4 ms·

Relevant: http://www.mcetech.com/optibay/ http://www.mcetech.com/optibay/

by gbrindisi 16y ago

PStamatiou 16y ago
Yeah I used that optibay to put a second ssd in and raid it with my other ssd in my 17inch mbp. definitely worth it
- stcredzero 16y ago
  Someone needs to create a filesystem optimized for something like two heterogeneous drives, like a 64GB SSD and a 500GB HDD. It would try to put larger files on the HDD (where storage space and sequential read/write speed are useful and random-access less critical) and smaller files on the SSD (which has better random access). This would rock! You'd have a really zippy laptop with scads of space.
  - pyre 16y ago
    The issue being that by the time such a filesystem became stable enough for people to trust it with their data, SSDs may have already caught up to HDDs in terms of storage capacity.
  - ryanpetrich 16y ago
    ZFS has the ability to use SSDs as cache for larger HDDs (which is close to what you've described)
    - stcredzero 16y ago
      I could accomplish much the same thing with a daemon that migrated the files for me.
  - pmjordan 16y ago
    Working on a driver for this. Watch this space. :) (been trying to go fulltime on this, financial constraints have been holding me back; I have a partial prototype working on Linux, Mac OS X is the next target) That said, there are existing solutions for this, they just suck, e.g.: http://www.seagate.com/www/en-us/products/laptops/laptop-hdd http://www.seagate.com/www/en-us/products/laptops/laptop-hdd (only 4GB Flash, WTF?) http://www.bit-tech.net/news/hardware/2010/02/03/silverstone-announces-hybrid-ssd-hard-disk/1 http://www.bit-tech.net/news/hardware/2010/02/03/silverstone... (this is just a dumb partial RAID) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ReadyBoost http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ReadyBoost (designed to work with USB sticks of all things, and isn't terribly smart about what to cache)
    - stcredzero 16y ago
      What about a daemon that migrates files over and symlinks them?
      - pmjordan 16y ago
        Brittle. Many apps will delete and replace a file when writing. Now you have 2 copies, 1 out of date. You'd be mildly better off with a union file system, but there aren't any good ones I can find. Plus, that sort of file-based system doesn't cache file system structure/metadata, which is a major source of disk head movement.
  - Encosia 16y ago
    I've found that it's beneficial to embrace the divide between a fast boot drive and a large data drive. If you only store your OS and programs on the boot drive, space isn't a big concern and you gain a lot of flexibility. It's less hassle to repave the OS, migrating your data to new machines is simple, and it's easier to upgrade the boot drive as faster ones are available. That's especially nice with SSDs because you no longer have to care very much about the write limit. If my SSD boot drive wears out, I have 0 data recovery/restoration to worry about.
    - stcredzero 16y ago
      I've found that it's beneficial to embrace the divide between a fast boot drive and a large data drive. I'm thinking of it myself, but I also thought it out further and concluded that it could be completely automated. In my case, if one just kept all files larger than 100MB on the HDD, that would be enough. Better still, I could specify certain directories to be kept on the HDD. I could do all of the above with symlinks, but setting that up once and getting the desired result automatically could be even better.

Relevant: http://www.mcetech.com/optibay/ http://www.mcetech.com/optibay/

PStamatiou 16y ago

Yeah I used that optibay to put a second ssd in and raid it with my other ssd in my 17inch mbp. definitely worth it

stcredzero 16y ago
Someone needs to create a filesystem optimized for something like two heterogeneous drives, like a 64GB SSD and a 500GB HDD. It would try to put larger files on the HDD (where storage space and sequential read/write speed are useful and random-access less critical) and smaller files on the SSD (which has better random access). This would rock! You'd have a really zippy laptop with scads of space.
- pyre 16y ago
  The issue being that by the time such a filesystem became stable enough for people to trust it with their data, SSDs may have already caught up to HDDs in terms of storage capacity.
- ryanpetrich 16y ago
  ZFS has the ability to use SSDs as cache for larger HDDs (which is close to what you've described)
  - stcredzero 16y ago
    I could accomplish much the same thing with a daemon that migrated the files for me.
- pmjordan 16y ago
  Working on a driver for this. Watch this space. :) (been trying to go fulltime on this, financial constraints have been holding me back; I have a partial prototype working on Linux, Mac OS X is the next target) That said, there are existing solutions for this, they just suck, e.g.: http://www.seagate.com/www/en-us/products/laptops/laptop-hdd http://www.seagate.com/www/en-us/products/laptops/laptop-hdd (only 4GB Flash, WTF?) http://www.bit-tech.net/news/hardware/2010/02/03/silverstone-announces-hybrid-ssd-hard-disk/1 http://www.bit-tech.net/news/hardware/2010/02/03/silverstone... (this is just a dumb partial RAID) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ReadyBoost http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ReadyBoost (designed to work with USB sticks of all things, and isn't terribly smart about what to cache)
  - stcredzero 16y ago
    What about a daemon that migrates files over and symlinks them?
    - pmjordan 16y ago
      Brittle. Many apps will delete and replace a file when writing. Now you have 2 copies, 1 out of date. You'd be mildly better off with a union file system, but there aren't any good ones I can find. Plus, that sort of file-based system doesn't cache file system structure/metadata, which is a major source of disk head movement.
- Encosia 16y ago
  I've found that it's beneficial to embrace the divide between a fast boot drive and a large data drive. If you only store your OS and programs on the boot drive, space isn't a big concern and you gain a lot of flexibility. It's less hassle to repave the OS, migrating your data to new machines is simple, and it's easier to upgrade the boot drive as faster ones are available. That's especially nice with SSDs because you no longer have to care very much about the write limit. If my SSD boot drive wears out, I have 0 data recovery/restoration to worry about.
  - stcredzero 16y ago
    I've found that it's beneficial to embrace the divide between a fast boot drive and a large data drive. I'm thinking of it myself, but I also thought it out further and concluded that it could be completely automated. In my case, if one just kept all files larger than 100MB on the HDD, that would be enough. Better still, I could specify certain directories to be kept on the HDD. I could do all of the above with symlinks, but setting that up once and getting the desired result automatically could be even better.