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  1. #11
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    Default Re: OT: Cluster Size in the 21st Century

    Quote Originally Posted by Dave Labrecque View Post
    The fragmentation angle is interesting. Hadn't considered that. Philip -- how 'bout that? Does it mean defragging more often when keeping with the default cluster size "under" bigger files?
    All modern operating systems deal with pretty much all of this under the covers.

    Your overthinking this.

    Just format the hard drive with the default settings and go about your business.

    If your not building some retrograde computer system with old PATA or generic ATA drives and an old operating system, none of this will make any difference.
    ---------------------------------------
    Philip G.

  2. #12

    Default Re: OT: Cluster Size in the 21st Century

    Quote Originally Posted by mr_es335 View Post
    Dave,

    Notice that I stated, "However, I think Philip is on the right track."

    Also, from what I have read, you should not defrag SSD's.
    And so I have to wonder what impact fragmentation has on the performance of SSDs over time, especially with real-time streaming applications like multitrack audio playback.
    Dave "it aint the heat, it's the humidity" Labrecque
    Becket, Massachusetts

  3. #13

    Default Re: OT: Cluster Size in the 21st Century

    Quote Originally Posted by cgrafx View Post
    All modern operating systems deal with pretty much all of this under the covers.

    Your overthinking this.

    Just format the hard drive with the default settings and go about your business.

    If your not building some retrograde computer system with old PATA or generic ATA drives and an old operating system, none of this will make any difference.
    Tell me why. I don't consider curiosity overthinking, btw. I don't have an HDD or SSD in front of me to format at this time. Though I likely have ADD and/or ADHD, and, certainly OCD.

    How do modern OS's deal with fragmentation under the covers? This is all interesting to me, and I'd like to understand it.
    Dave "it aint the heat, it's the humidity" Labrecque
    Becket, Massachusetts

  4. #14
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    Default Re: OT: Cluster Size in the 21st Century

    Quote Originally Posted by Dave Labrecque View Post
    Tell me why. I don't consider curiosity overthinking, btw. I don't have an HDD or SSD in front of me to format at this time. Though I likely have ADD and/or ADHD, and, certainly OCD.

    How do modern OS's deal with fragmentation under the covers? This is all interesting to me, and I'd like to understand it.
    A lot of the house keeping functions are built-in to the OS. Continual defrag routines for standard hard drives and TRIM functions for SSDs.

    SSD's don't have fragmentation issues because they are not physically mechanical devices. No rotating platters or moving heads.

    SSD data access is effectively real-time from any memory block as its primarily just a memory address call.

    SSD's have different house keeping functions that deal with garbage collection (properly marking and preparing erased sections of the memory for re-use), but again that is handled directly by the newer OS's and or even directly in the SSD drive firmware.
    ---------------------------------------
    Philip G.

  5. #15

    Default Re: OT: Cluster Size in the 21st Century

    Quote Originally Posted by cgrafx View Post
    A lot of the house keeping functions are built-in to the OS. Continual defrag routines for standard hard drives and TRIM functions for SSDs.

    SSD's don't have fragmentation issues because they are not physically mechanical devices. No rotating platters or moving heads.

    SSD data access is effectively real-time from any memory block as its primarily just a memory address call.

    SSD's have different house keeping functions that deal with garbage collection (properly marking and preparing erased sections of the memory for re-use), but again that is handled directly by the newer OS's and or even directly in the SSD drive firmware.
    Fascinating. Hey, while I've got you...

    What's the current thinking on SSD for audio/video recording/playback? And why?

    I've been checking out video editing programs lately. Their proponents (even staffers) seem to love to tout SSD's as the way to go alongside a fast CPU and GPU. But I'd thought that was still considered a no-no for some reason. At least for audio (or even "data," generally). Catch me up.

    (And WTH, a boot drive is full of data. So what gives?)
    Dave "it aint the heat, it's the humidity" Labrecque
    Becket, Massachusetts

  6. #16
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    Default Re: OT: Cluster Size in the 21st Century


  7. #17
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    Default Re: OT: Cluster Size in the 21st Century

    Quote Originally Posted by Dave Labrecque View Post
    Fascinating. Hey, while I've got you...

    What's the current thinking on SSD for audio/video recording/playback? And why?

    I've been checking out video editing programs lately. Their proponents (even staffers) seem to love to tout SSD's as the way to go alongside a fast CPU and GPU. But I'd thought that was still considered a no-no for some reason. At least for audio (or even "data," generally). Catch me up.

    (And WTH, a boot drive is full of data. So what gives?)
    SSD's are fine for audio storage and playback, they just cost a lot more per megabyte. Still in the 5-10x cost factor.

    I can by a good quality fast 8 terabyte spinner for around $275. A 4 terabyte SSD will run you $1500.

    Even though SSD reliability has improved a lot over the last 5 years, there is still a downside. SSD's pretty much always hard fail, meaning when they do fail there is almost never any chance of recovering data off the drive. Traditional spinners generally soft fail. They will usually start throwing errors or have difficultly spinning up, long before they are completely unreadable.

    The big advantage to SSD though is definitely going to be speed, particularly if you move away from the SATA interface and get to the faster direct interface connections.


    M.2 Drive Throughput by Connection Theoretical Maximum Throughput Est. Real-World Maximum Throughput
    SATA III 6.0 Gb/s (750 MB/s) 4.8 Gb/s (600 MB/s)
    PCI-E 2.0 x2 8 Gb/s (1 GB/s) 6.4 Gb/s (800 MB/s)
    PCI-E 2.0 x4 16 Gb/s (2 GB/s) 12.8 Gb/s (1.6 GB/s)
    PCI-E 3.0 x4 32 Gb/s (4 GB/s) 31.5 Gb/s (3.9 GB/s)


    By comparison a 7200 RMP SATA III standard hard drive will get read speeds in the 200MB/s range.

    M.2 PCIe Gen3 x4 SSD drives will see data rates around 3500MB/s read and 2100MB/s write

    That is a 10x performance factor
    Last edited by cgrafx; 11-14-2017 at 08:40 PM.
    ---------------------------------------
    Philip G.

  8. #18

    Default Re: OT: Cluster Size in the 21st Century

    Quote Originally Posted by cgrafx View Post
    SSD's are fine for audio storage and playback, they just cost a lot more per megabyte. Still in the 5-10x cost factor.

    I can by a good quality fast 8 terabyte spinner for around $275. A 4 terabyte SSD will run you $1500.

    <SNIP>
    Not to take the thread OT, but this reminds me of my early adoption of SCSI hard drives. I bought two of them for $1k each for a grand total of 8 GB. Yep, that's 4 GB each!! So I suppose we can assume that if we all live long enough we'll be buying huge SSDs for peanuts at some point. Can't wait.

    Oh yeah, one other thing; one of those drives catastrophically failed after a few months' use!! Ugg.
    Richard
    Green Valley Recording
    My cats have nine lives; my life has nine cats.

  9. #19
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    Default Re: OT: Cluster Size in the 21st Century

    Richard,

    What of MFM HDD's at 1K for 10MB's, or 16k RAM at $750.00, or 14.4 modems at $420.00. Still got the boxes too.

  10. #20

    Default Re: OT: Cluster Size in the 21st Century

    Quote Originally Posted by mr_es335 View Post
    Richard,

    What of MFM HDD's at 1K for 10MB's, or 16k RAM at $750.00, or 14.4 modems at $420.00. Still got the boxes too.
    Yikes!!! I guess I got a bargain then.
    Richard
    Green Valley Recording
    My cats have nine lives; my life has nine cats.

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