M2 SSD

[mikeymike 357]

Hey,

so I am getting a new mobo , ram and cpu soon 

 

and was thinking a SSD m2 

at the moment I have a Samsung pro 256gb for os

and another for P3d 

now was thinking to either to us se the m2 500gb for scenery Or for P3d v4? 

Or shall I use both m2 ssd to benefit speed?

thoughts?

Edited October 3, 2019 by mikeymike

[nas123 160]

I would get the Kingston M.2 A1000 NMVe. 

Then  split the physical SSD into 2 x 500 GB logical units. 

1 for OS and 1 for P3D. 

Or a 500GB module split into 2 250GB, 1 for OS and the other for P3D 

The Kingston M.2 A1000 has great performance and low cost.

Edited October 3, 2019 by nas123

[mikeymike 357]

Thanks for the reply, hmm didn’t know you could split the ssd? 

 

So I guess my current ssd with a separate m2 will cause issues with loading etc? 

9 minutes ago, nas123 said:

I would get the Kingston M.2 A1000 NMVe. 

Then  split the physical SSD into 2 x 500 GB logical units. 

1 for OS and 1 for P3D. 

Or a 500GB module split into 2 250GB, 1 for OS and the other for P3D 

The Kingston M.2 A1000 has great performance and low cost.

Regards 

mike 

[Bob Scott 7,714]

The only reason I would consider partitioning (splitting) the SSD would be to have the ability to back up the OS partition more quickly.  On my primary sim machine, I now keep Win 10 on a separate 256GB SLC Samsung Pro so that I can very quickly take a snapshot of the OS drive every week as an insurance policy against having one of the many FUBAR Win 10 automatic updates borking my system.  I use a more expensive SLC (single-layer cell) SSD because the OS drive gets a lot more write activity, so I prefer a drive with much higher write endurance there.

There are some reasonable arguments to be made against partitioning the drive--one being that it's not always easy to determine just how much space to give to each logical partition, another being that putting the OS into a small partition means more thrashing of the cells assigned to that partition because of swap file writes, OS updates, search index table maintenance etc.

Performance was not measurably different than when I had the OS and P3D on the same SSD. 

Regards

[mikeymike 357]

1 hour ago, w6kd said:

The only reason I would consider partitioning (splitting) the SSD would be to have the ability to back up the OS partition more quickly.  On my primary sim machine, I now keep Win 10 on a separate 256GB SLC Samsung Pro so that I can very quickly take a snapshot of the OS drive every week as an insurance policy against having one of the many FUBAR Win 10 automatic updates borking my system.  I use a more expensive SLC (single-layer cell) SSD because the OS drive gets a lot more write activity, so I prefer a drive with much higher write endurance there.

There are some reasonable arguments to be made against partitioning the drive--one being that it's not always easy to determine just how much space to give to each logical partition, another being that putting the OS into a small partition means more thrashing of the cells assigned to that partition because of swap file writes, OS updates, search index table maintenance etc.

Performance was not measurably different than when I had the OS and P3D on the same SSD. 

Regards

So my best option would be to use my current ssd Samsung 840 pro

and get a say 250gb/500fb  m2 for P3d 

and say 500/1tb m2 for addons scenery etc etc ??

 

thanks 

mike 

 

[Bob Scott 7,714]

4 hours ago, mikeymike said:

So my best option would be to use my current ssd Samsung 840 pro

and get a say 250gb/500fb  m2 for P3d 

and say 500/1tb m2 for addons scenery etc etc ??

 

thanks 

mike 

 

I don't understand why you'd want two SSDs for the sim when one will do.  You could keep the 840 Pro for Windows, then put the entire sim and your addons on a single 500-1000GB SSD. 

Also, M2 is a form factor, not an interface.  You can have an M2 SSD with a SATA III interface that's electrically no different than a 2.5" SATA drive parked in a HDD bay.  nVME and SATA III--the interfaces--are where the performance is determined. nVME's potential throughput is nominally ~17x faster than SATA III,  but that said, the only difference you're likely to see in P3D from that increase in storage throughput is reduced load times at startup.  P3D's lookahead scenery caching makes mass storage throughput during simulation pretty much a non-factor unless you're using large amounts of heavy photoscenery, or flying close to the ground at very fast speeds.

[Luke 782]

14 hours ago, w6kd said:

I use a more expensive SLC (single-layer cell) SSD because the OS drive gets a lot more write activity, so I prefer a drive with much higher write endurance there.

Out of curiosity, how much are you writing? I'm doing around 4TB a year to my 970PRO and I fully expect it to become obsolete or simply too small long before it wears out. Even if that doesn't happen, I fully expect me to wear out long before the drive does.

14 hours ago, w6kd said:

putting the OS into a small partition means more thrashing of the cells assigned to that partition because of swap file writes, OS updates, search index table maintenance etc.

Keep in mind that the drive remaps the cells on the fly, so a free flash cell that that was used for Partition 1 and later freed could be used at some later date for Partition 2, based on the wear leveling algorithm.

Cheers!

[mikeymike 357]

9 hours ago, w6kd said:

I don't understand why you'd want two SSDs for the sim when one will do.  You could keep the 840 Pro for Windows, then put the entire sim and your addons on a single 500-1000GB SSD. 

Also, M2 is a form factor, not an interface.  You can have an M2 SSD with a SATA III interface that's electrically no different than a 2.5" SATA drive parked in a HDD bay.  nVME and SATA III--the interfaces--are where the performance is determined. nVME's potential throughput is nominally ~17x faster than SATA III,  but that said, the only difference you're likely to see in P3D from that increase in storage throughput is reduced load times at startup.  P3D's lookahead scenery caching makes mass storage throughput during simulation pretty much a non-factor unless you're using large amounts of heavy photoscenery, or flying close to the ground at very fast speeds.

Ok, thanks for the reply

so basically have addons outside P3d folder.

and having addons in sane drive thou different folder shouldn’t yield a performance issue?

regards

mike 

[Bob Scott 7,714]

23 minutes ago, mikeymike said:

having addons in sane drive thou different folder shouldn’t yield a performance issue?

Nope

[Bob Scott 7,714]

1 hour ago, Luke said:

Out of curiosity, how much are you writing? I'm doing around 4TB a year to my 970PRO and I fully expect it to become obsolete or simply too small long before it wears out. Even if that doesn't happen, I fully expect me to wear out long before the drive does.

Keep in mind that the drive remaps the cells on the fly, so a free flash cell that that was used for Partition 1 and later freed could be used at some later date for Partition 2, based on the wear leveling algorithm.

I saw over 30 TB on my 256GB 850 Pro in less than a year, not sure why so much.  On wear-levelling, I remember reading some time back that the wear-levelling algorithms typically respect partition boundaries.  It'd be interesting to know more detail about how that's done on a multi-partition drive, but it's probably different for each manufacturer and kept closely-held as a proprietary secret.

Cheers

[mikeymike 357]

36 minutes ago, w6kd said:

Nope

Thank you.

[Luke 782]

3 hours ago, w6kd said:

I saw over 30 TB on my 256GB 850 Pro in less than a year, not sure why so much.  On wear-levelling, I remember reading some time back that the wear-levelling algorithms typically respect partition boundaries.  It'd be interesting to know more detail about how that's done on a multi-partition drive, but it's probably different for each manufacturer and kept closely-held as a proprietary secret.

30TB? That _is_ a lot. I wonder why - were you doing builds, graphics or some other I/O intensive work?

I'd love to see a link to the second statement. AFAIU drives just work on the concept of blocks, and really should have no idea of a partition, especially as there are multiple ways of defining one (and partitioning if I understand correctly isn't even required under certain operating systems).

Cheers!