5 ms·

What I really want: a very fast volatile SSD. Reason: my notebook RAM is maxed out and I don't want to throw it off; a fast volatile SSD would allow me to use i

What I really want: a very fast volatile SSD. Reason: my notebook RAM is maxed out and I don't want to throw it off; a fast volatile SSD would allow me to use it as a swap device. Is there such a thing?

kccqzy 4y ago
A regular SSD will do. But if your notebook is old, it may only support SATA based SSD, which is not considered fast any more.
- snuxoll 4y ago
  6Gb(it)ps of a maxed out SATA III link is still not slow, it's just that the multi-GB(yte)ps speeds of modern PCIe drives is just insanely fast. My TrueNAS box has 3x2 mirrored vdevs of 7200RPM drives and has plenty of bandwidth to handle multiple 4K ProRes streams, the only reason I have PCIe storage (an Optane 800P) on it is because I don't want to waste a precious 3.5" bay for a SLOG device to handle sync writes (VM workloads).
picture 4y ago
Why not just a fast SSD, without being volatile?
- marcodiego 4y ago
  Because by being volatile, it could be faster.
  - p1mrx 4y ago
    Have you actually looked for a fast SSD? Your laptop's SATA/PCIe interface is probably the bottleneck at this point.
  - joshenders 4y ago
    Solution, meet problem?
  - WithinReason 4y ago
    It couldn't, since it would be limited by bus width anyway.
snuxoll 4y ago
There used to be a product called ZeusRAM which was a small (like 8GB) SSD with a matching amount of DRAM. In normal use all operations were done on the DRAM, and when power was lost it would use charge held in a super-cap to flush the data out to the NAND. Haven't seen any purely volatile drives, though.
- jonatron 4y ago
  The Gigabyte i-RAM from 2005/2006, featured in a LTT video.
- andai 4y ago
  So when power is restored it restores the RAM and turns back on like nothing happened?
  - snuxoll 4y ago
    Correct.
- birdyrooster 4y ago
  Oh wow lol, this reminds me of Windows Vista days and Microsoft’s ReadyBoost for using a USB flash drive as extra memory for disk caching because it was hammering peoples disks. Good times.
jonatron 4y ago
A single board computer with something like a 10GbE connection to your laptop.
systems_glitch 4y ago
These used to exist, PCI cards loaded up with DRAM, optionally battery-backed. Some talked over a drive interface like SCSI or SATA. I don't know that anyone bothers with them nowadays, since the target was never laptops and it's easy to cram a lot of RAM in a not-laptop.
- scintill76 4y ago
  Here's a list of some: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RAM_drive#History_and_operating_system_specifics https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RAM_drive#History_and_operatin...
soganess 4y ago
Not volatile, but Optane? Even in the era of super fast pcie4 ssds, the random read times for optane is like 6-10x faster. Fast enough that intel put optane into ram module for persistence. Plus intel sold nand ssd drives (model H20?) that had a 32gb optane module on board. You can just use the optane for swap and the nand as your main drive.
- favorited 4y ago
  Also, consumer Optane is hella cheap at the moment. For example, : https://www.newegg.com/intel-optane-ssd-p1600x-118gb/p/1Z4-009F-00621 https://www.newegg.com/intel-optane-ssd-p1600x-118gb/p/1Z4-0...?
  - samstave 4y ago
    Q: ; I have multiple TBs of SSD currently, how is Optane better at ~118 GBs of stuff... Why would I want this over that?
    - 0xCMP 4y ago
      If you're doing lots of writes it will not wear out the same way an SSD would. Also it's very fast, but these days not as fast as the best NVMe SSDs you can buy now.
    - FpUser 4y ago
      Optane has insane write endurance. Speed is good as well. It is expensive for sure but I guess it can be justified for some database use.
    - wongarsu 4y ago
      I think of optane not so much as a mass storage device, and more as a fast scratch space. The perfect place to put your swap partition, to use as cache in front of slower storage, the scratch space of an algorithm that starts using disk space to save memory, or the intermediate output of your compiler.
    - TomatoTomato 4y ago
jewel 4y ago
On Linux there is zram which creates a first-priority swap partition that just compresses the pages and keeps them in memory. It looks like Windows also has memory compression. I believe that OS X has memory compression turned on by default.
- iforgotpassword 4y ago
  Zram is actually a general purpose block device, you can format it with ext4 and have a compressed RAM disk. There is also zswap, which is a transparent compressed RAM cache in front of your cache partition. Most distros have it enabled by default, so make sure you don't use it together with swap in zram.
- denysonique 4y ago
  >I believe that OS X has memory compression turned on by default. It isn't just turned on by default, there is no way of turning it off.
pkaye 4y ago
Having worked on SSD firmware, that would simplify a lot of the code in the firmware if we didn't have to recover things after a power loss. But I don't think it would improve performance a lot.
paulmd 4y ago
Optane SSDs. 2242 devices should fit in an ExpressCard bay (which is electrically a PCIe slot) but the only adapters are from ThinkMod and the owner of that company has kinda disappeared.

kccqzy 4y ago

A regular SSD will do. But if your notebook is old, it may only support SATA based SSD, which is not considered fast any more.

snuxoll 4y ago
6Gb(it)ps of a maxed out SATA III link is still not slow, it's just that the multi-GB(yte)ps speeds of modern PCIe drives is just insanely fast. My TrueNAS box has 3x2 mirrored vdevs of 7200RPM drives and has plenty of bandwidth to handle multiple 4K ProRes streams, the only reason I have PCIe storage (an Optane 800P) on it is because I don't want to waste a precious 3.5" bay for a SLOG device to handle sync writes (VM workloads).

picture 4y ago

Why not just a fast SSD, without being volatile?

marcodiego 4y ago
Because by being volatile, it could be faster.
- p1mrx 4y ago
  Have you actually looked for a fast SSD? Your laptop's SATA/PCIe interface is probably the bottleneck at this point.
- joshenders 4y ago
  Solution, meet problem?
- WithinReason 4y ago
  It couldn't, since it would be limited by bus width anyway.

snuxoll 4y ago

There used to be a product called ZeusRAM which was a small (like 8GB) SSD with a matching amount of DRAM. In normal use all operations were done on the DRAM, and when power was lost it would use charge held in a super-cap to flush the data out to the NAND. Haven't seen any purely volatile drives, though.

jonatron 4y ago
The Gigabyte i-RAM from 2005/2006, featured in a LTT video.
andai 4y ago
So when power is restored it restores the RAM and turns back on like nothing happened?
- snuxoll 4y ago
  Correct.
birdyrooster 4y ago
Oh wow lol, this reminds me of Windows Vista days and Microsoft’s ReadyBoost for using a USB flash drive as extra memory for disk caching because it was hammering peoples disks. Good times.

jonatron 4y ago

A single board computer with something like a 10GbE connection to your laptop.

systems_glitch 4y ago

These used to exist, PCI cards loaded up with DRAM, optionally battery-backed. Some talked over a drive interface like SCSI or SATA. I don't know that anyone bothers with them nowadays, since the target was never laptops and it's easy to cram a lot of RAM in a not-laptop.

scintill76 4y ago
Here's a list of some: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RAM_drive#History_and_operating_system_specifics https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RAM_drive#History_and_operatin...

soganess 4y ago

Not volatile, but Optane? Even in the era of super fast pcie4 ssds, the random read times for optane is like 6-10x faster. Fast enough that intel put optane into ram module for persistence. Plus intel sold nand ssd drives (model H20?) that had a 32gb optane module on board. You can just use the optane for swap and the nand as your main drive.

favorited 4y ago
Also, consumer Optane is hella cheap at the moment. For example, : https://www.newegg.com/intel-optane-ssd-p1600x-118gb/p/1Z4-009F-00621 https://www.newegg.com/intel-optane-ssd-p1600x-118gb/p/1Z4-0...?
- samstave 4y ago
  Q: ; I have multiple TBs of SSD currently, how is Optane better at ~118 GBs of stuff... Why would I want this over that?
  - 0xCMP 4y ago
    If you're doing lots of writes it will not wear out the same way an SSD would. Also it's very fast, but these days not as fast as the best NVMe SSDs you can buy now.
  - FpUser 4y ago
    Optane has insane write endurance. Speed is good as well. It is expensive for sure but I guess it can be justified for some database use.
  - wongarsu 4y ago
    I think of optane not so much as a mass storage device, and more as a fast scratch space. The perfect place to put your swap partition, to use as cache in front of slower storage, the scratch space of an algorithm that starts using disk space to save memory, or the intermediate output of your compiler.
  - TomatoTomato 4y ago

jewel 4y ago

On Linux there is zram which creates a first-priority swap partition that just compresses the pages and keeps them in memory. It looks like Windows also has memory compression. I believe that OS X has memory compression turned on by default.

iforgotpassword 4y ago
Zram is actually a general purpose block device, you can format it with ext4 and have a compressed RAM disk. There is also zswap, which is a transparent compressed RAM cache in front of your cache partition. Most distros have it enabled by default, so make sure you don't use it together with swap in zram.
denysonique 4y ago
>I believe that OS X has memory compression turned on by default. It isn't just turned on by default, there is no way of turning it off.

pkaye 4y ago

Having worked on SSD firmware, that would simplify a lot of the code in the firmware if we didn't have to recover things after a power loss. But I don't think it would improve performance a lot.

paulmd 4y ago

Optane SSDs. 2242 devices should fit in an ExpressCard bay (which is electrically a PCIe slot) but the only adapters are from ThinkMod and the owner of that company has kinda disappeared.