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World Community Grid Forums
Category: Support
Forum: BOINC Agent Support
Thread: No HDD. USB or HDD or SSD ? |
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Thread Status: Active Total posts in this thread: 30
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Byteball_730a2960
Senior Cruncher Joined: Oct 29, 2010 Post Count: 318 Status: Offline Project Badges: 
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Hi everyone, I am wondering if you can help me out.
I am just about to get a computer from my school for free. It has an Intel Celeron Core 2 Duo e4500 processor in it and everything but a harddrive which the school is keeping for privacy concerns. I don't know the Motherboard, Ram, PSU etc yet. I have been crunching with this computer reliably for several months, so with a new hard drive, it should be good to go. I intend to run Linux as I hear this is more efficient than W7. The computer will do nothing but crunch. I know a little bit about computers but nothing about software although I can usually figure it out. Considering that I will NOT be running CEP2 and it can only run two threads, what do you think about these options. 1) Can I run everything on a 8GB 2.0 USB stick? It is cheaper to buy one than a harddrive and I imagine it will use less power too. Will the read/write speeds be a bottle neck? 2) I could get a Samsung HM031HC PATA drive which runs at 5400 rpm and 8mb cache. Will this work in a desktop? 3) A cheap ssd although with only two threads, I think this is overkill. I hope this isn't a stupid question but I would like to contribute as much as possible to WCG. Thanks a lot! |
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Coleslaw
Veteran Cruncher USA Joined: Mar 29, 2007 Post Count: 1343 Status: Offline Project Badges: 
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Any of those 3 options would work. You can also use a Live CD for many brands of Linux and basically run all out of ram. The problem is that you would have to reset all your options and such again if it reboots. Dotsch Linux is also a good way to go if you want to use a usb thumb drive. Do a forum search in here for more info on it. If you are not doing CEP2, then a standard PATA would work ok too. I have used really old HDD's that were only a single gigabyte from the old Pentium 1 days for this purpose.
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Sgt.Joe
Ace Cruncher USA Joined: Jul 4, 2006 Post Count: 7849 Status: Offline Project Badges:
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1) Can I run everything on a 8GB 2.0 USB stick? It is cheaper to buy one than a harddrive and I imagine it will use less power too. Will the read/write speeds be a bottle neck? I would tend to discourage this option as I tried it. The thumbdrives(USB sticks) have a limited number of writes and are not designed to be run continuously. I used Linux Mint on one and it did run beautifully for about 45 days if I remember correctly and then "poof" it was gone. I agree with Coleslaw that any PATA drive will work as I have done this also with drives as small as 3gb with a Win 2000 install. Many Linux installs would be smaller. You should be able to pick up a used small PATA drive for 5 to 10 bucks. Good luck with your cruncher. Cheers
Sgt. Joe
*Minnesota Crunchers* |
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Byteball_730a2960
Senior Cruncher Joined: Oct 29, 2010 Post Count: 318 Status: Offline Project Badges:
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Thanks guys, I will look into those options when I get a little more time and the computer next week.
Out of interest, I just started running BOINC portable from a USB on one of the servers here as my school didn't want the hard drive to potentially fail on that. In this case, what would be the best way of extending the life of the USB? Get a bigger USB or write less often? |
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Coleslaw
Veteran Cruncher USA Joined: Mar 29, 2007 Post Count: 1343 Status: Offline Project Badges:
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Write less often and quality of thumb drive over quantity.
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Sgt.Joe
Ace Cruncher USA Joined: Jul 4, 2006 Post Count: 7849 Status: Offline Project Badges:
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Write less often and quality of thumb drive over quantity. I agree. Cheers
Sgt. Joe
*Minnesota Crunchers* |
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Byteball_730a2960
Senior Cruncher Joined: Oct 29, 2010 Post Count: 318 Status: Offline Project Badges:
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Ok. I guess it is time for me to learn a lot about USB sticks.
1) To write less often, I guess that would mean changing the "Tasks checkpoint to disk at most every..." to a longer value. At the moment, I have it set at 900 seconds. Do I want it longer than that? 2) Looking at this, http://blog.premiumusb.com/2011/01/buying-tips-for-flash-drive-quality/ I want something with a grade A chip but I cannot find a list of regular manufacturers with grade A chips. I was looking at buying a Sandisk Cruzer fit 8gb drive but all I can find is that it comes with a two year guarantee. Is this a quality drive? |
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Sgt.Joe
Ace Cruncher USA Joined: Jul 4, 2006 Post Count: 7849 Status: Offline Project Badges:
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1. 900 seconds is every 15 minutes. I think that would be OK.
----------------------------------------2. Sandisk is a quality maker. Check the reviews on Newegg and Amazon. 2 years is a good warranty. Cheers
Sgt. Joe
*Minnesota Crunchers* |
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Former Member
Cruncher Joined: May 22, 2018 Post Count: 0 Status: Offline |
Was wondering where "Tasks checkpoint to disk at most every..." came from where it used to be "Write to disk at most every...", v7 it appears and yet more manual modding and user/support confusion [though it is a much better conveying of the relationship]. We've already established that CEP2 wont listen to that setting... it just writes a single one when 1 of 16 jobs in a task is ready.
Tests have shown that above 900 seconds there is no appreciable performance improvements when using spinning drives i.e. would only serve to extend life a little bit more on SSDs by increasing the interval further. On a 24/7 Linux device had it on 1800 for longer but that gained nothing at all. --//-- |
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Byteball_730a2960
Senior Cruncher Joined: Oct 29, 2010 Post Count: 318 Status: Offline Project Badges:
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Thanks everyone. I ended up getting the cruzer and we are working on getting everything working together.
Basically, I love the idea of WCG and I crunch exclusively on it. Like many others, I upgraded my home computer too powerful for my everyday needs but to increase my crunch. I have persuaded my school board to believe in it too and they are going to help me out. They are in the process of installing new systems throughout the schools and junking a bunch of computers. The computers are just going to be thrown away and I can pick and choose what I want. So, over the next month or so, I will be getting some cases, power supplies, etc etc and I plan to build some crunching machines from them depending on the parts and how much electricity I can spend etc. I'll be asking you guys for your advice if I can't find everything I need online which leads me to my first question. In the meantime, I have been given a free business sample laptop. It has a 250gb Sata drive, 4Gb Ram and an intel i5-2430M processor. What is the leanest OS that I should install on it? |
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