Comments

jabloomf1230 wrote on 1/22/2012, 1:59 PM
@Birk,

You are absolutely right about winsat. It is just the Windows Assessment Tool without the GUI and is passive. All it does is calculate various scores on an 8 point scale for each hardware subsystem. For disks it's:

winsat disk -drive <drive letter w/o :>

As to SSDs, I've had no problems in over a year. I have a 120 GB SSD as my Win 7 x64 OS drive and a 240 GB SSD for removable video storage. The former is an OCZ Vertex 2 and the latter is a Corsair C300. Both have WEIs in the high 7s and are probably limited in speed, by the fact that they connected to the mobo SATA 2 controller and not SATA3.

And johnmeyer is right, use ATTO for disk performance measurement. But if you have an SSD, don't get carried away, because these assessment tools are only meant to be used sparingly. Running them once or twice a day, for example (Why anyone would do that, I don't know.) would definitely shorten the useful life of an SSD.
NicolSD wrote on 1/22/2012, 1:59 PM
I ran Atto on my older 1.5 Terabyte, 7,200 rpm, SATA 2 HD. It peaked at 125 MB read. I bet someone with a RAID and a newer drive could easily beat that. But that's good enough for my data.

Geoff_Wood wrote on 1/22/2012, 2:02 PM
Kind of sad when a few seconds (or tens of) wait becomes a 'problem' ;-)

geoff
Geoff_Wood wrote on 1/22/2012, 2:14 PM
Do you find you get really fraught in traffic jams, supermarket queues, etc ;-)

Primarily as an audio recordist, i have found that instant rewinds and re-takes has engendered a culture of simply throwing more at a problem rather than better , which can be assisted by the small period of consideration while the tape rewound.

Sorry if I'm rambling philosophically here !

geoff
john_dennis wrote on 1/23/2012, 4:50 PM


Over the weekend, the IBM field engineers installed a new disk subsystem where I work. I uploaded a tour for those who don’t get to go into data centers. This disk system has no rotating disks at all. The specifications are as follows:

128 300GB SSD (38.4 TeraBytes The drive trays are only one third full. The system can grow to four frames and only two frames are installed.)

32 8Gbps Fiber Channel Adapters

This system will host a copy of a production database for an application where all the queries that people run will hit this system rather than the primary system.

We have five of these types of systems of various vintages from IBM as well as eight similar ones from Hitachi.
john_dennis wrote on 1/23/2012, 5:09 PM
Geoff, I share some of your feelings about music. Primarily, I wonder why current artists who cover old songs feel compelled to fill every nanosecond with some instrumentation or fill.

On technology, however, I've never felt that systems were fast enough to free me to think about the media without wondering about the hardware.

Though I'm rather deliberate about technology upgrades, there are two things that I've bought as impulse purchases: 1) an SSD and 2) dual-pane, low-emissivity windows for my house. I'm happy with both.
johnmeyer wrote on 1/23/2012, 5:21 PM
dual-pane, low-emissivity windows for my house. I'm happy with both. I hope you have better luck with yours than I have had with mine. I replaced almost every window in this house in 1994. Just after the warranty expired, they started fogging up or, in other cases, developed mold spots. I have now spent over $4,000 replacing just a small fraction (5%) of those windows. I haven't yet replaced any of the big picture windows.

Next time (if I live that long), I'm going back to storm windows.
john_dennis wrote on 1/23/2012, 5:33 PM
I haven't had a problem with fogging, but here it is dry most of the time.

I used to have crank-out casement windows. Aside from being wasteful, (I replaced my window sills numerous time from condensation), those windows were just unsafe for a first floor. I've crashed my head into an open window many times when working in the flower beds.
NicolSD wrote on 1/23/2012, 7:36 PM
John, I looked at some of your YouTube videos and one question kept popping in my head: where is he working that would need equipment like that. The UPS battery replacement itself was incredible.
john_dennis wrote on 1/23/2012, 8:54 PM
I run the physical environment at a rather large data center. We don't do video there, but I do, occasionally. During a recent addition, I posted video so people could see the progress. Most people can't just stop by to see the progress in person because of the security.
JJKizak wrote on 1/24/2012, 6:47 AM
The best windows I ever saw were in the military buildings built in Greenland. They were tripple pane with a wire mesh sandwiched inside with sealant all around the glass edges. During a 168 knot windstorm with the wind picking up small stones and sandblasting the building and striking the windows like a bullet the temperature transfer from outside to inside was undetectable. The roof of the building was blown off but the windows had not a scratch. One of the buildings occupants later put a small hole through one of the windows with a sledge hammer with great difficulty to provide ventilation. It was rumored that he was in an inibriated state of mind.
JJK
NicolSD wrote on 1/24/2012, 10:49 AM
"I run the physical environment at a rather large data center."

I guess the key words here are RATHER LARGE. You're not kidding. That place is damn impressive.