Question 2 NVMe drives for faster random read/write??

[kirkdickinson]

Back in the early 90's when hard drives were typically small. I used to have a bunch of SCSI drive and kept lots of things on separate drives.
OS Drive only
Program Drive Only
Documents Drive Only
Graphics Drive Only
Etc...

When drives became bigger and cheaper, I have stopped doing this.

Reading an article the other day about how NVMe drives are so fast for sequential read/write, but are much much slower for random read/write, I got to wondering about this strategy again. I already keep a separate Data drive from my OS/Program drive.

Wondering if I install two NVMe drives and keep one for OS and one for Programs would that speed up the random read/write by spreading it between two drives?

I am already going to put in two NVMe drives, but was going to get one big fast one for OS/Programs and a small cheaper one for Swap/Temp/Scratch.

Any thoughts?

 

[fastamdman]

No need, the difference is extremely minimal, you are talking milliseconds, it's really not a noticeable difference, let alone a needed one.

 

[richaron]

*snip*...Reading an article the other day about how NVMe drives are so fast for sequential read/write, but are much much slower for random read/write... *snip*

Any thoughts?

AFAIK NVMe provides the largest bandwidth and lowest latency possible for mass storage, an interface designed specifically for solid state drives. I can only guess you are reading reviews of various NVMe drives and blaming the interface itself?

I'm not up to date but I assume "Optane" (see 905p? line) drives are still king of the (consumer) hill with regards to latency and random performance, similar to Micron's (hopefully) soon to be released equivalent. So that's where I'd look if those things were my major concern. But...

No need, the difference is extremely minimal, you are talking milliseconds, it's really not a noticeable difference, let alone a needed one.

What he said mostly.

 

[kirkdickinson]

I realize that the NVMe is the fastest available except for the insanely expensive Optane line. Just the speeds they throw around are usually for the sequential which are crazy fast when what really matters is the random speeds which are usually only 15-20% of what the sequential are.

Just wondered if reading and writing to multiple drives at the same time would make a difference.

 

[richaron]

I realize that the NVMe is the fastest available except for the insanely expensive Optane line. Just the speeds they throw around are usually for the sequential which are crazy fast when what really matters is the random speeds which are usually only 15-20% of what the sequential are.

Just wondered if reading and writing to multiple drives at the same time would make a difference.

I thought Optane were NVMe? NVMe is just a protocol not a type of material... And random speeds are always a fraction of the (often highly advertised) maximum, whether HDD, SSD, or flash drive.

Anyway, a striped array is usually to increases the max bandwidth. I believe latency is worse but I have no way to back that up. Hopefully someone else can pop in and actually answer your question with proofs

Though as stated by the first reply; you'll probably never notice any increase/decrese anyway. And the size of the SSDs (even on the same product line) could likely make a larger difference.

 

[kirkdickinson]

I thought Optane were NVMe? NVMe is just a protocol not a type of material... And random speeds are always a fraction of the (often highly advertised) maximum, whether HDD, SSD, or flash drive.

Optane can address memory differently. I can't explain it, but I think it can access much smaller blocks of memory which makes it faster for random reads and writes, but not as fast for sequential.

 

[IntelUser2000]

Just wondered if reading and writing to multiple drives at the same time would make a difference.

By that you mean RAID 0(Striping)? It makes zero difference to random read/write speeds. With platter HDDs it made it faster since it was so slow at such things anyway. With NAND/Optane it can even get slower nevermind being faster. Best case is being on par.

The slowdowns are more pronounced the faster the drive is like with Optane.

Optane can address memory differently. I can't explain it, but I think it can access much smaller blocks of memory which makes it faster for random reads and writes, but not as fast for sequential.

Optane is faster than NAND because it doesn't have to deal with the program-erase-write cycle NAND cells have to go through. They are slower by nature too, but needing erase before rewrite is the big one.

For sequentials I think Optane is limited by power consumption.

 

[kirkdickinson]

By that you mean RAID 0(Striping)? It makes zero difference to random read/write speeds. With platter HDDs it made it faster since it was so slow at such things anyway. With NAND/Optane it can even get slower nevermind being faster. Best case is being on par.

No I wasn’t talking about Raid, I was talking about separating operations to two different drives. Operating system on one programs on another or other separations like data/swap etc...