.  It may be a Lexmark
thing.  HP may do it differently.  I looked to see if I could find a
replacement chip and some toner but not for my printer, yet anyway. 
Maybe in a year or so. 

Dale

:-)  :-) 

Re: [gentoo-user] Re: SDD, what features to look for and what to avoid.

[Adam Carter]

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>
> A simple read test with hdparm -t reveals:
> 500 GB Crucial from 2016: Timing buffered disk reads: 1596 MB in  3.00
> seconds = 531.46 MB/sec
> 128 GB Sandisk from 2014: Timing buffered disk reads: 1532 MB in  3.00
> seconds = 510.60 MB/sec
> 120 GB Sandisk from 2017: Timing buffered disk reads: 968 MB in  3.00
> seconds = 322.42 MB/sec
>
>
FYI some other hdparm results in case anyone's interested.

Host Disk Cached Reads Buffered Reads
Phenom965 6T wd red WDC WD60EFRX-68L 3785 147
Phenom965 8T wd red WDC WD80EFAX-68K 3716 190
Phenom965 250G Samsung SSD 840 (sata) 3757 60
FX-8350 nvme 512G Samsung 950 (951?) 4793 1435
FX-8350 1T WDC WD10EARX-00N 3883 118
FX-8350 3T WDC WD30EFRX-68A 4422 111
3900X@2133 3T WDC WD30EFRX-68A 11623 143
3900X@3200 3T WDC WD30EFRX-68A 15225 139
3900X@2133 nvme 512G Samsung 970 EVO PLUS 11904 2858
3900X@3200 nvme 512G Samsung 970 EVO PLUS 15213 3032
i3-6100U INTEL SSDSCKJW12 128G M2 sata 3541 448

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Re: [gentoo-user] Re: SDD, what features to look for and what to avoid.

[Dale]

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Adam Carter wrote:
>
>     A simple read test with hdparm -t reveals:
>     500 GB Crucial from 2016: Timing buffered disk reads: 1596 MB in 
>     3.00 seconds = 531.46 MB/sec
>     128 GB Sandisk from 2014: Timing buffered disk reads: 1532 MB in 
>     3.00 seconds = 510.60 MB/sec
>     120 GB Sandisk from 2017: Timing buffered disk reads: 968 MB in 
>     3.00 seconds = 322.42 MB/sec
>
>
> FYI some other hdparm results in case anyone's interested.
>
> Host Disk Cached Reads Buffered Reads
> Phenom965 6T wd red WDC WD60EFRX-68L 3785 147
> Phenom965 8T wd red WDC WD80EFAX-68K 3716 190
> Phenom965 250G Samsung SSD 840 (sata) 3757 60
> FX-8350 nvme 512G Samsung 950 (951?) 4793 1435
> FX-8350 1T WDC WD10EARX-00N 3883 118
> FX-8350 3T WDC WD30EFRX-68A 4422 111
> 3900X@2133 3T WDC WD30EFRX-68A 11623 143
> 3900X@3200 3T WDC WD30EFRX-68A 15225 139
> 3900X@2133 nvme 512G Samsung 970 EVO PLUS 11904 2858
> 3900X@3200 nvme 512G Samsung 970 EVO PLUS 15213 3032
> i3-6100U INTEL SSDSCKJW12 128G M2 sata 3541 448

Oooooooo. <me wipes up the drool>  That nvme speed is faaaasssssstttt. 
Do you happen to have the OS on that and if so, just how fast does it go
from BIOS or Grub to bootup complete?  I'm almost scared to ask.  o_O

Dale

:-)  :-) 

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Re: [gentoo-user] Re: SDD, what features to look for and what to avoid.

[William Kenworthy]

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On 2/4/20 10:05 am, Dale wrote:
> Adam Carter wrote:
>>
>>     A simple read test with hdparm -t reveals:
>>     500 GB Crucial from 2016: Timing buffered disk reads: 1596 MB in 
>>     3.00 seconds = 531.46 MB/sec
>>     128 GB Sandisk from 2014: Timing buffered disk reads: 1532 MB in 
>>     3.00 seconds = 510.60 MB/sec
>>     120 GB Sandisk from 2017: Timing buffered disk reads: 968 MB in 
>>     3.00 seconds = 322.42 MB/sec
>>
>>
>> FYI some other hdparm results in case anyone's interested.
>>
>> Host Disk Cached Reads Buffered Reads
>> Phenom965 6T wd red WDC WD60EFRX-68L 3785 147
>> Phenom965 8T wd red WDC WD80EFAX-68K 3716 190
>> Phenom965 250G Samsung SSD 840 (sata) 3757 60
>> FX-8350 nvme 512G Samsung 950 (951?) 4793 1435
>> FX-8350 1T WDC WD10EARX-00N 3883 118
>> FX-8350 3T WDC WD30EFRX-68A 4422 111
>> 3900X@2133 3T WDC WD30EFRX-68A 11623 143
>> 3900X@3200 3T WDC WD30EFRX-68A 15225 139
>> 3900X@2133 nvme 512G Samsung 970 EVO PLUS 11904 2858
>> 3900X@3200 nvme 512G Samsung 970 EVO PLUS 15213 3032
>> i3-6100U INTEL SSDSCKJW12 128G M2 sata 3541 448
>
> Oooooooo. <me wipes up the drool>  That nvme speed is 
> faaaasssssstttt.  Do you happen to have the OS on that and if so, just 
> how fast does it go from BIOS or Grub to bootup complete? I'm almost 
> scared to ask.  o_O
>
> Dale
>
> :-)  :-)

mfsmaster ~ # hdparm -Tt /dev/nvme0n1

/dev/nvme0n1:
  Timing cached reads:   8524 MB in  1.99 seconds = 4283.31 MB/sec
  Timing buffered disk reads: 4252 MB in  3.00 seconds = 1416.93 MB/sec
mfsmaster ~ #


Samsung 970 plus NVME M.2 on an odroid H2


:)


BillK




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Re: [gentoo-user] Re: SDD, what features to look for and what to avoid.

[Adam Carter]

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>
> 3900X@2133 nvme 512G Samsung 970 EVO PLUS 11904 2858
> 3900X@3200 nvme 512G Samsung 970 EVO PLUS 15213 3032
>
> Oooooooo. <me wipes up the drool>  That nvme speed is faaaasssssstttt.  Do
> you happen to have the OS on that and if so, just how fast does it go from
> BIOS or Grub to bootup complete?  I'm almost scared to ask.
>

Yep, everything's on the nvme except /var. From grub to console login
prompt is about 20 seconds, but it waits quite a while for the network
service to come up, perhaps because its using a bonded interface.

Booting is quick, but I really notice the speed when booting a win10 vm in
virtualbox, which takes about 15 seconds.

The system was delivered with the RAM running at 2133, so the auto speed
detection hadnt worked. Hardcoding it to the spec speed of 3200 took the
cache reads from 11.9Gig 15.2Gig...

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Re: [gentoo-user] Re: SDD, what features to look for and what to avoid.

[J. Roeleveld]

On Thursday, April 2, 2020 12:13:38 AM CEST antlists wrote:
> On 01/04/2020 22:46, Dale wrote:

> > BTW, next time I'll find a printer that allows refilling and such too.
> > I don't like that chip thing.  It counts against my page count on color
> > even if I print a black and white page.  Still, printer does a awesome
> > job.  Beats those ink jet thingys by a country mile.
> 
> My HP laser is like that. Mind you, my colour cartridges "ran out" at
> about 1900 pages. They're still going fine (well, the yellow got
> replaced) at 4000 pages. But HP do say that a cartridge running empty
> won't damage the printer - all the vulnerable parts are in the cartridge.

Same here, the colour cartridges have been saying they're "critically low" for 
the past couple of months. As they don't expire, I did order a new set when 
they got low. Those are still sealed in storage.

--
Joost

Re: [gentoo-user] Re: SDD, what features to look for and what to avoid.

[J. Roeleveld]

On Thursday, April 2, 2020 12:49:11 AM CEST Dale wrote:
> antlists wrote:
> > On 01/04/2020 22:46, Dale wrote:
> >> I still haven't bought it yet.  I ordered some toner cartridges a while
> >> back for my printer.  The site said that the ones I ordered fits my
> >> printer.  Well, it appears they found out that was a error because they
> >> removed that page and relisted it but did not include my printer model.
> >> So, I had to order a whole new set, at about $100.00 each for high
> >> yield.  Needless to say, I'll be paying on that for a while.  I'll try
> >> to sell the wrong ones later.  I only opened one color so the others are
> >> still sealed.
> > 
> > I know you're not UK, but under European rules you'd be able to return
> > that opened cartridge at their expense - "not as described" and it's
> > their problem even if you had to open it to find out.
> > 
> >> BTW, next time I'll find a printer that allows refilling and such too.
> >> I don't like that chip thing.  It counts against my page count on color
> >> even if I print a black and white page.  Still, printer does a awesome
> >> job.  Beats those ink jet thingys by a country mile.
> > 
> > My HP laser is like that. Mind you, my colour cartridges "ran out" at
> > about 1900 pages. They're still going fine (well, the yellow got
> > replaced) at 4000 pages. But HP do say that a cartridge running empty
> > won't damage the printer - all the vulnerable parts are in the cartridge.
> > 
> > Cheers,
> > Wol
> 
> I did try to contact them but have not heard back, either way.  They may
> be closed or something tho.  No idea.  Some businesses are closed due to
> the bug thingy. It may be that later on they allow me to return it. 
> 
> From my understanding, when it reaches zero pages, it stops that
> cartridge from working.  In other words, even if there is toner in the
> cartridge, it won't feed it into the printer.  It may be a Lexmark
> thing.  HP may do it differently.  I looked to see if I could find a
> replacement chip and some toner but not for my printer, yet anyway. 
> Maybe in a year or so. 

I use HP and don't have that issue.
Otherwise it would have stopped printing months ago :)

--
Joost

Re: [gentoo-user] Re: SDD, what features to look for and what to avoid.

[J. Roeleveld]

On Thursday, April 2, 2020 3:31:48 AM CEST Adam Carter wrote:
> > A simple read test with hdparm -t reveals:
> > 500 GB Crucial from 2016: Timing buffered disk reads: 1596 MB in  3.00
> > seconds = 531.46 MB/sec
> > 128 GB Sandisk from 2014: Timing buffered disk reads: 1532 MB in  3.00
> > seconds = 510.60 MB/sec
> > 120 GB Sandisk from 2017: Timing buffered disk reads: 968 MB in  3.00
> > seconds = 322.42 MB/sec
> 
> FYI some other hdparm results in case anyone's interested.
> 
> Host Disk Cached Reads Buffered Reads
> FX-8350 nvme 512G Samsung 950 (951?) 4793 1435

this seems low, my 950pro (256GB) does:
 Timing cached reads:   21216 MB in  1.99 seconds = 10660.10 MB/sec
 Timing buffered disk reads: 5444 MB in  3.00 seconds = 1813.68 MB/sec

(On an Asus Sabertooth X99 mainboard, X99 chipset with i7-5820K CPU)

I though the 256GB was supposed to be slower than the 512GB version. Not the 
other way round.

--
Joost

Re: [gentoo-user] Re: SDD, what features to look for and what to avoid.

[Dale]

J. Roeleveld wrote:
> On Thursday, April 2, 2020 12:49:11 AM CEST Dale wrote:
>> antlists wrote:
>>> On 01/04/2020 22:46, Dale wrote:
>>>> I still haven't bought it yet.  I ordered some toner cartridges a while
>>>> back for my printer.  The site said that the ones I ordered fits my
>>>> printer.  Well, it appears they found out that was a error because they
>>>> removed that page and relisted it but did not include my printer model.
>>>> So, I had to order a whole new set, at about $100.00 each for high
>>>> yield.  Needless to say, I'll be paying on that for a while.  I'll try
>>>> to sell the wrong ones later.  I only opened one color so the others are
>>>> still sealed.
>>> I know you're not UK, but under European rules you'd be able to return
>>> that opened cartridge at their expense - "not as described" and it's
>>> their problem even if you had to open it to find out.
>>>
>>>> BTW, next time I'll find a printer that allows refilling and such too.
>>>> I don't like that chip thing.  It counts against my page count on color
>>>> even if I print a black and white page.  Still, printer does a awesome
>>>> job.  Beats those ink jet thingys by a country mile.
>>> My HP laser is like that. Mind you, my colour cartridges "ran out" at
>>> about 1900 pages. They're still going fine (well, the yellow got
>>> replaced) at 4000 pages. But HP do say that a cartridge running empty
>>> won't damage the printer - all the vulnerable parts are in the cartridge.
>>>
>>> Cheers,
>>> Wol
>> I did try to contact them but have not heard back, either way.  They may
>> be closed or something tho.  No idea.  Some businesses are closed due to
>> the bug thingy. It may be that later on they allow me to return it. 
>>
>> From my understanding, when it reaches zero pages, it stops that
>> cartridge from working.  In other words, even if there is toner in the
>> cartridge, it won't feed it into the printer.  It may be a Lexmark
>> thing.  HP may do it differently.  I looked to see if I could find a
>> replacement chip and some toner but not for my printer, yet anyway. 
>> Maybe in a year or so. 
> I use HP and don't have that issue.
> Otherwise it would have stopped printing months ago :)
>
> --
> Joost
>

I'm surprised someone hasn't hacked the firmware in order to bypass all
that page count crap.  I wouldn't be surprised if it was some Linux type
OS either.  That should make it easier. It seems the printer is fairly
new.  Maybe by the time these new cartridges get low, something will
have changed.  Either a way to disable page counts, cheap replacement
ships and toner refill or something else I'm not aware of yet.

I may keep a eye out on a HP or other brand of printer.  One thing tho,
it will be duplex.  I love printing on both sides.  :-D

Dale

:-)  :-)

Re: [gentoo-user] Re: SDD, what features to look for and what to avoid.

[antlists]

On 02/04/2020 13:37, J. Roeleveld wrote:
> Same here, the colour cartridges have been saying they're "critically low" for
> the past couple of months. As they don't expire, I did order a new set when
> they got low. Those are still sealed in storage.

Yup. I ordered a set when they hit critically low. And replaced the 
yellow when it started looking naff. The other colours still look fine. 
The printer has been registered for its "free" 3-yr warranty, but it's a 
requirement that you must use only genuine HP cartridges. So I'm 
reckoning that once this first set of replacement cartridges runs out, 
the printer will be over three years old. The second set of cartridges 
will be compatibiles, and if I pay £20 instead of £100 per cartridge, 
that'll save me enough to buy a new printer if the old one breaks. I 
think the set of four XL cartridges cost more than the printer did!

Printers don't seem to last nowadays, anyway. I remember somebody asking 
about "old printers", and there were no "medium age" printers - they 
were all either less than five years old, or ancient LaserJet 4 era 
printers. Anything in-between had died (or, like one of my old printers, 
been sunk by production of consumables stopping).

Cheers,
Wol

[gentoo-user] Re: SDD, what features to look for and what to avoid.

[Grant Edwards]

On 2020-04-02, Dale <rdalek1967@gmail.com> wrote:

> Oooooooo. <me wipes up the drool> That nvme speed is faaaasssssstttt.
> Do you happen to have the OS on that and if so, just how fast does it go
> from BIOS or Grub to bootup complete? I'm almost scared to ask. o_O

I've been wondering if older fairly generic motherboards (7-8 years
old) from the likes of Asrock would be able to boot from an NVMe card
using a PCIe adapter like this:

https://www.amazon.com/QNINE-Adapter-Express-Controller-Expansion/dp/B075MDH28Y

I suspect not...

--
Grant

Re: [gentoo-user] Re: SDD, what features to look for and what to avoid.

[Dale]

Grant Edwards wrote:
> On 2020-04-02, Dale <rdalek1967@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> Oooooooo. <me wipes up the drool> That nvme speed is faaaasssssstttt.
>> Do you happen to have the OS on that and if so, just how fast does it go
>> from BIOS or Grub to bootup complete? I'm almost scared to ask. o_O
> I've been wondering if older fairly generic motherboards (7-8 years
> old) from the likes of Asrock would be able to boot from an NVMe card
> using a PCIe adapter like this:
>
> https://www.amazon.com/QNINE-Adapter-Express-Controller-Expansion/dp/B075MDH28Y
>
> I suspect not...
>
> --
> Grant

I have a Gigabyte 970 that is only a few years old and it doesn't
support it.  I wish it did.  I'm not sure when mobos started supporting
them tho and it may vary from one manufacturer to another.  I googled my
model number and nvme to find a site that says it isn't supported with
mine.  You may can do the same.

Dale

:-)  :-) 

Re: [gentoo-user] Re: SDD, what features to look for and what to avoid.

[Peter Humphrey]

On Thursday, 2 April 2020 03:57:00 BST William Kenworthy wrote:

> mfsmaster ~ # hdparm -Tt /dev/nvme0n1
> 
> /dev/nvme0n1:
>   Timing cached reads:   8524 MB in  1.99 seconds = 4283.31 MB/sec
>   Timing buffered disk reads: 4252 MB in  3.00 seconds = 1416.93 MB/sec
> mfsmaster ~ #
> 
> 
> Samsung 970 plus NVME M.2 on an odroid H2

/dev/nvme0n1:
 Timing cached reads:   18158 MB in  1.99 seconds = 9124.28 MB/sec
 Timing buffered disk reads: 5262 MB in  3.00 seconds = 1753.46 MB/sec

That's a "Samsung SM951 - NVMe Native Next Gen PCIe3 x4 M.2 256GB SSD", 
quoting from the invoice issued by Armari[1], the system builder. It's four 
years old, so it isn't even the latest whiz-bang toy. The motherboard is an 
Asus X99-A.

The whole Gentoo system is on it, apart from /tmp, /var/tmp/portage and /home/
prh/boinc. Boinc runs 24/7/52 on 12 threads + Radeon GPU.

1.  Armari build high-powered workstations for the London city financial 
markets, where fractions of a second count. Some serious iron.

-- 
Regards,
Peter.

Re: [gentoo-user] Re: SDD, what features to look for and what to avoid.

[Mark Knecht]

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On Thu, Apr 2, 2020 at 7:29 AM Grant Edwards <grant.b.edwards@gmail.com>
wrote:
>
> On 2020-04-02, Dale <rdalek1967@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > Oooooooo. <me wipes up the drool> That nvme speed is faaaasssssstttt.
> > Do you happen to have the OS on that and if so, just how fast does it go
> > from BIOS or Grub to bootup complete? I'm almost scared to ask. o_O
>
> I've been wondering if older fairly generic motherboards (7-8 years
> old) from the likes of Asrock would be able to boot from an NVMe card
> using a PCIe adapter like this:
>
>
https://www.amazon.com/QNINE-Adapter-Express-Controller-Expansion/dp/B075MDH28Y
>
> I suspect not...
>
> --
> Grant
>
The questions section says it will only boot from the card if the BIOS
supports the MB booting from NVMe drives

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[gentoo-user] Re: SDD, what features to look for and what to avoid.

[Grant Edwards]

On 2020-04-02, Mark Knecht <markknecht@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Thu, Apr 2, 2020 at 7:29 AM Grant Edwards <grant.b.edwards@gmail.com> wrote:
>> On 2020-04-02, Dale <rdalek1967@gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> I've been wondering if older fairly generic motherboards (7-8 years
>> old) from the likes of Asrock would be able to boot from an NVMe card
>> using a PCIe adapter like this:
>>
>>
> https://www.amazon.com/QNINE-Adapter-Express-Controller-Expansion/dp/B075MDH28Y
>>
>> I suspect not...

> The questions section says it will only boot from the card if the BIOS
> supports the MB booting from NVMe drives

Obvioiusly, boards can only boot from devices that are supported by
the BIOS.  The question is when did NVMe support in BIOSes become
common?

--
Grant

Re: [gentoo-user] Re: SDD, what features to look for and what to avoid.

[Mark Knecht]

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 1163 bytes --]

On Thu, Apr 2, 2020 at 10:28 AM Grant Edwards <grant.b.edwards@gmail.com>
wrote:
>
> On 2020-04-02, Mark Knecht <markknecht@gmail.com> wrote:
> > On Thu, Apr 2, 2020 at 7:29 AM Grant Edwards <grant.b.edwards@gmail.com>
wrote:
> >> On 2020-04-02, Dale <rdalek1967@gmail.com> wrote:
> >>
> >> I've been wondering if older fairly generic motherboards (7-8 years
> >> old) from the likes of Asrock would be able to boot from an NVMe card
> >> using a PCIe adapter like this:
> >>
> >>
> >
https://www.amazon.com/QNINE-Adapter-Express-Controller-Expansion/dp/B075MDH28Y
> >>
> >> I suspect not...
>
> > The questions section says it will only boot from the card if the BIOS
> > supports the MB booting from NVMe drives
>
> Obvioiusly, boards can only boot from devices that are supported by
> the BIOS.  The question is when did NVMe support in BIOSes become
> common?
>
> --
> Grant

Common? Don't know. Possible? Since probably 2011 with the right UEFI. If
your Asrock has UEFI/BIOS updates in the last couple of years I'd guess you
have a good chance.

Asrock gives you a place to ask questions:

https://www.asrock.com/support/index.us.asp

Give them a try.

Mark

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Re: [gentoo-user] Re: SDD, what features to look for and what to avoid.

[Frank Steinmetzger]

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On Thu, Apr 02, 2020 at 09:45:58AM -0500, Dale wrote:
> Grant Edwards wrote:
> > On 2020-04-02, Dale <rdalek1967@gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> >> Oooooooo. <me wipes up the drool> That nvme speed is faaaasssssstttt.
> >> Do you happen to have the OS on that and if so, just how fast does it go
> >> from BIOS or Grub to bootup complete? I'm almost scared to ask. o_O
> > I've been wondering if older fairly generic motherboards (7-8 years
> > old) from the likes of Asrock would be able to boot from an NVMe card
> > using a PCIe adapter like this:
> >
> > https://www.amazon.com/QNINE-Adapter-Express-Controller-Expansion/dp/B075MDH28Y
> >
> > I suspect not...
> >
> > --
> > Grant
> 
> I have a Gigabyte 970 that is only a few years old and it doesn't
> support it.  I wish it did.

Well, raw throughput is great ’n all, but in real-life you won’t notice much
difference between a SATA and an NVME drive. The bottleneck quickly becomes
the CPU again during boot or loading more complex applications (browser,
office). The biggest improvement in those situation comes from the fast
“seeking” and reading of many small files. HDDs are at a big disatvantage
here due to their moving head and mechanical seeking.

In fact I doubt you have many use cases for reading many gigabytes at a time
over and over again every day without much CPU overhead, like video editing
(loading previews in 4K or 8K), copying, archiving, checksumming and so on.

Due to their immense speed, those NVMEs also tend to heat up quite a bit
under load, eventually leading to throttling. So from a practical POV, and
since you’re on a budget, I suggest cutting cost by staying with SATA.

-- 
Gruß | Greetings | Qapla’
Please do not share anything from, with or about me on any social network.

“He doesn’t know how to use the three seashells!”

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Re: [gentoo-user] Re: SDD, what features to look for and what to avoid.

[Dale]

Frank Steinmetzger wrote:
> On Thu, Apr 02, 2020 at 09:45:58AM -0500, Dale wrote:
>> Grant Edwards wrote:
>>> On 2020-04-02, Dale <rdalek1967@gmail.com> wrote:
>>>
>>>> Oooooooo. <me wipes up the drool> That nvme speed is faaaasssssstttt.
>>>> Do you happen to have the OS on that and if so, just how fast does it go
>>>> from BIOS or Grub to bootup complete? I'm almost scared to ask. o_O
>>> I've been wondering if older fairly generic motherboards (7-8 years
>>> old) from the likes of Asrock would be able to boot from an NVMe card
>>> using a PCIe adapter like this:
>>>
>>> https://www.amazon.com/QNINE-Adapter-Express-Controller-Expansion/dp/B075MDH28Y
>>>
>>> I suspect not...
>>>
>>> --
>>> Grant
>> I have a Gigabyte 970 that is only a few years old and it doesn't
>> support it.  I wish it did.
> Well, raw throughput is great ’n all, but in real-life you won’t notice much
> difference between a SATA and an NVME drive. The bottleneck quickly becomes
> the CPU again during boot or loading more complex applications (browser,
> office). The biggest improvement in those situation comes from the fast
> “seeking” and reading of many small files. HDDs are at a big disatvantage
> here due to their moving head and mechanical seeking.
>
> In fact I doubt you have many use cases for reading many gigabytes at a time
> over and over again every day without much CPU overhead, like video editing
> (loading previews in 4K or 8K), copying, archiving, checksumming and so on.
>
> Due to their immense speed, those NVMEs also tend to heat up quite a bit
> under load, eventually leading to throttling. So from a practical POV, and
> since you’re on a budget, I suggest cutting cost by staying with SATA.
>


Yea, I don't see me getting a nvme anyway.  They kind of pricey.  While
fast, I have more time than I do money.  I do try to keep my rig in a
good place as far as age tho.  I may try to upgrade my mobo in a couple
years but stick with my current CPU and memory.  Mobos do go bad with
age, I've read about caps blowing their top and stinking up a room quite
well. 

While I don't edit videos, I do have several terabytes of video.  I
mostly just play them tho and they play fine with no skipping or
anything so what I got is plenty fast for that.  I mostly just want the
OS itself on something faster but also newer since that HDD I have now
has some age on it. 

I still find the nvmes interestingly fast.  Wow!!

Dale

:-)  :-) 

P. S. My top fan in my Cooler Master HAF-932 case got stuck the other
day.  It stopped spinning and gkrellm was kind enough to let me know
that.  I took it out, oiled it good and it works fine again.  I also
oiled the side fan and the front fan.  I got some high dollar gun oil I
use for those.  It's super slick, handles a wide range of temps and
lasts for ages.  I've used it in several fans.  Even my old CPU cooler
fan still runs.  I replaced it over a year ago.  I use the old one to
dry counter tops, dishes and cool batteries I'm charging. 

Re: [gentoo-user] Re: SDD, what features to look for and what to avoid.

[Peter Humphrey]

On Friday, 3 April 2020 16:14:33 BST Frank Steinmetzger wrote:

> Well, raw throughput is great ’n all, but in real-life you won’t notice much
> difference between a SATA and an NVME drive.

Not so. The difference is dramatic.

> The bottleneck quickly becomes
> the CPU again during boot or loading more complex applications (browser,
> office). The biggest improvement in those situation comes from the fast
> “seeking” and reading of many small files. HDDs are at a big disatvantage
> here due to their moving head and mechanical seeking.
> 
> In fact I doubt you have many use cases for reading many gigabytes at a time
> over and over again every day without much CPU overhead, like video editing
> (loading previews in 4K or 8K), copying, archiving, checksumming and so on.
> 
> Due to their immense speed, those NVMEs also tend to heat up quite a bit
> under load, eventually leading to throttling. So from a practical POV, and
> since you’re on a budget, I suggest cutting cost by staying with SATA.

I can't say anything about temperature, because gkrellm can't see a sensor of 
it, but I certainly wouldn't go back to plain old SSDs.

-- 
Regards,
Peter.

Re: [gentoo-user] Re: SDD, what features to look for and what to avoid.

[Alexandru N. Barloiu]

On Sat, 2020-04-04 at 10:51 +0100, Peter Humphrey wrote:
> On Friday, 3 April 2020 16:14:33 BST Frank Steinmetzger wrote:
> 
> > Well, raw throughput is great ’n all, but in real-life you won’t
> > notice much
> > difference between a SATA and an NVME drive.
> 
> Not so. The difference is dramatic.
> 
> > The bottleneck quickly becomes
> > the CPU again during boot or loading more complex applications
> > (browser,
> > office). The biggest improvement in those situation comes from the
> > fast
> > “seeking” and reading of many small files. HDDs are at a big
> > disatvantage
> > here due to their moving head and mechanical seeking.
> > 
> > In fact I doubt you have many use cases for reading many gigabytes
> > at a time
> > over and over again every day without much CPU overhead, like video
> > editing
> > (loading previews in 4K or 8K), copying, archiving, checksumming
> > and so on.
> > 
> > Due to their immense speed, those NVMEs also tend to heat up quite
> > a bit
> > under load, eventually leading to throttling. So from a practical
> > POV, and
> > since you’re on a budget, I suggest cutting cost by staying with
> > SATA.
> 
> I can't say anything about temperature, because gkrellm can't see a
> sensor of 
> it, but I certainly wouldn't go back to plain old SSDs.
> 


sata was a major bottleneck. in most motherboards it was embeded in the
southbridge WITH lan, sound, usb. When you saturate the sata
controller, all others stop working, or lag terribly. That's why swap
on sata systems only exacerbates the problem. 

nvme drives have been moved up in northbridge with cpu, memory and gpu.

The bandwidth is superhuge now. Not only you get amazing speeds with
one thread, but regardless of how much disk io you are doing, the
computer is not lagging anymore. 

problem with heating is the way it is mounted. M2 drives sit too close
to the motherboard, pciexpress drives are usually mounted on the bottom
half of the case because of the way pciexpress ports are layed out.
port one for gpu. last port from bottom, nvme. you could just put a fan
on it. 

Also, you don't need a fancy gui for nvme temperature. nvme smart-log
/dev/nvme0 will tell you the temperature from console. 



axl

Re: [gentoo-user] Re: SDD, what features to look for and what to avoid.

[Peter Humphrey]

On Saturday, 4 April 2020 11:38:48 BST Alexandru N. Barloiu wrote:
> On Sat, 2020-04-04 at 10:51 +0100, Peter Humphrey wrote:

> Also, you don't need a fancy gui for nvme temperature. nvme smart-log
> /dev/nvme0 will tell you the temperature from console.

Thanks for the pointer.

# nvme smart-log /dev/nvme0n1
Smart Log for NVME device:nvme0n1 namespace-id:ffffffff
critical_warning                    : 0
temperature                         : 49 C
available_spare                     : 100%
available_spare_threshold           : 10%
percentage_used                     : 31%
[...]

Interesting. 

-- 
Regards,
Peter.

Re: [gentoo-user] Re: SDD, what features to look for and what to avoid.

[Peter Humphrey]

On Saturday, 4 April 2020 10:51:42 BST Peter Humphrey wrote:
> On Friday, 3 April 2020 16:14:33 BST Frank Steinmetzger wrote:
> > Well, raw throughput is great ’n all, but in real-life you won’t notice
> > much difference between a SATA and an NVME drive.
> 
> Not so. The difference is dramatic.

For example, when I dep-cleaned gentoo-sources-4.19.97 this morning, it took 
11 seconds. That's real write performance.

-- 
Regards,
Peter.