Which OS Performs Best With SSDs?

Lucas123 writes "Linux, Vista and Mac OS perform differently with solid state disks. While all of them work well with SSDs, as they write data more efficiently or run fewer applications in the background than XP, surprisingly Windows 2000 appears to be the winner when it comes to performance. However, no OS has yet been optimized to work with SSDs. This lost opportunity is one Microsoft plans to address with Windows 7; Apple, too, is likely to upgrade its platform soon for better SSD performance."

Comments

Re:Linux, as a matter of fact

[Jonah Bomber]

Geniuses often don't play well with others.

Awful article

[Nick Ives]

It conflates the results of several independent tests to form the view that XP is somehow best. It also bandies about meaningless numbers like one OS being x% faster than another without giving any hint of the metric.

Avoid.

Re:Awful article

[iYk6]

Several problems with the article. No mention of metric, as parent said. No mention of what Linux-based OS they used. Choice quotes like the following, "but Linux is 'always faster' than Vista or Mac OS X -- to the tune of 1% to 2% -- because like Windows 2000, 'it never runs anything in the background.'" What do background applications have to do with anything? And both Windows 2000 and all Linux distros run stuff in the background. Even DOS does that.

To top it off, the article is spread out over 3 pages. Here's the print link: http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=printArticleBasic&taxonomyName=Storage&articleId=9123140&taxonomyId=19

No optimized OS = false

[The Man]

Since they didn't test Solaris, the test is meaningless. It's the only OS in existence right now with caching and data management features designed specifically to take advantage of flash to improve real-world performance. The submitter's assertion to the contrary is a deliberate lie, an assumption that until Microsoft does something it hasn't been done, or at best sheer ignorance.

Read up on the ZFS L2ARC and the use of supercap/DRAM/flash subsystems for separate intent logs that make up the hybrid storage pool. There are plenty of white papers and other material out there, and of course you can also read the source code.

Re:No optimized OS = false

[nvrrobx]

With all due respect, I call shenanigans on your logic here. OpenSolaris is just as much of a desktop OS as Linux is. Have you looked at the hardware it supports and what runs on it recently?

The word "desktop" isn't even mentioned in the article anywhere.

After reading TFA, it all feels a bit vague anyhow. I see no real performance results, just a few percentages thrown around.

Article is bullshit

[francium de neobie]

When I read into the middle, it says,

According to Far, Mac OS X runs "a little faster than Vista" with an SSD drive, but Linux is "always faster" than Vista or Mac OS X -- to the tune of 1% to 2% -- because like Windows 2000, "it never runs anything in the background."

Ok, so Linux and Windows 2000 never run anything in the background. My head exploded so I stopped reading.

Re:Windows 2000 is fastest of Windows and Mac OSX

[JCSoRocks]

Actually recent benchmarks have shown that defragging doesn't make *that* much of a difference - http://www.maximumpc.com/article/the_disk_defrag_difference?page=0%2C2 I've never heard of a fragmented drive affecting machine stability. That's like saying having a 5400 RPM drive instead of a 10,000 RPM drive in a server will make it crash... It makes no sense. Fragmentation has nothing to do with data integrity which is the only thing that would affect stability.

Also, it's "its" not "it's".

Why would I care?

[Trillan]

Even if their methodology was clear.
Even if their methodology was valid.
Even if every percentage point was accurate.
Even if all of their arguments were valid.
(And none of these are true.)
Why would I care enough about 5% to let that pick my OS?

Re:Nevers run anything in the background? You what

[Actually, I do RTFA]

For example, XP will defrag your disk without you asking it to as soon as you're marginally idle

XP will not. OS X will. In fact, OS X will defrag your thumb drive without your permission. It was bad enough that it was wearing my disk for no benefit, but it also made my thumb drive remarkably non-resiliant to power outages.

Re:Nevers run anything in the background? You what

[Hal_Porter]

That's because Mac users are non technical and open their files by name rather than cluster number. If you do that then defragmenting doesn't break anything.

Linus on SSD Vendors and Filesystems

[zealot]

>I'm suspicious of the suggestion that a log-based
>filesystem will cure all the ills of the limited flash-
>controller based wear leveling.

Yeah. Total bull.

Anybody who thinks the filesystem can do really well has
bought into the crud from most existing vendors about how
you have to use those things differently. If you really
do believe that, you shouldn't touch an SSD with a ten-foot
pole.

If the flash vendor talks about "limits" in the wear
levelling, and how you have to write certain ways, just
start running away. Don't walk. Run away as fast as you
can.

>A question keeps coming up in my mind about what happens
>when you split an SSD into multiple partitions, and what
>*you want to happen*. I use separate partitions for root,
>boot, and var, because I tend to make root and boot
>read-only.

Again, if your SSD vendor says "align to 64kB boundaries"
or anything like that, you really should tell them to go
away, and you should do what Val said - just get a real
disk instead. Let them peddle their crap to people who are
stupider than you, but don't buy their SSD.

So what you want to happen if you split an SSD into multiple
partitions is exactly nothing. It shouldn't matter
one whit. If it does, the SSD is not worth buying. If it is
so sensitive to access patterns that you can't reasonably
write your data where you want to, just say "No, thank you".

Anyway, I have a good SSD now, so I can actually
give some data:
- Most flash-based SSD's currently suck.

I don't have these ones myself, but last week we had the
yearly kernel summit here in Portland, and a flash
company that shall remain nameless (but is one of the
absolute biggest and most recognizable names in flash)
was selling their snake-oil about how you need to write
in certain patterns.

So I called them on it, and called them idiots. Probably
one reason why I didn't get one of the drives they were
handing out, but one of the people who did get a drive
was the Linux block system maintainer. So he ran some
benchmarks.

Those things suck. You will never get any decent
performance of anything but a very specialized filesystem
out of them, unless you use them as essentially read-only
devices.

For a basic 4kB blocksize random write test, the SSD got
around 10 IOps. That's ten, as in "How many fingers do
you have?" or as in "That's really pathetic". It means
that you cannot actually use it as a disk at all, and
you need some special filesystem to make it worthwhile,
and certainly means that wear levelling is probably not
working right.

(For the math-challenged, 10 IOps at a 4kB blocksize
means 40kB/s throughput and 100ms+ latencies for those
things. It also means that even if some operations are
fast, you can never trust the drive)

- In contrast, the Intel SSD's are performing exactly as
advertised.

I did get one of these, with warnings about how
if I want to get low-power operation etc I need to make
sure that disk-initiated power management is enabled etc.

Whatever. The important thing is that the Intel SSD does
not care one whit where you write stuff, or how you do
it. With the same 4kB random write b