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SSD - solid state drives?

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NutmegCT

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At the air museum, we use desktops for (1) database access, and (2) browser-based email and web searches.

The database is held on a dedicated server, with four workstation desktops accessing the database over the local network.

A tech guy recently suggested we change all the machines from the current (mechanical) hard drives, to SSD solid state drives. Tech said "you'll be amazed at how much faster they'll run".

As an old curmudgeon, I don't see any advantage to moving to SSD drives, based on several factors:

1. speed of database use (adding items and searching the database) is governed by finger typing speed, not data flow. We do very few database searches, and the few we do make require only a few seconds. Adding items is a manual data entry procedure; after data fields are filled, clicking Save takes only about one second until we're ready to add another item.

2. replacing HDs with SSDs would require reinstalling the OS (Win10) and all applications (MS Office, browser, thousands of data files).

3. we're due to replace all the desktops within the next two years (five year cycle), when we could easily buy machines with SSDs already set up.

I don't have a problem having SSDs on the next upgrade, but can't see any advantage to all the hassle of replacing the current HDs with SSDs. What am I missing?

Thanks.
Tom M.
(I'm also a Frugal Zealot. Why spend money, even at $50/SSD, then have to reconfigure all the machines, when they're working fine now.)

PS - the only frustrating delay we have now, is coming in to work, and seeing "You must restart to install updates". Can't figure out how to get the machines to restart automatically after updating.
 
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Macrium Reflect Image of the old drive, load onto new drive, IF Microslime will allow it.
SS drives have issues with defragmenting...as in, don't. Always uses the same segments and burns the out prematurely.

I'll stick with HDD and non-UEFI BIOS.
 
DrEntropy

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Tom, JMHO but that seems a pointless expense. And a time waster, too.
 
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NutmegCT

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DrEntropy said:
Tom, JMHO but that seems a pointless expense. And a time waster, too.
Click to expand...

:iagree:

But always wondering what I might be overlooking. I'm sure the tech support company with our service contract would *never* try to sell us something we don't need!
 
Basil

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NutmegCT said:
:iagree:

But always wondering what I might be overlooking. I'm sure the tech support company with our service contract would *never* try to sell us something we don't need!
Click to expand...

I prefer SSD over mechanical HD for a variety of reasons, BUT if you're planning a future upgrade anyway and could go with SSD at that time, I don't think I'd waste the money upgrading the current system. If you are not noticing any significant performance issues that are affecting getting the job done, then there really isn't any compelling reason to switch.

Where you might see a big difference is not with single queries, but if you were doing large batch-type queries, or queries that need to check millions of records on the database. Fragmentation is not really an issue with SSD because there isn't really any (or very very little) seek time penalty for fragmented data like there is with HDD that has to use mechanical seek process to find pieces of a file on the hard drive that may be scattered all over the disk. By the way the BCF Server is running on SSD Drives. When there are lots of users online or lurking, the database is getting hit with many requests to serve web pages or doing search queries in a short time, then SSD does make a noticeable difference in performance.
 
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NutmegCT

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Thanks Basil. You've got way more experience with search-heavy issues than we do at the museum. I think I'll have the tech service put a SSD on the database server, and see if anyone notices a difference. It'll also be interesting to see how much of a hassle the conversion process turns out to be.

I'm always wary of tech guys who tell me how much faster my machines will be with additional ram and SSD. They doubled the ram on the machines, and we saw no difference whatever - altho' loading using multiple apps at once did show a slight speed increase in switching windows. But we never run multiple apps other than the various bits of the o/s. Everybody wants "faster browser experience" - but few realize that browser speed is very dependent on the websites themselves.

Thanks.
Tom M.
 
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YakkoWarner

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NutmegCT said:
Thanks Basil. You've got way more experience with search-heavy issues than we do at the museum. I think I'll have the tech service put a SSD on the database server, and see if anyone notices a difference. It'll also be interesting to see how much of a hassle the conversion process turns out to be.

I'm always wary of tech guys who tell me how much faster my machines will be with additional ram and SSD. They doubled the ram on the machines, and we saw no difference whatever - altho' loading using multiple apps at once did show a slight speed increase in switching windows. But we never run multiple apps other than the various bits of the o/s. Everybody wants "faster browser experience" - but few realize that browser speed is very dependent on the websites themselves.

Thanks.
Tom M.
Click to expand...

On the other side of the equation:

I threw an SSD into a 2006 Macbook (no change in RAM or anything else) and the performance difference was amazingly better. Just simply navigating around the system is much more responsive and crisper. Switching my Windows machine to SSD had similar results - you don't always realize while using it but the OS is constantly loading and unloading bits of itself on the fly (unless you happen to have an insane amount of RAM onboard) - just hovering the mouse over an application's toolbar causes it load the tooltip bubbles as needed, dialog boxes load before being displayed, things like that. ALL of that happens much faster regardless of which OS you're using. Its like the difference between a dry bearing and a well lubricated one. You don't really notice the fractional second lag on the user interface elements, or the short pause while web pages are cached to local disk. But when that lag goes away, you do perceive the whole experience as being quicker. It can make the browsing experience less sluggish as well - yes the pages still come in at whatever speed the internet feeds them to you at - but with the SSD the internet speed becomes the only significant bottleneck instead of one of many. Flipping between tabs is almost seamless, scrolling long pages is quicker, active scripting/javascript load times are quicker - all sorts of stuff like that.

If the machines are close to EOL anyway, the effort to switch over may not be worth it, especially if the performance is acceptable for the current usage. I'd almost be tempted to say try it on one machine and see if there is enough improvement to warrent doing the rest.
 
DrEntropy

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Yakko said:
If the machines are close to EOL anyway, the effort to switch over may not be worth it, especially if the performance is acceptable for the current usage. I'd almost be tempted to say try it on one machine and see if there is enough improvement to warrent doing the rest.
Click to expand...


A measured response. My guess is it would not show enough of an advantage to make the 'upgrade' to the other workstations.
 
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NutmegCT

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DrEntropy said:
A measured response. My guess is it would not show enough of an advantage to make the 'upgrade' to the other workstations. [/COLOR]
Click to expand...

Same thing I'm thinking. I'm going to have the tech company do the installation on the server only, and measure before vs after speeds on database access from the workstations. Ulterior motive: show the tech guy that the work and SSD isn't worth doing - at least now.

Thanks.
Tom M.
 
DrEntropy

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The server is the beneficiary in that it will boot up faster and satisfy a query more quickly. That may be the better use of a metal-to-SSD swap, actually.

Personally, I'm not yet sold on SSD use in a mission critical data server application. Been using WD's "Black" metal HD's with good results for a few years now in server builds. Did recently use a Solid State drive in a server, but only as the scratch drive. A WD (Black) 1T drive to hold data. Jury's still out on the SSD reliability, only a few months into service.
 
PAUL161

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I agree that the jury's out on just how long these SSDs will last, I hope they hold up as this new HP of mine is lightning fast, kinda different getting use to it's speed, but I love it! My Toshiba laptop has a 1T WD drive and I never realized just how slow it was/is compared to this new one. Not a fan of Microsoft or Windows 10, but I'll leave it as is for now, the Toshiba has Linux in it. PJ
 
GregW

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I have one SSD drive that will be turning 7 years old in December. That computer gets fired up at least once every day.
 
LarryK

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It is a museum, stick with the old, until you have too. You've got enough to do without messing with the computer for a few days. :chuncky:
 
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NutmegCT

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LarryK said:
It is a museum, stick with the old, until you have too. You've got enough to do without messing with the computer for a few days. :chuncky:
Click to expand...

Good idea. We just might stick with the old database system:


museum search.jpg
 
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PAUL161 said:
Not a fan of Microsoft or Windows 10, but I'll leave it as is for now, the Toshiba has Linux in it. PJ
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We've converted to Win10 on work laptops. While it's ok.., I've noticed some days it boots up within a minute, other days can take up to 10 minutes just to reach the wallpaper. They say it is just the fact that everything jumps ni at once and whatever grabs the processor may wait on things that can't get in yet.
 
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Windows 10 also needs to phone back to the Microsoft mothership more frequently than 7 did, and some of that delay is waiting for the response (or if not connected to the internet waiting for the timeout) before proceeding. I see it on my Win10 tablet at times also...
 
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NutmegCT

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Not worried about bootup times, as the server runs 24/7. Will be interesting to see if database searches run any faster than on the current HD system.
 
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