Solid state drive

[zubs1aa]

i put in an SSD as my boot drive- OS all aplications are on there. DB sis out on a 7200 rpm drive.

system speed increased ridic amounts on my older machine.

If you just put the entire database on the separate drive you don't get the benefit from having data and logs split up - you need a tablespace for that. However, you do get some benefits from not having your database on the drive your operating system is using. I don't have a detailed estimate for how much those gains are though.

kraada- it would be pointless to split data and logs if you choose to put it all on the SSD with your OS and poker clients on an HDD. couple reasons for this. (well, i suppose still splitting them across 2 drives would be even faster... but together on one SSD wwill still destroy any spec from splitting them across 2 HDD.)

SSD run at R/W speeds a bazillion times above any HDD, even a 10k rpm (which I think is a velociraptor speed).
THe main reason here is that there is no read head to wait on it jumping around. so unless the actual quantity of R/W for logs and data exceeds the drive spec, you'll still be running the drive at it's max speed and getting a huge benefit.

OP I think you are going about your setup completely wrong though. The max speed gain you would get is by putting the OS and your apps including PT on the SSD and make it your boot drive. Then put your postgre and data on your velociraptor or across 2 HDD. Your OS and all teh read/writing it and all te poker clients do is the major drag on performance. If yo uspeed that up with SSD and then put your PT3 data/sql on that velociraptor I think yo uwill get max bang for the buck.

Another benefit to these SSD's, especially ones running under win7 that have built in TRIM support.. is that they never fragment. In fact defragging them can really kill their life expectancy. So OP, evne if the drive is nearly full, you won't have a performance decrease... unless whatever you are running on that drive ends up buffering files or things because it can't find the space needed.

that is some background.. but plz post the details as I mentioned in my post above as requested so people can help you out.

[PokerBot]

My set up will be windows 7 on the SSD; ill put sql on it too; to see if it will fit it all on there if not; i can then use the raptor to carry some of the load. My guess is that it would be best to put my databse; as in the hands i play on a table space on the raptor; since i would only have to do this once and then put my observed hands; which i will add and delete as time goes by on the SSD so that i dont have to table space it every time i add a new data base. My guess is that this is best since the rapot will be writing; my hands and the SSD will be reading for the HUD?

[kraada]

it would be pointless to split data and logs if you choose to put it all on the SSD with your OS and poker clients on an HDD. couple reasons for this. (well, i suppose still splitting them across 2 drives would be even faster... but together on one SSD wwill still destroy any spec from splitting them across 2 HDD.)

I'm well aware, but depending on his budget and his database needs it may not be a good solution for him to fit his entire database on the SSD. At that point, considering a small SSD for the primary OS and if he then has two HDDs for database storage, it would provide a pretty good benefit to split things up there, plus he could easily have more storage than he ever needs. He did say his D: drive above (the one he was referencing that I responded to) was going to be his Velociraptor - not an SSD.

My set up will be windows 7 on the SSD; ill put sql on it too; to see if it will fit it all on there if not; i can then use the raptor to carry some of the load. My guess is that it would be best to put my databse; as in the hands i play on a table space on the raptor; since i would only have to do this once and then put my observed hands; which i will add and delete as time goes by on the SSD so that i dont have to table space it every time i add a new data base. My guess is that this is best since the rapot will be writing; my hands and the SSD will be reading for the HUD?

That will work depending on how many hands you plan to keep around that are observed hands - PT3 databases get large fairly quickly; 100k full ring hands is about 1G of hard drive space. And obviously we don't want you running out of space entirely :)

[PokerBot]

Just to be sure what house keeping should i NOT do with the solid state drive? Ill be putting everything on there for know to see if i can fit it all on there

[kraada]

Cluster is unnecessary, but you still want to vacuum/analyze/update cache.

[preparac]

I do not get all technical details, I think. So are theese cliff notes ok?

- Buy a SSD
- Put your OS, your Poker clients and your PT3 on it.
- If possible (iff SSD is big enough...*) put also PT3data and Postgres on the SSD.
- Do not anymore clustering and defragmenting

* Question: For clustering purposes (?) free space on your HDD should be always > postgres DB. Is this not anymore required on a SSD?
thx

[kraada]

Yep those would be the cliff notes. And you're correct you do not need that much free space on your SSD - the free space was for clustering purposes which is not necessary to do on a SSD

[PokerBot]

I have installed all my data on the SSD alas i don't notice much is any improvement over the 150GB raptor while playing; its no "smoother" or faster etc. Import speeds increased but not too drastically. I have trim enabled; though i only enable AHCI mode after installing windows 7; can i get some advise on how to increase performance. Note i don't want to fiddle with other adjusts like the RAM and other tweaks; i want to see what i can get out of the SSD that i bought first. Thanks

[zubs1aa]

I have installed all my data on the SSD alas i don't notice much is any improvement over the 150GB raptor while playing; its no "smoother" or faster etc. Import speeds increased but not too drastically. I have trim enabled; though i only enable AHCI mode after installing windows 7; can i get some advise on how to increase performance. Note i don't want to fiddle with other adjusts like the RAM and other tweaks; i want to see what i can get out of the SSD that i bought first. Thanks

First off, get one or more of the std benchmarking tools and just run a bench on your SSD and on your HDD. That will tell you how much faster your SSD really is vs the HDD to begin with. Maybe there is something interesting or odd to be seen there. (google a review of your drive and they will show all te bench's that the reviewing website used... there's a bunch... ans most are freeware.)

Also, try calling your tech support at the SSD manufacturer. Explain to them the kind of SW you are running and your hardware and see what they think is likely best. (Though it's possible they don't have enough info to know)

The other thing I would try is to see if while you are playing whether or not the SSD is maxing out on it's performance or not. (don't know how to do that - must be a utility somewhere...I'd ask the manufacturer about that as well.)


Lastly, I'd try moving the postgre and the databases to the raptor. I think that will be faster IMO regardless of whatever else is going on. by splitting the work it should by definition be faster...

[PokerBot]

According to the benchmarks the drive is fine however when it comes to real world computing; i.e. where is counts the performance has dropped off in boot times, it even take a few seconds to load the standard system tray icons; when at first install every thing was pretty much instant. Boot time and virus scans seems slow too; both being only slightly faster than my raptor.

I will try moving the data to another drive; note though i want to be able to use just the SSD for everything; that is what i paid for; and doing the table space is basically a work around whcih is why i am looking for tweaks to get the most from SQL AND OS; (i am asking OCZ at the moment also but it is not looking fruitful). What i will try also is just moving the data to another drive to see if the space cleared will improve performance. So can i simply cut and paste the postgre folder to D drive; try the speed / booting / scanning etc and then cut and paste back without any problems with postgres / poker tracker