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World Community Grid Forums
Category: Community
Forum: Hardware Chat Room
Thread: Best drive for cruncher - USB Flash Drive, HDD or SSD? |
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Thread Status: Active Total posts in this thread: 39
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Former Member
Cruncher Joined: May 22, 2018 Post Count: 0 Status: Offline |
I'm currently running two crunchers 24/7, running Linux (Lubuntu 16.04) from USB flash drive. My reasons for not choosing SSD or HDD were:
- cheap price of USB sticks - lower energy consumption - especially when compared to HDD, but I would guess a bit also compared to SSD - even a few Watt make quite some difference over longer time spans, and electricity is expensive where i live - low read/write speeds seem not to be much of an issue for WCG, I set minimum write time to 3600s, so data written should be really not much. And as I do not work on the machines I don't care if the desktop is a bit laggy and starting applications takes a bit longer But what about longevity? All the advantages of running a OS from USB flash drive are not worth much, if they fail repeatedly. Do they? My experiences for now: - one no-name USB flash drive failed after 7 months - ok it was no-name, probably low quality - bought two Intenso speed line 16 GB sticks for my two crunchers. These are not expensive but not ultra-cheap also. One runs since 5 months without issue now. Another failed a few days ago after running not even three months. So what do I do now? Buy another USB stick? Maybe I were just unlucky and they do not fail too often? Buy a more expensive one in the hope that it is better quality and lasts longer? Buy a SSD instead? (HDD is not really an option for me). Does anyone have experience here? 1. How long do your USB flash drives last when running Linux on a 24/7 WCG cruncher on them? 2. Does anyone have any valid data as to how much electricity does a SSD use vs. a USB flash drive? I would guess especially the SATA controller (which is deactivated on my systems) uses a few Watt extra which adds up, but I have no valid data on that |
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Former Member
Cruncher Joined: May 22, 2018 Post Count: 0 Status: Offline |
I believe Sgt Joe has servers running off USB flash drives. Last I recall, he said some of them had been running for over a year with no ill effects. I wish members could be tagged on this archaic forum...
You may have gotten some bad media with the no name devices. I have had no name micro SD cards fail on me, where the name brand ones have never failed. Setting your "write to" in BOINC higher is a good idea to save the USB sticks from unnecessary writes, but not so much if the systems reboot frequently. For USB sticks vs SSDs, I don't know what the power consumption differences are. I know SSDs are very low compared to HDDs though. For your setup, if you are not using the machine I would stick to a good quality name brand USB stick. SSDs are still too high in price IMO unless it is a daily use system where you would notice the speed differences, and you could go through several USB sticks before reaching the cost of a 250GB SSD (those run about $75US for a good quality SSD here). Also, you did not mention what size your USB sticks you are using are. If you are only using a 4GB or 8GB, that is less room to write to so it will likely wear out faster. If you go with a larger size, say a 32GB or so, the writes would be spread out more and the drive should last longer. |
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Former Member
Cruncher Joined: May 22, 2018 Post Count: 0 Status: Offline |
The sticks are 16 GB, more thatn half is still free, so I guess there is no issue with writing the same sections too often.
With the prices for SSDs the difference might be not that large... I don't need 250 GB. There are new 32 GB SSDs available for 25-30 EUR. The USB sticks I have in use now are about 8 EUR (16 GB Intenso Speed Line) and higher quality ones may be 15 EUR (e.g. Transcend JetFlash 780, 16 GB). However, even smaller price differences add up over time, and I will probably build several WCG crunchers over the years. |
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KerSamson
Master Cruncher Switzerland Joined: Jan 29, 2007 Post Count: 1684 Status: Offline Project Badges: 
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Honestly, after many years operating Linux and Windows 7 hosts on HDD and SSD, I cannot report any noticeable performance differences, including with 8 threads, excepted at boot time. However, since the hosts run 24/7, the reboot time has a very limited impact.
----------------------------------------In order to preserve the SSD life time, I usually store the boinc data on the HDD. I assume that the RAM speed has probably a more significant impact on crunching performances than the HDD/SSD. Cheers, Yves |
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flynryan
Senior Cruncher United States Joined: Aug 15, 2006 Post Count: 235 Status: Offline Project Badges:
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I've used both SSD's and Flash sticks without issue. HDD's are fine for crunching use but they do take more electricity due to them having constant moving parts. Any solid state option is the best IMO.
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KLiK
Master Cruncher Croatia Joined: Nov 13, 2006 Post Count: 3108 Status: Offline Project Badges: 
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How often do you need to replace the USB sticks?
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Sgt.Joe
Ace Cruncher USA Joined: Jul 4, 2006 Post Count: 7851 Status: Offline Project Badges:
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I have two servers running strictly off of USB sticks. They are both 24 thread units. I had in the past tried a no name unit and it failed after a couple of months. I now have used 16gb Sandisk units for which I paid $4.99 US. One unit has been running for 395 days now without a problem. The other one has been running for 199 days. For the one time ( on the machine with the 199 day one) the Sandisk has failed me, it was my own fault. I started my table saw on the same circuit as that machine and the voltage fluctuation is what probably killed the USB drive. So, I learned my lesson that time. If I had not done that it would most probably also be at the same level as the other one. Both machines are running Linux Mint 18.
----------------------------------------Cheers
Sgt. Joe
*Minnesota Crunchers* |
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hchc
Veteran Cruncher USA Joined: Aug 15, 2006 Post Count: 865 Status: Offline Project Badges: 
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I have a dual-core box running on Debian Stable 9.4 with no GUI or Desktop Environment. The entire system is running on a 16 GB Lexar (Micron memory) USB flash drive. It's been operational since about December 2017 so about 4 months so far with no problems. I only reboot if the system updates require it, so maybe once every 1-2 months. The checkpoint frequency is set to 600 seconds (10 minutes).
----------------------------------------No problems yet. It's not worth the cost to upgrade to SSD for each cruncher.
[Edit 1 times, last edit by hchc at Mar 24, 2018 9:20:32 AM] |
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dondee
Advanced Cruncher Joined: Jan 16, 2006 Post Count: 100 Status: Offline Project Badges: 
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I have two questions for you fellow crunchers using usb drives. I ask this here because obviously some one here has done this.
----------------------------------------1 Do you have the partition on the usb drives set persistent and how did you accomplish that? I have looked for this on the internet and seems the info is incomplete or just wrong. 2 Do you have a swap partition set up or are you running without swap? Thanks, any info would be helpful. I forgot to qualify these questions by telling the os will be Linux. [Edit 1 times, last edit by dondee at Mar 25, 2018 3:40:39 AM] |
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KLiK
Master Cruncher Croatia Joined: Nov 13, 2006 Post Count: 3108 Status: Offline Project Badges:
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Yesterday bought 2x32GB of PNY with 2y warranty.
----------------------------------------Will have to copy Linux system to it...don't know how, so have to copy whole partition. A little learning is going to happen... |
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