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World Community Grid Forums
Category: Support
Forum: BOINC Agent Support
Thread: Running BOINC on SSD |
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Thread Status: Active Total posts in this thread: 10
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Former Member
Cruncher Joined: May 22, 2018 Post Count: 0 Status: Offline |
Hello everyone,
I'd like to ask if anyone has an experience with running BOINC on a Solid-State Drive? Is SSD suitable for running distributed computing on it? My point is that I'm going to exchange my regular hard drive for a SSD and I'm not sure if running distributed computing on it can particularly fasten mechanical wear of the SSD for example? Thank you very much for your replies. |
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Former Member
Cruncher Joined: May 22, 2018 Post Count: 0 Status: Offline |
Yes, I've tried it on a couple of SSDs (Intel X25-V 40GB and Corsair F60 60GB) and it works well enough.
But the Intel SSD has a "media wearout indicator" among it's SMART data, and running BOINC causes the wearout indicator to drop a bit faster than I'd like, to the tune of 2-3 points (out of 100) per month of 24/7 BOINC. This still gives an expected SSD lifetime of 3 years or more, so it's not that big a deal, and with a bigger SSD the wearout effect would be smaller. (With an SSD twice the size, 80 GB SSD instead of 40 GB, I'd expect half the wearout and twice the lifetime, and if we are talking 6 years or more that's longer than I'm likely to keep the system.) Still, I've decided to run BOINC on HDD for now, keeping the SSD for the OS. I may change my mind when larger SSDs (say >100GB) come down in price. |
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sk..
Master Cruncher http://s17.rimg.info/ccb5d62bd3e856cc0d1df9b0ee2f7f6a.gif Joined: Mar 22, 2007 Post Count: 2324 Status: Offline Project Badges: 
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I agree that it's probably a better idea to run Boinc from a secondary hard disk drive, with the operating system on the primary drive. Some projects benefit more than others from having a faster drive, but if you run a mix of projects then the significance of a drives speed is lessened. The ideal setup would probably be a raid zero secondary SSD drive config, but its costly and not really worth it unless you have a very high end system (dual skt). Also, when raid 0 goes wrong, it tends to go wrong big style. So it's more effort, more risk and more cost, for not a lot of extra performance if you are running mixed tasks.
WRT drives, its worth noting that most hard drives only come with a 1year warranty and some SSD's are much faster than others. |
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kateiacy
Veteran Cruncher USA Joined: Jan 23, 2010 Post Count: 1027 Status: Offline Project Badges: 
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I run BOINC on a 32 GB SSD in one of my machines. I run almost exclusively CEP2 on that machine, and find that the SSD really increases the efficiency. With a regular hard drive, I was seeing about 30-40 mins difference between elapsed time and CPU time, whereas on the SSD, the difference is 5-10 mins (both when running CEP2 on all 4 cores).
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KerSamson
Master Cruncher Switzerland Joined: Jan 29, 2007 Post Count: 1684 Status: Offline Project Badges:
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I operate two hosts (Phenom II x6) with SSD, especially because of CEP2.
----------------------------------------One host is linux based (Ubuntu 10.04) only and boinc-data in on a file system located on a SSD. CEP2 efficiency is close to 100% (99.7%). The second host has been operated at first with WinXP Pro SP3 on conventional HDD, with a CEP2 efficiency of 90 - 92%. Later I move the boinc data to a SSD partition with a CEP2 efficiency of 96.5%. Because of very inefficient RAM management in Win XP Pro with DDDT2 and CEP2, I switched the host on Linux (Ubuntu 10.04) and the average CEP2 efficiency is 99%. On the both hosts, the SSD is 128 GB big. I am aware that boinc should be a little bit stressful for a SSD. The future will show if SSDs are sufficiently reliable. Cheers, Yves |
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Fred De Condappa
Cruncher Joined: Nov 1, 2010 Post Count: 17 Status: Offline |
Yves,
I was interested in your post. At the moment, I do not run CEP2 at the moment as my rig isn't powerful enough. From your post, it seems that using an SSD can make quite a difference. However, my new rig will be powerful enough and I want to get the most out of it. I intend to run it 24/7 and I want the most efficient setup. I am often out of the house for long periods of time and plan to have one windows 7 boot up for when I am in the house and doing stuff and one linux bootup to only run WCG when I am away. I will adjust the caches manually to minimise WUs not finishing in time. Here are my two options. 1) My boot is an SSD on which I have both the linux and windows bootup but boinc and everything will be using a HDD to not wear out the SSD. 2) I buy a another (cheap) 32gb SSD and use this to run the linux and WCG setup exclusively. Which will be more efficient and practical? |
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sk..
Master Cruncher http://s17.rimg.info/ccb5d62bd3e856cc0d1df9b0ee2f7f6a.gif Joined: Mar 22, 2007 Post Count: 2324 Status: Offline Project Badges:
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I would go for two drives, one Linux and one W7. You could even just swap the SATA cable to switch.
Reason, to avoid failures and data loss. |
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Former Member
Cruncher Joined: May 22, 2018 Post Count: 0 Status: Offline |
On SSDs in general, not particularly related to BOINC:
This guy likes SSDs a lot, but also says that they fail a lot - someone there has eight dead SSDs over a period of two years. From the post: Solid state hard drives are so freaking amazing performance wise, and the experience you will have with them is so transformative, that I don't even care if they fail every 12 months on average! I can't imagine using a computer without a SSD any more; it'd be like going back to dial-up internet or 13" CRTs or single button mice. Over my dead body, man! All things considered, I would go for an SSD/HDD combo :) |
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sk..
Master Cruncher http://s17.rimg.info/ccb5d62bd3e856cc0d1df9b0ee2f7f6a.gif Joined: Mar 22, 2007 Post Count: 2324 Status: Offline Project Badges:
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Anyone that wants to buy a SSD should only do so if it has a good warranty. I would also register with them asap, and keep the box and receipt. If you have to do an RTM, use their methods of returning the item or use a signed and traced delivery service.
The exact same advice for buying a GPU. |
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gabranth99
Cruncher Joined: Mar 1, 2011 Post Count: 26 Status: Offline |
or you could just use a software ramdisk lasts longer than an SSD
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