Re: Seagate DockStar and power consumption

[Warner Losh <imp%bsdimp.com@localhost>]

On Jun 10, 2011, at 1:48 PM, John Klos wrote:

>>> Under heavy I/O to the TDK branded 32 gig USB stick, the device lags
>>> pretty badly. Seems worse than just I/O performance on the USB stick,
>>> but I could be wrong.
>> 
>> I think you're right. Booting in Linux, I see it to be snappier. When 
>> there's heavy I/O, it just becomes very very slow, much slower than 
>> expected. More, I've been also installing a complete NetBSD system on an 
>> external 5400rpm drive, and it's also VERY slow there.
> 
> I don't know about why a regular hard drive would be slower, but I know that 
> WAPBL on flash devices seems not only slower but wears them out much more 
> quickly due to writes in the same places over and over. I went through four 
> 16 gig CF cards in a little more than a year before realizing and switching 
> to softdep. Since then, I've been on the same card for more than a year now 
> (same system, same brand of card, same uses, but softdep instead of WAPBL). 
> It might be worth a try.

It is worth pointing out that "same brand of card" is approximately 
meaningless.  Up until a few years ago I oversaw the company I worked for's  CF 
cards.  Every new shipment had new geometry, ID strings, performance, etc even 
when it had identical labels on the outside...

I don't doubt that soft updates help, but I'm not sure this is a 100% fair 
comparison...

Warner