On Mon, 17 Oct 2016 07:02:15 +0100, Rod Speed wrote:



"James Wilkinson Sword" wrote in message
news
On Sat, 15 Oct 2016 19:27:45 +0100, Rod Speed
wrote:



"Bod" wrote in message
...
On 15/10/2016 09:44, alan_m wrote:
On 15/10/2016 01:23, David Paste wrote:
am I barking up the
wrong tree to assume an SSD will improve the snappiness of the user
interface?)


When I replaced a traditional hard disk in my 5 year old laptop with a
SSD I noticed a faster start up but for day to day use no overall
difference in speed.

Hmm! that hasn't been my experience. I've changed several laptops to
SSDs
and *everything* is much snappier.

Only with the laptops that dont have enough physical memory..

Bull****.

We'll see...

My desktop has 32GB and the SSD still makes an enormous difference.

Not to anything except the time to start from a full reboot and
with launching apps that are very disk intensive when starting.

Or when in use.

Anyone with even half a clue only reboots every few months
and doesnt close apps at all.

I only have open the apps I'm using. It's tidier. Why have more clutter on the taskbar?

--
In 2005 eight Brits (All Scottish) cracked their skulls while throwing up into the toilet.

On Tue, 18 Oct 2016 12:56:14 +0100, John Rumm
wrote:

On 17/10/2016 22:15, T i m wrote:
On Mon, 17 Oct 2016 20:20:55 +0100, John Rumm
wrote:

On 17/10/2016 11:42, T i m wrote:

So and irrespective of any performance impact ITRW, if some software
(Gparted) can see and display that these alignments aren't made *and*
can set them, is Gparted actually then *actually / physically*
resetting said alignments or just indicating it is?

It would need to copy the entire partition up or down a number of
sectors.

Yes, I have seen how one used Gparted to do it John but was interested
to know how we *know* it was actually doing it?

That's basically saying "does Gparted's partition resize / move
capability work?"

No, it's not. It's 'Is Gparted able to see and manipulate data at a
sufficiently low level', just in the same way low level formatting IDE
hard drives *appeared* to do something but (often) actually did
nothing at all.

The answer to which is yes.

If that is the right answer to the right question. ;-)



Like when your tried
to LL format a drive and it looked like it was doing so but then you
rebooted and all your stuff was still there ... eg,

Low level formatting on IDE onwards was "supported" by issuing a command
to the drive and letting it get on with it (or not).

Quite, and it's the 'or not' bit I'm questioning here.

Moving a partition
is not something a drive has embedded support for -

I'm not suggesting it has John.

your external
utility needs to physically read a bunch of blocks from one area of the
disk and write them back somewhere else, then rinse and repeat until its
done the whole partition.

Yes, understood, and that's fine *as long* as the blocks it thinks
it's writing to are the actual blocks. Think hdd address translation.

Is it actually
happening (and how can we *prove* that) or is it simply saying it's
happening (by say moving a pointer) but not *actually* doing it (as
TNP seem to suggest is the case)?

Its happening for real, the partition will appear at a new starting
logical block address once done.

Ok, and we can prove that how? eg, Do you have or are aware of a
utility, possibly offered by the drive manufacturers themselves that
can support your thoughts / understanding? Just to be clear here, I'm
not questioning your understanding, just asking if you have any way of
proving it please?

Internally the shift in content may not be reflected in exactly the same
way as a result of wear levelling, but its also fair to say the drive is
not going to be smart enough to say "aha, that 512MB bunch of sectors
you read a few mins ago, looks suspiciously similar to a new bunch of
sectors you are now writing 600 meg higher up the LBA address space -
you know what, I will take a gamble that you won't be needing the
original copy of that data and just pull a fast one swapping some
pointers round"

I think I follow what you are saying there but don't think it's what
I'm trying to pin down (but it could well be). ;-)


What would be a good (valid) way of checking for such things
(increased performance hopefully) pre and post adjustment?

On windows, do a msinfo32 in a command prompt to start the system
information tool. Then expand out the Components - Storage - Disks
part of the tree view. That will show all the physical drives, and the
partitions and their starting offsets. Divide the offset by 4096 and
hope you get an integer answer ;-)

Ok, but again, how do we *know* we are seeing the raw data and not
some soft translation of same?

You are seeing the raw partition info and LBA numbers.

Yes, I understand that's what you are saying but can you offer any way
of substantiating it? Or more accurately, is there any way you could
help me substantiate it for myself on the SSD / System (dual booting
W10 and Mint 18) here?


Even with a normal HDD there may be sector remapping going on, so you
won't necessarily know how those LBAs map to the physical CHS addresses
on the HDD, or the flash page address of the SSD (especially as SSDs use
internal parallelism for performance)

Ok, but I was really only trying to consider a clean / new drive that
had not had any block re-allocation.

Is there some diagnostic software that
can really access the drive and report what *it* is actually doing?

With SSD you probably can't get at physical flash pages unless you have
a proprietary tool from the maker of the drive.

That was my thought.

(one of the reasons why
there is a security risk when attempting to sanitise a SSD - you can't
be sure you have got all of the flash pages since they are not all
visible via a LBA - and the physical page used for a given LBA may
change in use).

Hmm, so that may also be the answer to my general 'but how can we be
sure' questions. ;-(

I've no dog in this fight, I'm just trying to get to the bottom of
what might be going on so as I can determine if I should bother /
waste any time correcting something that I may not actually be able to
in any case.

Maybe if no definitive / scientific answer is easily obtainable, maybe
a direct / specific speed test (focused on testing for such things)
could be applied (by me) pre and post any block alignment and then at
least I would know if it was any more than just a geeky myth etc
('now', if it ever was anything else etc). ;-)

Maybe I need a gold plated SATA 'Digital' cable to be able to test it
fully. weg

Cheers, T i m

"James Wilkinson Sword" wrote in message
news
On Mon, 17 Oct 2016 07:03:27 +0100, Rod Speed
wrote:



"James Wilkinson Sword" wrote in message
news
On Sat, 15 Oct 2016 09:54:16 +0100, Bod wrote:

On 15/10/2016 09:44, alan_m wrote:
On 15/10/2016 01:23, David Paste wrote:
am I barking up the
wrong tree to assume an SSD will improve the snappiness of the user
interface?)


When I replaced a traditional hard disk in my 5 year old laptop with a
SSD I noticed a faster start up but for day to day use no overall
difference in speed.




Hmm! that hasn't been my experience. I've changed several laptops to
SSDs and *everything* is much snappier.

Agreed. I guess his day to day use is opening one word processor and
using it for hours.

Nope, just only rebooting ever few months and not closing apps.

A very odd way to use a computer.

The only sensible way to use a computer used most of most days.

"James Wilkinson Sword" wrote in message
news
On Mon, 17 Oct 2016 07:02:15 +0100, Rod Speed
wrote:



"James Wilkinson Sword" wrote in message
news
On Sat, 15 Oct 2016 19:27:45 +0100, Rod Speed
wrote:



"Bod" wrote in message
...
On 15/10/2016 09:44, alan_m wrote:
On 15/10/2016 01:23, David Paste wrote:
am I barking up the
wrong tree to assume an SSD will improve the snappiness of the user
interface?)


When I replaced a traditional hard disk in my 5 year old laptop with
a
SSD I noticed a faster start up but for day to day use no overall
difference in speed.

Hmm! that hasn't been my experience. I've changed several laptops to
SSDs
and *everything* is much snappier.

Only with the laptops that dont have enough physical memory.

Bull****.

We'll see...

My desktop has 32GB and the SSD still makes an enormous difference.

Not to anything except the time to start from a full reboot and
with launching apps that are very disk intensive when starting.

Or when in use.

There are **** all of those that most use much.

Anyone with even half a clue only reboots every few months and doesnt
close apps at all.

I only have open the apps I'm using.

More fool you.

It's tidier.

Its stupid.

Why have more clutter on the taskbar?

Makes no difference what so ever to the taskbar when you use
that properly as where you start apps that you use much.

On Tue, 18 Oct 2016 22:35:03 +0100, Rod Speed wrote:



"James Wilkinson Sword" wrote in message
news
On Mon, 17 Oct 2016 07:03:27 +0100, Rod Speed
wrote:



"James Wilkinson Sword" wrote in message
news On Sat, 15 Oct 2016 09:54:16 +0100, Bod wrote:

On 15/10/2016 09:44, alan_m wrote:
On 15/10/2016 01:23, David Paste wrote:
am I barking up the
wrong tree to assume an SSD will improve the snappiness of the user
interface?)


When I replaced a traditional hard disk in my 5 year old laptop with a
SSD I noticed a faster start up but for day to day use no overall
difference in speed.




Hmm! that hasn't been my experience. I've changed several laptops to
SSDs and *everything* is much snappier.

Agreed. I guess his day to day use is opening one word processor and
using it for hours.

Nope, just only rebooting ever few months and not closing apps.

A very odd way to use a computer.

The only sensible way to use a computer used most of most days.

If I'm not going to use a program (note: not "app", that's a mobile phone word) for a while, I see no point in leaving it open.

--
An Englishman was feeling a little queezy on his first sailing, and leaned over the edge of the boat. He saw a Frenchman below opening his porthole so, feeling the urge to bring up his dinner, he yelled "LOOK OUT!"
The Frenchman stuck his head out of the porthole and was decorated with semi-digested food. "YOU SILLY ENGLISHMAN!!!!" he yelled, "Why do you say look out when you mean look in?"

"James Wilkinson Sword" wrote in message
news
On Tue, 18 Oct 2016 22:35:03 +0100, Rod Speed
wrote:



"James Wilkinson Sword" wrote in message
news
On Mon, 17 Oct 2016 07:03:27 +0100, Rod Speed
wrote:



"James Wilkinson Sword" wrote in message
news On Sat, 15 Oct 2016 09:54:16 +0100, Bod wrote:

On 15/10/2016 09:44, alan_m wrote:
On 15/10/2016 01:23, David Paste wrote:
am I barking up the
wrong tree to assume an SSD will improve the snappiness of the user
interface?)


When I replaced a traditional hard disk in my 5 year old laptop with
a
SSD I noticed a faster start up but for day to day use no overall
difference in speed.




Hmm! that hasn't been my experience. I've changed several laptops to
SSDs and *everything* is much snappier.

Agreed. I guess his day to day use is opening one word processor and
using it for hours.

Nope, just only rebooting ever few months and not closing apps.

A very odd way to use a computer.

The only sensible way to use a computer used most of most days.

If I'm not going to use a program (note: not "app", that's a mobile phone
word)

Wrong, as always.

for a while, I see no point in leaving it open.

Yes, you are that stupid.

The point is that it is vastly quicker to switch to an already
open app when you need to than it is to start it again.

On 18/10/2016 15:14, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
On 18/10/16 13:24, John Rumm wrote:
On 17/10/2016 21:30, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
On 17/10/16 20:07, John Rumm wrote:
On 17/10/2016 12:34, The Natural Philosopher wrote:


There are no 'misaligned' partitions.

Just partitions.

OK, so if you look at the Intel document from 2014[1], they explain why
misaligned partitions cause performance impacts on their drives of that
time. You have claimed that that information is out of date, and its no
longer an issue. Could you point to an authoritative source that
justifies that claim?

Or are you claiming that Intel drives are just way behind the current
state of the art, and other makers drives don't suffer the problem, but
then Intel ones still do? In which case it sounds like a strong
marketing hook the other drive makers would use. Could you point to
some documentation reflecting this?


If you look at the actual strategies - and I supplied pointers to then -
google 'wear levelling' you will realise that is a massively complex
process right away, and completely destroys any relationship between
what the disk reports as a block device and where physically the data is
stored. Yea even unto splitting blocks of data up into different flash
pages or amalgamating two different 'sectors'; into one flash page.

Yup, not questioning that wear levelling is a complex subject. However
its a side issue here.

IN essence the disk is a database, with sectors located wherever they
happen to end up, and indexed by a database like structure that relates
the sector number of the logical device, to an offset in a flash page
somewhere on the disk.

And tuning the garbage correction and read and write algorithms is the
best way to increase the system life.

Logical sectors that have never been written , simply do not have any
physical area assigned to them.

Yup, I don't have any problem with that.

The asertion of the partitioneers, is that if you start a partition with
whatever information it has in it, on a less rthan e.g. 4K boundary,
that will result in more cross-page writes. Firstly I dont see that is
true even if the algorithm is always to apply aligned sectors in 4k
chunks to a 4k flash page.

I think you are mentally over complicating this.

At some point the authors of the device firmware need to make a design
decision about how they are going to store sectors. Modern 4K "advanced
format" drives have native 4K sectors (these have been the standard for
the last 5 years or so). All modern OSes will create partitions aligned
on 4K boundaries. Modern OSes also do basic disk IO transaction in 4K
lumps. So it would seem like a fairly safe bet for the designer to try
and ensure that writes of a complete 4K sector generate as few accesses
to physical storage as possible. Obviously you would choose to store an
integer number of sectors in a single page of flash. There would be
absolutely no advantage to do otherwise.

(Also keep in mind that this issue affects all 4K AF drives, not just
SSDs. Its only the SSDs that have the additional complication of life
expectancy reductions / write amplification issues as well, but even
spinning rust drives will take a performance hit)

But I see no reason why if the disk detects a sequence of data starting
at say 133rd sector....it would not start that at the beginning of the
flash page, assuming it has no prior knowledge of this sequence.

What size sector are you talking about? The difficulty comes from the
fact that the although the drive is now a native 4K sector device, most
of them still presents a legacy interface that allows 512 sectors to be
manipulated. Normally an OS will do this 8 at a time, and normally 4K
aligned, so its not a problem. However when the drive is presented with
a block of 8 (512 byte) sectors that straddle separate pages in storage
you now have extra pages to access.

After all, all that is being maintained is a database of Logical
sector-physical flash pageage offset.

There is no reason to say that because the sector number is, modulo 4,
number 3, that the page offset should also be 3.

Note that nearly all of this IIRC only applies to windows, as Linux file
systems are aligned on much larger page sizes anyway.

This is not a platform specific problem - exactly the same issues can
apply to Linux etc.

The point I wanted to make way back before all the name calling started,

I don't recall calling anyone names.

was that they way data is physically organised on a flash disk bears no
relation whatsoever to how it is presented logically. It is organised
precisely to minimise writes and erases, and to ensure that when those
take place, they are as evenly spread as possible.

Indeed - and one way to minimise erase operations is to avoid Read
Modify Write cycles...

Therefore theories that changing the nature of OS access to the
*logical* structure will impact on the physical processes are at best
optimistic simplistic and dependent on a poor implementation of wear
levelling and garbage collection algorithms. At worst they are risible
nonsense.

And yet you have seen recent documentation from Intel explaining why
this is a problem. There are also head to head performance results about
that demonstrate the performance hit from misalignment.

And there is evidence that more than one manufacturer has firmware that
exactly understands partitions of the NTFS sort and has adjusted its
algorithms accordingly. Why would they not?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Write_...age_collection

Yup, again missing the point.

A little knowledge is a dangerous thing., To someone with a little
knowledge, someone with a lot more appears ignorant and uninformed.

The 'partition your SSD correctly' appears to be an urban (windows)
myth, that has propagated widely, and yet no explanation of why it works
is consistent with my understanding of how logical to physical mapping
works in a real life SSD.

Well that could be because you are right and everyone else is misguided,
or it could be your basic understanding is flawed somewhere.

And because I have written code to analyse and understand file systems
at the sector level, I know its really not hard to understand what type
of FS and what structure is located where, on a disk.

And yet you still seem to be veering off at these tangents. This is not
a filesystem issue. Try actually thinking like a programmer, and it
should make perfect sense.

The crucial step is of course coding that can cope with arbitrary
locations of a 512 byte sector, rather than a 4k or 16k block that it
might be part of.

Of course the system can cope with individual 512 byte sectors, however
you optimise your system for the typical use case, and 90% of those will
be 4K sector reads/writes on 4K boundaries.

I can conceive that a rubbish programmer with no understanding of file
systems or flash might cobble up something that bad for a prototype
product, but in a fiercely competitive field with longevity being an
essential part of the product attributes, its unlikely that better
algorithms and more flexible mapping systems would not evolve.

Apply Occam's razor.

[1]
http://www.intel.co.uk/content/dam/w...tech-brief.pdf

Is an interesting document to be sure.


Perhaps you should offer your wisdom to the drive makers, because they
all seem to have fallen for it...

Here is the alignment tool from WD:

http://support.wdc.com/downloads.aspx?p=128&lang=en

Here is the HGST document on the use of their tool:

https://www.hgst.com/sites/default/f...User_Guide.pdf

Here is the documentation for Seagate's tool / hack:

http://www.seagate.com/docs/pdf/whit...nology_faq.pdf






--
Cheers,

John.

/================================================== ===============\
| Internode Ltd - http://www.internode.co.uk |
|-----------------------------------------------------------------|
| John Rumm - john(at)internode(dot)co(dot)uk |
\================================================= ================/

On 18/10/2016 18:30, T i m wrote:
On Tue, 18 Oct 2016 12:56:14 +0100, John Rumm
wrote:

On 17/10/2016 22:15, T i m wrote:
On Mon, 17 Oct 2016 20:20:55 +0100, John Rumm
wrote:

On 17/10/2016 11:42, T i m wrote:

So and irrespective of any performance impact ITRW, if some software
(Gparted) can see and display that these alignments aren't made *and*
can set them, is Gparted actually then *actually / physically*
resetting said alignments or just indicating it is?

It would need to copy the entire partition up or down a number of
sectors.

Yes, I have seen how one used Gparted to do it John but was interested
to know how we *know* it was actually doing it?

That's basically saying "does Gparted's partition resize / move
capability work?"

No, it's not. It's 'Is Gparted able to see and manipulate data at a
sufficiently low level', just in the same way low level formatting IDE
hard drives *appeared* to do something but (often) actually did
nothing at all.

GParted will read and write sectors - typically to LBAs (but probably
also still supports CHS).

Once you have moved something, it will be at the new LBA (what will be
at the old LBA will depend on if its been reused)

your external
utility needs to physically read a bunch of blocks from one area of the
disk and write them back somewhere else, then rinse and repeat until its
done the whole partition.

Yes, understood, and that's fine *as long* as the blocks it thinks
it's writing to are the actual blocks. Think hdd address translation.

Not sure what you mean by "actual blocks"? Can the partition management
tool identify where in the SSD address space the blocks are actually
located? No I would not expect it to be able to.

Is it actually
happening (and how can we *prove* that) or is it simply saying it's
happening (by say moving a pointer) but not *actually* doing it (as
TNP seem to suggest is the case)?

Its happening for real, the partition will appear at a new starting
logical block address once done.

Ok, and we can prove that how? eg, Do you have or are aware of a
utility, possibly offered by the drive manufacturers themselves that
can support your thoughts / understanding? Just to be clear here, I'm
not questioning your understanding, just asking if you have any way of
proving it please?

I have not come across any utilities that let you delve into the
internals of a SSD. (although to be fair, I have not been looking for
them either!)

Internally the shift in content may not be reflected in exactly the same
way as a result of wear levelling, but its also fair to say the drive is
not going to be smart enough to say "aha, that 512MB bunch of sectors
you read a few mins ago, looks suspiciously similar to a new bunch of
sectors you are now writing 600 meg higher up the LBA address space -
you know what, I will take a gamble that you won't be needing the
original copy of that data and just pull a fast one swapping some
pointers round"

I think I follow what you are saying there but don't think it's what
I'm trying to pin down (but it could well be). ;-)

ok, glad we cleared that up ;-)

All I am really saying is that if you copy a bunch of blocks from one
LBA to another, then you are unlikely to be able to predict from the
outside exactly where in the flash storage they will end up. However it
seems unlikely that they will be in the same place as when you started,
and the SSD will just create an illusion that they have moved unless you
have some API to it that allows you to inform it of your intention along
with your actual request.

What would be a good (valid) way of checking for such things
(increased performance hopefully) pre and post adjustment?

On windows, do a msinfo32 in a command prompt to start the system
information tool. Then expand out the Components - Storage - Disks
part of the tree view. That will show all the physical drives, and the
partitions and their starting offsets. Divide the offset by 4096 and
hope you get an integer answer ;-)

Ok, but again, how do we *know* we are seeing the raw data and not
some soft translation of same?

You are seeing the raw partition info and LBA numbers.

Yes, I understand that's what you are saying but can you offer any way
of substantiating it? Or more accurately, is there any way you could
help me substantiate it for myself on the SSD / System (dual booting
W10 and Mint 18) here?

There is a simple empirical solution... if you have a system with non
aligned partitions (and that would only be likely if you have partitions
originally created by an old OS (pre Vista kind of time frame)), then
benchmark the disk. Then run one of the partition alignment tools and
benchmark again.


Even with a normal HDD there may be sector remapping going on, so you
won't necessarily know how those LBAs map to the physical CHS addresses
on the HDD, or the flash page address of the SSD (especially as SSDs use
internal parallelism for performance)

Ok, but I was really only trying to consider a clean / new drive that
had not had any block re-allocation.

Is there some diagnostic software that
can really access the drive and report what *it* is actually doing?

With SSD you probably can't get at physical flash pages unless you have
a proprietary tool from the maker of the drive.

That was my thought.

(one of the reasons why
there is a security risk when attempting to sanitise a SSD - you can't
be sure you have got all of the flash pages since they are not all
visible via a LBA - and the physical page used for a given LBA may
change in use).

Hmm, so that may also be the answer to my general 'but how can we be
sure' questions. ;-(

I've no dog in this fight, I'm just trying to get to the bottom of
what might be going on so as I can determine if I should bother /
waste any time correcting something that I may not actually be able to
in any case.

Maybe if no definitive / scientific answer is easily obtainable, maybe
a direct / specific speed test (focused on testing for such things)
could be applied (by me) pre and post any block alignment and then at
least I would know if it was any more than just a geeky myth etc
('now', if it ever was anything else etc). ;-)

Yup, sounds like it might be worth doing. Since a good prerequisite of
any exercise like that will be a full backup, the time will not be
totally wasted ;-)

Maybe I need a gold plated SATA 'Digital' cable to be able to test it
fully. weg

See if that nice Mr Andrews has anything to offer.


--
Cheers,

John.

/================================================== ===============\
| Internode Ltd - http://www.internode.co.uk |
|-----------------------------------------------------------------|
| John Rumm - john(at)internode(dot)co(dot)uk |
\================================================= ================/

On 19/10/16 10:12, John Rumm wrote:
Perhaps you should offer your wisdom to the drive makers, because they
all seem to have fallen for it...

Here is the alignment tool from WD:

http://support.wdc.com/downloads.aspx?p=128&lang=en


Nothing to do with SSDs, refers to spinning rust drives.

Here is the HGST document on the use of their tool:

https://www.hgst.com/sites/default/f...User_Guide.pdf

Nothing to do with SSDs, refers to spinning rust drives.


Here is the documentation for Seagate's tool / hack:

http://www.seagate.com/docs/pdf/whit...nology_faq.pdf


Nothing to do with SSDs, refers to spinning rust drives.


Do you actually bothre to read what you link to? No one, me included, is
saying taht partition misalignment is an issue on spinning rust drives,
which have far simpler mapping algorithms since wear levelling is not a
particular problem.


My poimt was solely about SSDs.

Oh and for your information I dont think Linux partioning tools will
allow you to actually specify a granularity less than 4k. so its simply
not possible with the usual tools to misalign a linux partition anyway.


--
How fortunate for governments that the people they administer don't think.

Adolf Hitler

Lets look at soime SDSD manufacturers. YOu would thuink they might have
something to say abiut this

http://www.kingston.com/en/ssd/ssd_faq

Oh dear. Not a single mention of partitioning issues.





--
Future generations will wonder in bemused amazement that the early
twenty-first centurys developed world went into hysterical panic over a
globally average temperature increase of a few tenths of a degree, and,
on the basis of gross exaggerations of highly uncertain computer
projections combined into implausible chains of inference, proceeded to
contemplate a rollback of the industrial age.

Richard Lindzen

En el artículo , John
Rumm escribió:

I think you are mentally over complicating this.

He just wants to appear clever (and failing)

Its only the SSDs that have the additional complication of life
expectancy reductions / write amplification issues as well

a very good point - partition misalignment will not only reduce the
performance of asn SSD, but reduce its life due to the extra
read/erase/write cycles needed.

This is not a platform specific problem - exactly the same issues can
apply to Linux etc.

Agreed.

was that they way data is physically organised on a flash disk bears no
relation whatsoever to how it is presented logically

which has bugger all to go with partition alignment, which was the original
topic...

And yet you have seen recent documentation from Intel explaining why
this is a problem

oh, but he knows better than Intel, Micron, Samsung...

Well that could be because you are right and everyone else is misguided,
or it could be your basic understanding is flawed somewhere.

I know which I think it is.

Perhaps you should offer your wisdom to the drive makers, because they
all seem to have fallen for it...

Heh.

Here is the alignment tool from WD:

http://support.wdc.com/downloads.aspx?p=128&lang=en

Here is the HGST document on the use of their tool:

https://www.hgst.com/sites/default/f..._User_Guide.pd
f

Here is the documentation for Seagate's tool / hack:

http://www.seagate.com/docs/pdf/whit...nology_faq.pdf

There's no point confusing the poor dear with facts. He's right and
everyone else, including those in the know like Intel, Micron, etc. is
wrong.

--
(\_/)
(='.'=) systemd: the Linux version of Windows 10
(")_(")

On 18:30 18 Oct 2016, D i m bored us all to death with:

No, it's not. It's 'Is Gparted able to see and manipulate data
at a sufficiently low level',

No, it just reads and writes LBAs. ('Sectors' is also used, but isn't
strictly accurate).

just in the same way low level
formatting IDE hard drives *appeared* to do something but
(often) actually did nothing at all.

That's because all but the earliest IDE drives were low level formatted
at the factory. The factory format laid down servo information along
with the data. Allowing a true low level format in the field would
destroy the servo data and render the drive unusable. So the drive
accepts the format command (for compatability) but either does nothing
or zeros itself.

As you would have found out if you'd bothered to google.

--
(\_/)
(='.'=) systemd: the Linux version of Windows 10
(")_(")

On 19/10/16 11:13, Mike Tomlinson wrote:
En el artÃ*culo , John
Rumm escribió:

I think you are mentally over complicating this.

He just wants to appear clever (and failing)

Its only the SSDs that have the additional complication of life
expectancy reductions / write amplification issues as well

a very good point - partition misalignment will not only reduce the
performance of asn SSD, but reduce its life due to the extra
read/erase/write cycles needed.

This is not a platform specific problem - exactly the same issues can
apply to Linux etc.

Agreed.

was that they way data is physically organised on a flash disk bears no
relation whatsoever to how it is presented logically

which has bugger all to go with partition alignment, which was the original
topic...

And yet you have seen recent documentation from Intel explaining why
this is a problem

oh, but he knows better than Intel, Micron, Samsung...

Well that could be because you are right and everyone else is misguided,
or it could be your basic understanding is flawed somewhere.

I know which I think it is.

Perhaps you should offer your wisdom to the drive makers, because they
all seem to have fallen for it...

Heh.

Here is the alignment tool from WD:

http://support.wdc.com/downloads.aspx?p=128&lang=en

Here is the HGST document on the use of their tool:

https://www.hgst.com/sites/default/f..._User_Guide.pd
f

Here is the documentation for Seagate's tool / hack:

http://www.seagate.com/docs/pdf/whit...nology_faq.pdf

There's no point confusing the poor dear with facts. He's right and
everyone else, including those in the know like Intel, Micron, etc. is
wrong.


No, you are wrong ,mike. The information you supplied to support your
case is not applicable to SSDS - its about Hrad drives, not solid state
drives.

I didn't think you would stoop that low just to win an argument


--
Religion is regarded by the common people as true, by the wise as
foolish, and by the rulers as useful.

(Seneca the Younger, 65 AD)

On Tue, 18 Oct 2016 23:47:55 +0100, Rod Speed wrote:



"James Wilkinson Sword" wrote in message
news
On Tue, 18 Oct 2016 22:35:03 +0100, Rod Speed
wrote:



"James Wilkinson Sword" wrote in message
news On Mon, 17 Oct 2016 07:03:27 +0100, Rod Speed
wrote:



"James Wilkinson Sword" wrote in message
news On Sat, 15 Oct 2016 09:54:16 +0100, Bod wrote:

On 15/10/2016 09:44, alan_m wrote:
On 15/10/2016 01:23, David Paste wrote:
am I barking up the
wrong tree to assume an SSD will improve the snappiness of the user
interface?)


When I replaced a traditional hard disk in my 5 year old laptop with
a
SSD I noticed a faster start up but for day to day use no overall
difference in speed.




Hmm! that hasn't been my experience. I've changed several laptops to
SSDs and *everything* is much snappier.

Agreed. I guess his day to day use is opening one word processor and
using it for hours.

Nope, just only rebooting ever few months and not closing apps.

A very odd way to use a computer.

The only sensible way to use a computer used most of most days.

If I'm not going to use a program (note: not "app", that's a mobile phone
word)

Wrong, as always.

They were called programs or applications until mobile phone morons wanted shorter words. Even phone is too long so they write fone.

for a while, I see no point in leaving it open.

Yes, you are that stupid.

The point is that it is vastly quicker to switch to an already
open app when you need to than it is to start it again.

Not if you have lots of memory and/or an SSD.

--
WEDDING DRESS FOR SALE.
Worn once by mistake.
Call Stephanie.

On Tue, 18 Oct 2016 23:47:55 +0100, Rod Speed wrote:



"James Wilkinson Sword" wrote in message
news
On Tue, 18 Oct 2016 22:35:03 +0100, Rod Speed
wrote:



"James Wilkinson Sword" wrote in message
news On Mon, 17 Oct 2016 07:03:27 +0100, Rod Speed
wrote:



"James Wilkinson Sword" wrote in message
news On Sat, 15 Oct 2016 09:54:16 +0100, Bod wrote:

On 15/10/2016 09:44, alan_m wrote:
On 15/10/2016 01:23, David Paste wrote:
am I barking up the
wrong tree to assume an SSD will improve the snappiness of the user
interface?)


When I replaced a traditional hard disk in my 5 year old laptop with
a
SSD I noticed a faster start up but for day to day use no overall
difference in speed.




Hmm! that hasn't been my experience. I've changed several laptops to
SSDs and *everything* is much snappier.

Agreed. I guess his day to day use is opening one word processor and
using it for hours.

Nope, just only rebooting ever few months and not closing apps.

A very odd way to use a computer.

The only sensible way to use a computer used most of most days.

If I'm not going to use a program (note: not "app", that's a mobile phone
word)

Wrong, as always.

for a while, I see no point in leaving it open.

Yes, you are that stupid.

The point is that it is vastly quicker to switch to an already
open app when you need to than it is to start it again.

Actually that's bull****. If you have plenty memory, the program code stays in the disk cache when you close it. If you don't have enough memory, keeping it open just uses swapfile.

--
WEDDING DRESS FOR SALE.
Worn once by mistake.
Call Stephanie.

On 19/10/2016 16:26, James Wilkinson Sword wrote:
On Tue, 18 Oct 2016 23:47:55 +0100, Rod Speed
wrote:



"James Wilkinson Sword" wrote in message
news
On Tue, 18 Oct 2016 22:35:03 +0100, Rod Speed
wrote:



"James Wilkinson Sword" wrote in message
news On Mon, 17 Oct 2016 07:03:27 +0100, Rod Speed

wrote:



"James Wilkinson Sword" wrote in message
news On Sat, 15 Oct 2016 09:54:16 +0100, Bod
wrote:

On 15/10/2016 09:44, alan_m wrote:
On 15/10/2016 01:23, David Paste wrote:
am I barking up the
wrong tree to assume an SSD will improve the snappiness of the
user
interface?)


When I replaced a traditional hard disk in my 5 year old laptop
with
a
SSD I noticed a faster start up but for day to day use no overall
difference in speed.




Hmm! that hasn't been my experience. I've changed several
laptops to
SSDs and *everything* is much snappier.

Agreed. I guess his day to day use is opening one word processor
and
using it for hours.

Nope, just only rebooting ever few months and not closing apps.

A very odd way to use a computer.

The only sensible way to use a computer used most of most days.

If I'm not going to use a program (note: not "app", that's a mobile
phone
word)

Wrong, as always.

for a while, I see no point in leaving it open.

Yes, you are that stupid.

The point is that it is vastly quicker to switch to an already
open app when you need to than it is to start it again.

Actually that's bull****. If you have plenty memory, the program code
stays in the disk cache when you close it. If you don't have enough
memory, keeping it open just uses swapfile.

Plus if you use an M.2 SSD system drive like I do , which is approx 4
times faster than a standard SSD and DDR 4 ram plus an i7 CPU, then
everything is even snappier.

On Wed, 19 Oct 2016 16:40:19 +0100, Bod wrote:

On 19/10/2016 16:26, James Wilkinson Sword wrote:
On Tue, 18 Oct 2016 23:47:55 +0100, Rod Speed
wrote:



"James Wilkinson Sword" wrote in message
news On Tue, 18 Oct 2016 22:35:03 +0100, Rod Speed
wrote:



"James Wilkinson Sword" wrote in message
news On Mon, 17 Oct 2016 07:03:27 +0100, Rod Speed

wrote:



"James Wilkinson Sword" wrote in message
news On Sat, 15 Oct 2016 09:54:16 +0100, Bod
wrote:

On 15/10/2016 09:44, alan_m wrote:
On 15/10/2016 01:23, David Paste wrote:
am I barking up the
wrong tree to assume an SSD will improve the snappiness of the
user
interface?)


When I replaced a traditional hard disk in my 5 year old laptop
with
a
SSD I noticed a faster start up but for day to day use no overall
difference in speed.




Hmm! that hasn't been my experience. I've changed several
laptops to
SSDs and *everything* is much snappier.

Agreed. I guess his day to day use is opening one word processor
and
using it for hours.

Nope, just only rebooting ever few months and not closing apps.

A very odd way to use a computer.

The only sensible way to use a computer used most of most days.

If I'm not going to use a program (note: not "app", that's a mobile
phone
word)

Wrong, as always.

for a while, I see no point in leaving it open.

Yes, you are that stupid.

The point is that it is vastly quicker to switch to an already
open app when you need to than it is to start it again.

Actually that's bull****. If you have plenty memory, the program code
stays in the disk cache when you close it. If you don't have enough
memory, keeping it open just uses swapfile.

Plus if you use an M.2 SSD system drive like I do , which is approx 4
times faster than a standard SSD and DDR 4 ram plus an i7 CPU, then
everything is even snappier.

4 times faster? I'm sure the one you told me about wasn't that much faster than mine (an M4).


--
People who live in glass houses should **** in the basement.

On 19/10/2016 17:01, James Wilkinson Sword wrote:
On Wed, 19 Oct 2016 16:40:19 +0100, Bod wrote:

On 19/10/2016 16:26, James Wilkinson Sword wrote:
On Tue, 18 Oct 2016 23:47:55 +0100, Rod Speed
wrote:



"James Wilkinson Sword" wrote in message
news On Tue, 18 Oct 2016 22:35:03 +0100, Rod Speed

wrote:



"James Wilkinson Sword" wrote in message
news On Mon, 17 Oct 2016 07:03:27 +0100, Rod Speed

wrote:



"James Wilkinson Sword" wrote in message
news On Sat, 15 Oct 2016 09:54:16 +0100, Bod
wrote:

On 15/10/2016 09:44, alan_m wrote:
On 15/10/2016 01:23, David Paste wrote:
am I barking up the
wrong tree to assume an SSD will improve the snappiness of the
user
interface?)


When I replaced a traditional hard disk in my 5 year old laptop
with
a
SSD I noticed a faster start up but for day to day use no
overall
difference in speed.




Hmm! that hasn't been my experience. I've changed several
laptops to
SSDs and *everything* is much snappier.

Agreed. I guess his day to day use is opening one word processor
and
using it for hours.

Nope, just only rebooting ever few months and not closing apps.

A very odd way to use a computer.

The only sensible way to use a computer used most of most days.

If I'm not going to use a program (note: not "app", that's a mobile
phone
word)

Wrong, as always.

for a while, I see no point in leaving it open.

Yes, you are that stupid.

The point is that it is vastly quicker to switch to an already
open app when you need to than it is to start it again.

Actually that's bull****. If you have plenty memory, the program code
stays in the disk cache when you close it. If you don't have enough
memory, keeping it open just uses swapfile.

Plus if you use an M.2 SSD system drive like I do , which is approx 4
times faster than a standard SSD and DDR 4 ram plus an i7 CPU, then
everything is even snappier.

4 times faster? I'm sure the one you told me about wasn't that much
faster than mine (an M4).


My standard SSDs write at 550 MB/s, My M.2 is 2200MB/s.

On 19/10/2016 17:10, Bod wrote:
On 19/10/2016 17:01, James Wilkinson Sword wrote:
On Wed, 19 Oct 2016 16:40:19 +0100, Bod wrote:

On 19/10/2016 16:26, James Wilkinson Sword wrote:
On Tue, 18 Oct 2016 23:47:55 +0100, Rod Speed
wrote:



"James Wilkinson Sword" wrote in message
news On Tue, 18 Oct 2016 22:35:03 +0100, Rod Speed

wrote:



"James Wilkinson Sword" wrote in message
news On Mon, 17 Oct 2016 07:03:27 +0100, Rod Speed

wrote:



"James Wilkinson Sword" wrote in message
news On Sat, 15 Oct 2016 09:54:16 +0100, Bod
wrote:

On 15/10/2016 09:44, alan_m wrote:
On 15/10/2016 01:23, David Paste wrote:
am I barking up the
wrong tree to assume an SSD will improve the snappiness of the
user
interface?)


When I replaced a traditional hard disk in my 5 year old laptop
with
a
SSD I noticed a faster start up but for day to day use no
overall
difference in speed.




Hmm! that hasn't been my experience. I've changed several
laptops to
SSDs and *everything* is much snappier.

Agreed. I guess his day to day use is opening one word processor
and
using it for hours.

Nope, just only rebooting ever few months and not closing apps.

A very odd way to use a computer.

The only sensible way to use a computer used most of most days.

If I'm not going to use a program (note: not "app", that's a mobile
phone
word)

Wrong, as always.

for a while, I see no point in leaving it open.

Yes, you are that stupid.

The point is that it is vastly quicker to switch to an already
open app when you need to than it is to start it again.

Actually that's bull****. If you have plenty memory, the program code
stays in the disk cache when you close it. If you don't have enough
memory, keeping it open just uses swapfile.

Plus if you use an M.2 SSD system drive like I do , which is approx 4
times faster than a standard SSD and DDR 4 ram plus an i7 CPU, then
everything is even snappier.

4 times faster? I'm sure the one you told me about wasn't that much
faster than mine (an M4).


My standard SSDs write at 550 MB/s, My M.2 is 2200MB/s.

The link to prove it:

https://www.msi.com/Laptop/GP62-6QF-...#hero-overview

On Wed, 19 Oct 2016 10:24:43 +0100, John Rumm
wrote:

snip good stuff for brevity

Yes, I understand that's what you are saying but can you offer any way
of substantiating it? Or more accurately, is there any way you could
help me substantiate it for myself on the SSD / System (dual booting
W10 and Mint 18) here?

There is a simple empirical solution... if you have a system with non
aligned partitions (and that would only be likely if you have partitions
originally created by an old OS (pre Vista kind of time frame)),

(or if you had cloned the drive from a conventional one as I have with
the laptop in question...?)

then
benchmark the disk. Then run one of the partition alignment tools and
benchmark again.

Yes, that's what I suggested I could do but wasn't aware of ant
specific tools to do it with. eg, I'm aware of generic PC benchmarking
utilities but not knowing all the answers I would like to know if
there was a recommended utility for highlighting such things. I ask
because I am also aware of Utilities that can be confused and *not*
report the true facts.

snip

Maybe if no definitive / scientific answer is easily obtainable, maybe
a direct / specific speed test (focused on testing for such things)
could be applied (by me) pre and post any block alignment and then at
least I would know if it was any more than just a geeky myth etc
('now', if it ever was anything else etc). ;-)

Yup, sounds like it might be worth doing. Since a good prerequisite of
any exercise like that will be a full backup, the time will not be
totally wasted ;-)

A raw 'iron image' is taken daily on my WHS 2011 server. ;-)

Maybe I need a gold plated SATA 'Digital' cable to be able to test it
fully. weg

See if that nice Mr Andrews has anything to offer.

Did he work for Richer Sounds or such like then? ;-)

Cheers, T i m

On Wed, 19 Oct 2016 11:08:59 +0100, pamela wrote:

snip

This web page from 2011 mentions a glitch with Gparted's boundary
alignment. I don't use it for my partition work, so I don't know
if or when it was fixed.

I wonder if it's describing the same sort of problem you may be
hitting.

http://lifehacker.com/5837769/make-s...artitions-are-
correctly-aligned-for-optimal-solid-state-drive-performance

I'm not sure what 'problem' you think I'm hitting as such ... I was
just trying to pin down if this whole boundary alignment thing was
fact or fiction .... 'today'?

So, in the absence of any proof that any utility is actually able to
report what might be really going on at the electronics / paging
level, the only thing left would be to run some before and after tests
and see what sort of improvements are seen (if any)?

To do that I would first need a suitable utility that was *known* to
really test for such things and not just report what it thinks it
might be seeing (because of some form of caching or hardware access
limitations).

Cheers, T i m

"James Wilkinson Sword" wrote in message
news
On Tue, 18 Oct 2016 23:47:55 +0100, Rod Speed
wrote:



"James Wilkinson Sword" wrote in message
news
On Tue, 18 Oct 2016 22:35:03 +0100, Rod Speed
wrote:



"James Wilkinson Sword" wrote in message
news On Mon, 17 Oct 2016 07:03:27 +0100, Rod Speed

wrote:



"James Wilkinson Sword" wrote in message
news On Sat, 15 Oct 2016 09:54:16 +0100, Bod
wrote:

On 15/10/2016 09:44, alan_m wrote:
On 15/10/2016 01:23, David Paste wrote:
am I barking up the
wrong tree to assume an SSD will improve the snappiness of the
user
interface?)


When I replaced a traditional hard disk in my 5 year old laptop
with
a
SSD I noticed a faster start up but for day to day use no overall
difference in speed.




Hmm! that hasn't been my experience. I've changed several laptops
to
SSDs and *everything* is much snappier.

Agreed. I guess his day to day use is opening one word processor
and
using it for hours.

Nope, just only rebooting ever few months and not closing apps.

A very odd way to use a computer.

The only sensible way to use a computer used most of most days.

If I'm not going to use a program (note: not "app", that's a mobile
phone
word)

Wrong, as always.

for a while, I see no point in leaving it open.

Yes, you are that stupid.

The point is that it is vastly quicker to switch to an already
open app when you need to than it is to start it again.

Actually that's bull****.

We'll see...

If you have plenty memory,

You don't.

the program code stays in the disk cache when you close it.

Pig ignorantly mangled all over again.

If you don't have enough memory,

You should add more memory instead of an SSD.

"Bod" wrote in message
...
On 19/10/2016 16:26, James Wilkinson Sword wrote:
On Tue, 18 Oct 2016 23:47:55 +0100, Rod Speed
wrote:



"James Wilkinson Sword" wrote in message
news On Tue, 18 Oct 2016 22:35:03 +0100, Rod Speed
wrote:



"James Wilkinson Sword" wrote in message
news On Mon, 17 Oct 2016 07:03:27 +0100, Rod Speed

wrote:



"James Wilkinson Sword" wrote in message
news On Sat, 15 Oct 2016 09:54:16 +0100, Bod
wrote:

On 15/10/2016 09:44, alan_m wrote:
On 15/10/2016 01:23, David Paste wrote:
am I barking up the
wrong tree to assume an SSD will improve the snappiness of the
user
interface?)


When I replaced a traditional hard disk in my 5 year old laptop
with
a
SSD I noticed a faster start up but for day to day use no overall
difference in speed.




Hmm! that hasn't been my experience. I've changed several
laptops to
SSDs and *everything* is much snappier.

Agreed. I guess his day to day use is opening one word processor
and
using it for hours.

Nope, just only rebooting ever few months and not closing apps.

A very odd way to use a computer.

The only sensible way to use a computer used most of most days.

If I'm not going to use a program (note: not "app", that's a mobile
phone
word)

Wrong, as always.

for a while, I see no point in leaving it open.

Yes, you are that stupid.

The point is that it is vastly quicker to switch to an already
open app when you need to than it is to start it again.

Actually that's bull****. If you have plenty memory, the program code
stays in the disk cache when you close it. If you don't have enough
memory, keeping it open just uses swapfile.

Plus if you use an M.2 SSD system drive like I do , which is approx 4
times faster than a standard SSD and DDR 4 ram plus an i7 CPU, then
everything is even snappier.

Bull**** it is. Transcoding still takes just as long.

On Wed, 19 Oct 2016 17:30:36 +0100, Bod wrote:

On 19/10/2016 17:10, Bod wrote:
On 19/10/2016 17:01, James Wilkinson Sword wrote:
On Wed, 19 Oct 2016 16:40:19 +0100, Bod wrote:

On 19/10/2016 16:26, James Wilkinson Sword wrote:
On Tue, 18 Oct 2016 23:47:55 +0100, Rod Speed
wrote:



"James Wilkinson Sword" wrote in message
news On Tue, 18 Oct 2016 22:35:03 +0100, Rod Speed

wrote:



"James Wilkinson Sword" wrote in message
news On Mon, 17 Oct 2016 07:03:27 +0100, Rod Speed

wrote:



"James Wilkinson Sword" wrote in message
news On Sat, 15 Oct 2016 09:54:16 +0100, Bod
wrote:

On 15/10/2016 09:44, alan_m wrote:
On 15/10/2016 01:23, David Paste wrote:
am I barking up the
wrong tree to assume an SSD will improve the snappiness of the
user
interface?)


When I replaced a traditional hard disk in my 5 year old laptop
with
a
SSD I noticed a faster start up but for day to day use no
overall
difference in speed.




Hmm! that hasn't been my experience. I've changed several
laptops to
SSDs and *everything* is much snappier.

Agreed. I guess his day to day use is opening one word processor
and
using it for hours.

Nope, just only rebooting ever few months and not closing apps.

A very odd way to use a computer.

The only sensible way to use a computer used most of most days.

If I'm not going to use a program (note: not "app", that's a mobile
phone
word)

Wrong, as always.

for a while, I see no point in leaving it open.

Yes, you are that stupid.

The point is that it is vastly quicker to switch to an already
open app when you need to than it is to start it again.

Actually that's bull****. If you have plenty memory, the program code
stays in the disk cache when you close it. If you don't have enough
memory, keeping it open just uses swapfile.

Plus if you use an M.2 SSD system drive like I do , which is approx 4
times faster than a standard SSD and DDR 4 ram plus an i7 CPU, then
everything is even snappier.

4 times faster? I'm sure the one you told me about wasn't that much
faster than mine (an M4).


My standard SSDs write at 550 MB/s, My M.2 is 2200MB/s.

The link to prove it:

https://www.msi.com/Laptop/GP62-6QF-...#hero-overview

That's a laptop, there are specs he https://www.kitguru.net/components/s...me-ssd-review/
Sequential read/write figures for the 2TB drive as 3,500MB/s and 2,100MB/s respectively.
Christ all ****ing mighty!

--
Many of the world's greatest runners come from Kenya because they have a unique training program there -- it's called a lion.

On 19/10/2016 19:38, T i m wrote:
On Wed, 19 Oct 2016 10:24:43 +0100, John Rumm
wrote:

snip good stuff for brevity

Yes, I understand that's what you are saying but can you offer any way
of substantiating it? Or more accurately, is there any way you could
help me substantiate it for myself on the SSD / System (dual booting
W10 and Mint 18) here?

There is a simple empirical solution... if you have a system with non
aligned partitions (and that would only be likely if you have partitions
originally created by an old OS (pre Vista kind of time frame)),

(or if you had cloned the drive from a conventional one as I have with
the laptop in question...?)

It would still need to be a partition created some time ago. Windows has
done 4K alignment and a start offset of 1024K since Vista, and I think
Linux had support about the same time or slightly before.

then
benchmark the disk. Then run one of the partition alignment tools and
benchmark again.

Yes, that's what I suggested I could do but wasn't aware of ant
specific tools to do it with. eg, I'm aware of generic PC benchmarking
utilities but not knowing all the answers I would like to know if
there was a recommended utility for highlighting such things. I ask
because I am also aware of Utilities that can be confused and *not*
report the true facts.

So long as you use the same for both tests, then you should get a basis
for comparison.

Crystal Disk Mark is not bad IIRC:

http://crystalmark.info/software/Cry...k/index-e.html


--
Cheers,

John.

/================================================== ===============\
| Internode Ltd - http://www.internode.co.uk |
|-----------------------------------------------------------------|
| John Rumm - john(at)internode(dot)co(dot)uk |
\================================================= ================/

On 19/10/2016 10:35, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
On 19/10/16 10:12, John Rumm wrote:
Perhaps you should offer your wisdom to the drive makers, because they
all seem to have fallen for it...

Here is the alignment tool from WD:

http://support.wdc.com/downloads.aspx?p=128&lang=en


Nothing to do with SSDs, refers to spinning rust drives.

The same tool is used for both. They both suffer the same performance
issues with misaligned partitions. (SSDs just enjoy additional problems)

You will note that Intel also link to a "Intel SSD version" of Acronis.
Hyper X (Kingston) also supply a licence for it as well.

Here is the HGST document on the use of their tool:

https://www.hgst.com/sites/default/f...User_Guide.pdf


Nothing to do with SSDs, refers to spinning rust drives.

See above.

Here is the documentation for Seagate's tool / hack:

http://www.seagate.com/docs/pdf/whit...nology_faq.pdf



Nothing to do with SSDs, refers to spinning rust drives.


Do you actually bothre to read what you link to?

Yes.

No one, me included, is
saying taht partition misalignment is an issue on spinning rust drives,

Partition misalignment is a problem on *any* AF drive.

which have far simpler mapping algorithms since wear levelling is not a
particular problem.

My poimt was solely about SSDs.


Oh and for your information I dont think Linux partioning tools will
allow you to actually specify a granularity less than 4k. so its simply
not possible with the usual tools to misalign a linux partition anyway.

I think you will find that I said that some time ago... Everything has
been 4K aligned since the dawn of Vista, and whatever kernel release of
Linux was current about that time.




--
Cheers,

John.

/================================================== ===============\
| Internode Ltd - http://www.internode.co.uk |
|-----------------------------------------------------------------|
| John Rumm - john(at)internode(dot)co(dot)uk |
\================================================= ================/

On 19/10/16 22:40, John Rumm wrote:
On 19/10/2016 10:35, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
On 19/10/16 10:12, John Rumm wrote:
Perhaps you should offer your wisdom to the drive makers, because they
all seem to have fallen for it...

Here is the alignment tool from WD:

http://support.wdc.com/downloads.aspx?p=128&lang=en


Nothing to do with SSDs, refers to spinning rust drives.

The same tool is used for both. They both suffer the same performance
issues with misaligned partitions. (SSDs just enjoy additional problems)

You will note that Intel also link to a "Intel SSD version" of Acronis.
Hyper X (Kingston) also supply a licence for it as well.

Here is the HGST document on the use of their tool:

https://www.hgst.com/sites/default/f...User_Guide.pdf



Nothing to do with SSDs, refers to spinning rust drives.

See above.

Here is the documentation for Seagate's tool / hack:

http://www.seagate.com/docs/pdf/whit...nology_faq.pdf




Nothing to do with SSDs, refers to spinning rust drives.


Do you actually bothre to read what you link to?

Yes.

No one, me included, is
saying taht partition misalignment is not an issue on spinning rust drives,

Partition misalignment is a problem on *any* AF drive.

I give up.

Come back when you actually understand how an SSD works.

which have far simpler mapping algorithms since wear levelling is not a
particular problem.

My poimt was solely about SSDs.


Oh and for your information I dont think Linux partioning tools will
allow you to actually specify a granularity less than 4k. so its simply
not possible with the usual tools to misalign a linux partition anyway.

I think you will find that I said that some time ago... Everything has
been 4K aligned since the dawn of Vista, and whatever kernel release of
Linux was current about that time.






--
€œBut what a weak barrier is truth when it stands in the way of an
hypothesis!€�

Mary Wollstonecraft

On Wed, 19 Oct 2016 22:25:42 +0100, John Rumm
wrote:

On 19/10/2016 19:38, T i m wrote:
On Wed, 19 Oct 2016 10:24:43 +0100, John Rumm
wrote:

snip good stuff for brevity

Yes, I understand that's what you are saying but can you offer any way
of substantiating it? Or more accurately, is there any way you could
help me substantiate it for myself on the SSD / System (dual booting
W10 and Mint 18) here?

There is a simple empirical solution... if you have a system with non
aligned partitions (and that would only be likely if you have partitions
originally created by an old OS (pre Vista kind of time frame)),

(or if you had cloned the drive from a conventional one as I have with
the laptop in question...?)

It would still need to be a partition created some time ago. Windows has
done 4K alignment and a start offset of 1024K since Vista, and I think
Linux had support about the same time or slightly before.

I can't remember how it came into being but checking using the
information you mentioned previously suggested they weren't aligned.
Checking same round mates (with a SSD boot drive running W7) and his
were.

then
benchmark the disk. Then run one of the partition alignment tools and
benchmark again.

Yes, that's what I suggested I could do but wasn't aware of ant
specific tools to do it with. eg, I'm aware of generic PC benchmarking
utilities but not knowing all the answers I would like to know if
there was a recommended utility for highlighting such things. I ask
because I am also aware of Utilities that can be confused and *not*
report the true facts.

So long as you use the same for both tests, then you should get a basis
for comparison.

I like the 'should' there John. ;-)

Crystal Disk Mark is not bad IIRC:

http://crystalmark.info/software/Cry...k/index-e.html

Ok thanks, I'll give that a go.

Cheers, T i m

On Wed, 19 Oct 2016 22:37:54 +0100, pamela wrote:

snip

I'm not sure what 'problem' you think I'm hitting as such ... I
was just trying to pin down if this whole boundary alignment
thing was fact or fiction .... 'today'?

So, in the absence of any proof that any utility is actually
able to report what might be really going on at the electronics
/ paging level, the only thing left would be to run some before
and after tests and see what sort of improvements are seen (if
any)?

To do that I would first need a suitable utility that was
*known* to really test for such things and not just report what
it thinks it might be seeing (because of some form of caching or
hardware access limitations).


From what I read of your discussion (and I did skip parts)
;-)

I thought
you were asking whether a tool might be misreporting whether it had
aligned boundaries

Yes.

and I assumed this was a problem you had been
experiencing.

No-ish. Yes, I have since checked my SSD'd laptop and found my
boundaries aren't aligned but because the thing seems pretty fast, I
don't *know* that I'm suffering because of said. This thread has
potentially ('re', I knew of it previously) highlighted the whole
thing and got me looking into it.

"if some software (Gparted) can see and display that these
alignments aren't made *and* can set them, is Gparted actually
then *actually / physically* resetting said alignments or
just indicating it is?"

MID:

The link discusses a finding that Gparted rounds down certain small
but sometimes significant offsets that would affect alignment of
partition boundaries.

Ok.

This would be similar to the sort of
misreporting you are discussing.

Yes, well, more 'questioning the possibility of', rather than the
consequences as such. Had my SSD'd laptop run slower than I hoped re
speed improvements (and it doesn't) I might then be looking to this
'boundary alignment' as an issue that *did* actually need attention.

I do have other laptops and netbooks that I have upgraded to SSD's and
one at least didn't seem to improve as much as I was used and hoped.
Now, I'm just waiting for some RAM to arrive in the post as I know it
could use some more in any case (1 x 1G going to 2 x 2G) and then I'll
check and try tweaking the alignment on that also.

Cheers, T i m

En el artículo , John
Rumm escribió:

Crystal Disk Mark is not bad IIRC:

http://crystalmark.info/software/Cry...k/index-e.html

AS SSD Benchmark (will also do spinning rust). This tells you if
partitions are misaligned, and if IDE emulation mode is being used.
either/both of these will impact on performance.

http://www.alex-is.de/PHP/fusion/dow...?download_id=9

--
(\_/)
(='.'=) systemd: the Linux version of Windows 10
(")_(")

En el artículo , John
Rumm escribió:

I think you will find that I said that some time ago... Everything has
been 4K aligned since the dawn of Vista, and whatever kernel release of
Linux was current about that time.

My own experience came with XP, which doesn't align partitions and
starts the first partition at sector 63. This pre-dates SSDs and AF
drives with the 4k block size.

The XP install I had was ok on a (non-AF) hard drive until I upgraded it
to Win7 and migrated the original hard drive contents to SSD by doing a
sector by sector copy using dd under a Linux boot CD.

This meant that I had a Win7 system on SSD with misaligned partitons
inherited from XP, incurring a performance penalty.

Hence my interest in correcting the misalignment by moving partitions to
a 4k boundary, which GParted did for me.

--
(\_/)
(='.'=) systemd: the Linux version of Windows 10
(")_(")

On 19/10/2016 22:40, John Rumm wrote:

Oh and for your information I dont think Linux partioning tools will
allow you to actually specify a granularity less than 4k. so its simply
not possible with the usual tools to misalign a linux partition anyway.

I think you will find that I said that some time ago... Everything has
been 4K aligned since the dawn of Vista, and whatever kernel release of
Linux was current about that time.

You can definitely misalign Linux and windows if you try - we've had it
as a problem on SAN for both if the SAN is configured for the wrong
offset. (and that would apply to both spinning and SSDs).

fdisk will let you choose down to the sector level - eg 512 bytes on
vmware, so TNP is talking out of his arse.

(checked on a 3.13 kernel)

On 19/10/2016 23:41, Mike Tomlinson wrote:
En el artículo , John
Rumm escribió:

I think you will find that I said that some time ago... Everything has
been 4K aligned since the dawn of Vista, and whatever kernel release of
Linux was current about that time.

My own experience came with XP, which doesn't align partitions and
starts the first partition at sector 63. This pre-dates SSDs and AF
drives with the 4k block size.

The XP install I had was ok on a (non-AF) hard drive until I upgraded it
to Win7 and migrated the original hard drive contents to SSD by doing a
sector by sector copy using dd under a Linux boot CD.

This meant that I had a Win7 system on SSD with misaligned partitons
inherited from XP, incurring a performance penalty.

Hence my interest in correcting the misalignment by moving partitions to
a 4k boundary, which GParted did for me.

Aside from the reduced wear rate on the NAND which is hard to quantify,
did you see a difference in performance after the move?

(Note that if you did, it will have been "TNP Mythical" (tm) ;-)


--
Cheers,

John.

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On 19/10/2016 22:50, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
On 19/10/16 22:40, John Rumm wrote:

Partition misalignment is a problem on *any* AF drive.

I give up.

So in summary, in the blue corner we have:

Loads of technically clued up people dealing with partition alignment
problems, and lots of them publishing results of the performance gain
when they are fixed.

We have the makers of software tooling, providing specific capabilities
in their software for dealing with the problem. We have drive makers
promoting and linking to said tooling.

We have technical notes from the drive makers explaining the problem.

We have good old common sense that should be bleeding obvious to any
developer, that when you are living in a 4k sector world, you optimise
your code for that, even if it means that 10% of the time you will get a
negative impact from non 4k aligned accesses.

We have OS vendors specifically making changes to their partitioning
tools to support 4k alignment (including the holy tribe of Linus).

We have tech notes like:

https://blogs.technet.microsoft.com/...isks-and-ssds/

Including things like:

"Windows 7 will add additional benefit to the use of SSDs, as it
configures the partition with an disk alignment, that is optimized for
best performance. "

_and_

"€“ Set partition alignment:
NAND flash storage devices are functionally different from traditional
hard disk drives in three ways: physical structure, logical structure,
and bit erase operation. The logical structure of SSDs differs from
tradition hard disk drives because they are built upon pages, which are
a given number of bytes (typically 2 KB or 4 KB), and blocks, which are
a given number of pages. When the user wants to erase (re-program or
write-erase) a given set of bits in any block, the entire block must be
erased. This particular anomaly is directly associated with the physics
of how NAND works at the die level. If an operating system or data
partition is not properly page aligned, there are undesirable
consequences. Specifically, if the offset value where the partition
begins does not line up with a given page boundary, the SSD flash
management system is burdened with extra overhead each time there is a
request to perform an erase data operation.

If you wish to use the align parameter in the DiskPart tool, the correct
value should be 1 MB for SSDs with page sizes up to 4 KB, and 2 MB for
SSDs with a page sizes from 4 KB to 16 KB."


_and_

https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/jim...l-server-2014/

"Partition alignment remains a best practice for all versions of Windows
Server as well as SQL Server, including SQL Server 2012 & SQL Server
2014. No exceptions. Period. If, for whatever reason, misaligned
volumes are created, they will fail to deliver their expected
performance. SQL Server installed on such volumes will suffer
concomitant performance degradation."

and just in case you thought there was a free pass for SSDs:

"The performance impact of misalignment is not as apparent on SSD
relative to spinning media. *Yet partition alignment is required for
optimal performance.*" [my emphasis]

Come back when you actually understand how an SSD works.

Then in the red corner we have someone who; with no supporting evidence,
no benchmark results, and no experience of actually writing SSD drive
firmware, claims this is all a figment of the collective imagination,
any only his way is the one true and righteous one. We just have to have
faith!


Sorry, but positions for quasi religious storage guru are now closed.


--
Cheers,

John.

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En el artículo , John
Rumm escribió:

Aside from the reduced wear rate on the NAND which is hard to quantify,
did you see a difference in performance after the move?

Yes. I didn't do any benchmarking, but the system subjectively
immediately felt much snappier. It's worth noting that alignment
correction will only affect writes, before the dimidots start whining
that it made no difference for them. Read-only tests are going to show
next to no difference.

(Note that if you did, it will have been "TNP Mythical" (tm) ;-)

A lot of what he emits is mythical. The recent rocket science thread is
a scream

--
(\_/)
(='.'=) systemd: the Linux version of Windows 10
(")_(")

En el artículo , John
Rumm escribió:

We have OS vendors specifically making changes to their partitioning
tools to support 4k alignment (including the holy tribe of Linus).

All hail Linus!

Sorry, but positions for quasi religious storage guru are now closed.

ITYM "swivel-eyed loony"

ps. I do admire your tenacity in the face of idiocy.

--
(\_/)
(='.'=) systemd: the Linux version of Windows 10
(")_(")

On 20/10/16 14:22, Mike Tomlinson wrote:
En el artÃ*culo , John
Rumm escribió:

Aside from the reduced wear rate on the NAND which is hard to quantify,
did you see a difference in performance after the move?

Yes. I didn't do any benchmarking, but the system subjectively
immediately felt much snappier. It's worth noting that alignment
correction will only affect writes, before the dimidots start whining
that it made no difference for them. Read-only tests are going to show
next to no difference.

(Note that if you did, it will have been "TNP Mythical" (tm) ;-)

A lot of what he emits is mythical. The recent rocket science thread is
a scream

Says the man promoting urban myths



--
New Socialism consists essentially in being seen to have your heart in
the right place whilst your head is in the clouds and your hand is in
someone else's pocket.

On 20/10/16 14:26, Mike Tomlinson wrote:
En el artÃ*culo , John
Rumm escribió:

We have OS vendors specifically making changes to their partitioning
tools to support 4k alignment (including the holy tribe of Linus).

All hail Linus!

Sorry, but positions for quasi religious storage guru are now closed.

ITYM "swivel-eyed loony"

ps. I do admire your tenacity in the face of idiocy.

I see you have run out of valid arguments and have fallen back on ad
hominemns

Well, another troll posted...

--
New Socialism consists essentially in being seen to have your heart in
the right place whilst your head is in the clouds and your hand is in
someone else's pocket.

On 20/10/2016 14:22, Mike Tomlinson wrote:
En el artículo , John
Rumm escribió:

Aside from the reduced wear rate on the NAND which is hard to quantify,
did you see a difference in performance after the move?

Yes. I didn't do any benchmarking, but the system subjectively
immediately felt much snappier. It's worth noting that alignment
correction will only affect writes, before the dimidots start whining
that it made no difference for them. Read-only tests are going to show
next to no difference.

You should see some difference on large reads - but less on smaller ones.


(Note that if you did, it will have been "TNP Mythical" (tm) ;-)

A lot of what he emits is mythical. The recent rocket science thread is
a scream

I must have missed that one...


--
Cheers,

John.

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On 20/10/2016 18:06, pamela wrote:

I wonder if Turnip would also provide a list of what he's been
reading that supports his view. He wrote this:

"I try to do my research and take a view on what I read, and
present that. I happen to have done a lot of research on SSDS
beyond reading some urban legend on the net, and that is what
forms the basis for what I say."

MID:


Yup it would be nice if he could share some of this source material...


--
Cheers,

John.

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