Disabling indexing with SSD's

[erdemali]

1. Files are written all across the drive, these days. Windows has been using similar allocation techniques to *n*xes for years, now, resulting in reduced fragmentation, but also spreading data around. Even for bootup, it mostly relies on special bootup files, managed with ReadyBoot, pre-loading the hibernate file, and other little tricks.

2. Folders and files (but not their contents) are metadata, and may be in completely different locations (some definitely will be), relative to the files they relate to. They are trees, pointing to arbitrary lists of data offsets, with no particular location order relationships, unless managed by some 3rd-party defragger/optimizer. There is no linear space/location relationship.

3. The SSD's nature is, like an HDD, as a seekable block device, made up of 512B (usually) or 4KB blocks. How it reads or writes is largely irrelevant, and is completely hidden from the OS anyway. The drive has no concept of files, folders, or any other such things. It's got blocks and bytes, nothing more. How it does what it does doesn't matter.

4. Disabling indexes breaks no relationships. It just removes a lookup-optimized metadata cache from what the search function can utilize. It may not even slow down the search function. Windows 7 would automatically turn off indexing, if your SSD was fast enough, because they found the speed difference to be negligible in searching, while the overhead of maintaining the indexes was non-negligible. When it comes to file contents searching, though, the search will definitely be slower w/o indexing.

5. That sort of order was never assured to exist in the first place, probably won't at all exist on a drive that's been in use for awhile, nor does it really matter. Files, and fragments of them, get scattered all about the drive, all the time, by design.

6. No, it's not. The link between folders and their contents comes from the master file table or file allocation table, which are abstracted away from what's accessing them anyway, and unrelated to the search indexing functionality.
The search uses, and does not ignore, folders, regardless of whether you have any indexing or not; and will look for files individually, or not, regardless of indexing.

1. In most cases, Ssd writes to blocks with sequential reference numbers and searches the end of last file's reference number,unless if there is a gap between defence numbers. Ssd's do not care about what and how an OS indexes folders and files together. Once you copy and paste a file to a new folder, ssd do not care about that, OS knows about it only.

2. True, they can be in different locations, SSD does not care about the folder file relationships. It only does searching based on the reference number it is assigned to by the SSD.

3. It is totally true. But she's and hdd's are totally irrelevant when it comes to functioning.

4. Sort of. Indexing is bit of help. Like database files, search in search way.

5.

6. I agree with master file table which is indexed and helps searching while Ssd's are incompatible with OS's logics. They are a mismatch so the RAM s are.

 

[Cerb]

1. In most cases, Ssd writes to blocks with sequential reference numbers and searches the end of last file's reference number,unless if there is a gap between defence numbers. Ssd's do not care about what and how an OS indexes folders and files together. Once you copy and paste a file to a new folder, ssd do not care about that, OS knows about it only.

The SSD has no clue about anything regarding a file. It does not search anything. It reads the block it's told, and that's all.

2. True, they can be in different locations, SSD does not care about the folder file relationships. It only does searching based on the reference number it is assigned to by the SSD.

The SSD assigns no references to anything, anywhere. That's 100% the OS's job.

6. I agree with master file table which is indexed and helps searching while Ssd's are incompatible with OS's logics. They are a mismatch so the RAM s are.

The OS' logic is fine and quite compatible with SSDs. The MFT is *not* what is indexed. The file's name, path, arious attributes, and it's contents, are indexed. While the OS uses special NTFS features to get the job done, and to store the indexed data, the MFT itself is a separate thing from that. That final sentence makes no sense at all, though.

 

[erdemali]

The SSD has no clue about anything regarding a file. It does not search anything. It reads the block it's told, and that's all.

The SSD assigns no references to anything, anywhere. That's 100% the OS's job.

The OS' logic is fine and quite compatible with SSDs. The MFT is *not* what is indexed. The file's name, path, arious attributes, and it's contents, are indexed. While the OS uses special NTFS features to get the job done, and to store the indexed data, the MFT itself is a separate thing from that. That final sentence makes no sense at all, though.

All the files and folders are given unique reference number by SSD. It has no relations to OSs.everything is referenced in an ssd uniquely regardless.

My bad with indexing. I meant the files and their attributes. Thanks for correcting me on this.

Regarding the last sentence, we need to open up a new topic for the useless RAMs these days since Ssd's are introduced.

 

[Cerb]

All the files and folders are given unique reference number by SSD. It has no relations to OSs.everything is referenced in an ssd uniquely regardless.

The SSD is, to anything outside of it, a series of 512B sectors (some 4KB, by now, I'm sure). It's all raw data, in a giant string. Nothing more. The SSD is told to write X data to sector(s) Y, and it does it. Then, when sector(s) Y is/are read back, the [concatenated] result must be X. That's the extent of it. The data itself is gibberish to the SSD (or an HDD), with no semantics. All the complexity going on inside an SSD is not exposed to anything outside of it (that said, raw flash filesystems are bound to become a thing within 10 years). The SSD has no concept of files or folders, the tables holding the data pointing to them, etc., unless it's got some dubious optimizations going on (like the Samsung 830 w/ NTFS free space), which TRIM has largely rendered obsolete.

Regarding the last sentence, we need to open up a new topic for the useless RAMs these days since Ssd's are introduced.

RAM is still thousands to millions of times faster than SSDs. Even with V-NAND, the bulk of the flash itself is getting slower, as density increases. Things like big databases treating in-RAM cache as golden should start going away, in favor of higher-performance on-disk formats, to mmap for reading, for sure; but in general, RAM is, and will be remaining, way faster than MLC flash, especially as it concerns writing.

 

[erdemali]

The SSD is, to anything outside of it, a series of 512B sectors (some 4KB, by now, I'm sure). It's all raw data, in a giant string. Nothing more. The SSD is told to write X data to sector(s) Y, and it does it. Then, when sector(s) Y is/are read back, the [concatenated] result must be X. That's the extent of it. The data itself is gibberish to the SSD (or an HDD), with no semantics. All the complexity going on inside an SSD is not exposed to anything outside of it (that said, raw flash filesystems are bound to become a thing within 10 years). The SSD has no concept of files or folders, the tables holding the data pointing to them, etc., unless it's got some dubious optimizations going on (like the Samsung 830 w/ NTFS free space), which TRIM has largely rendered obsolete.

RAM is still thousands to millions of times faster than SSDs. Even with V-NAND, the bulk of the flash itself is getting slower, as density increases. Things like big databases treating in-RAM cache as golden should start going away, in favor of higher-performance on-disk formats, to mmap for reading, for sure; but in general, RAM is, and will be remaining, way faster than MLC flash, especially as it concerns writing.

Every block on an ssd are referenced and references for blocks are reshuffled until a new command send (copy, write, delete and etc.).

You cannot imagine a speed of raided 6 of an ssd.

 

[Puffnstuff]

Speaking only from my own experience, searching my ssd with the indexing off was far slower than with it on. Once I enabled indexing my search times decreased dramatically.

 

[VirtualLarry]

Hmm, don't know why you guys are even responding to him. His previous threads on "random computer ideas" were locked by the mods.

Anyways, he needs to read some tomes on computer architecture, Von Neumann machines, and memory hierarchies.

Edit: Clueless and spouting gibberish. I doubt that he is even educable.

 

[erdemali]

Hmm, don't know why you guys are even responding to him. His previous threads on "random computer ideas" were locked by the mods.

Anyways, he needs to read some tomes on computer architecture, Von Neumann machines, and memory hierarchies.

Edit: Clueless and spouting gibberish. I doubt that he is even educable.

You wanna know why a CPU heating up that much?. I will give you a bit of hint: increase the size of RAM to max possible and Spare area of ssd as much as possible. You will see a noticeable change in CPU heat. Do this, explanation is the latter.

When it comes to academics, I need to know whether you are at least holding a uni degree to have yourself compare to me. Full stop.

P.S.: any claims that Ssd's do not assign references to files is clueless about how an ssd works.

Little fish swimming in a creek thinks it is swimming in an ocean.

 

[dave_the_nerd]

I thought we had a tweakboy clause for people who post horribly incorrect or incoherent information.

 

[Essence_of_War]

Hmm, don't know why you guys are even responding to him. His previous threads on "random computer ideas" were locked by the mods.

Yup. Crossed the "not even wrong" threshold back on page 1.

 

[VirtualLarry]

P.S.: any claims that Ssd's do not assign references to files is clueless about how an ssd works.

Little fish swimming in a creek thinks it is swimming in an ocean.

You're clueless. A "file" is a high-level abstraction, controlled by the OS and the filesystem drivers. SSDs do not deal in "files". They are a low-level block storage device. They only deal with LBAs and blocks.

If you knew how SSDs work, you would have known this, but clearly, you do not understand.

 

[VirtualLarry]

You wanna know why a CPU heating up that much?. I will give you a bit of hint: increase the size of RAM to max possible and Spare area of ssd as much as possible. You will see a noticeable change in CPU heat. Do this, explanation is the latter.

A CPU heats up, because it's not made from Reversable Logic, and thus all electrical power going in to the CPU is eventually released as waste heat.

You're right, in a way, that the CPU will heat up less, given a greater RAM working-set. This is because the on-die caches are of a fixed size, and as the RAM size increases, they will see a lower cache hit-rate, thus leading to more trips out to main memory, leading to the CPU pipeline being idle more often, leading to power-gating kicking in, and shutting down parts of the CPU, thus leading to less power usage. This is a BAD thing, the CPU is now achieving much less work than its theoretical maximum.

Edit: Due to static versus dynamic power usage, the CPU now has much lower performance/watt. This is why this is a BAD thing.

And if we got rid of RAM altogether, as you seem to be advocating, then the CPU would constantly have to go to SSD for data, thus getting pretty-much ZERO work done. It would totally "suffocate" the CPU.

 

[Cerb]

Hmm, don't know why you guys are even responding to him. His previous threads on "random computer ideas" were locked by the mods.

No idea about those. I'm definitely out, now, though.

 

[VirtualLarry]

When it comes to academics, I need to know whether you are at least holding a uni degree to have yourself compare to me. Full stop.

Little fish swimming in a creek thinks it is swimming in an ocean.

I am too lazy to prepare a detailed cost /benefit analysis since Comp tech is just a hobby of mine and not determined to spare time for that.

..

 

[myocardia]

I'm surprised this thread is still 'open'. Although, at least we have all found out how to get Cerb to share some of his knowledge.

 

[Joepublic2]

I use it on my SSD but I have a bunch of small files to search through so it does speed things up for me. For the average user, probably not.

 

[Puffnstuff]

I hate it when people ruin a thread like this.