Index  | Recent Threads  | Unanswered Threads  | Who's Active  | Guidelines  | Search
 

Quick Go »
No member browsing this thread
Thread Status: Active
Total posts in this thread: 81
Posts: 81   Pages: 9   [ 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 | Next Page ]
[ Jump to Last Post ]
Post new Thread
Author
Previous Thread This topic has been viewed 56372 times and has 80 replies Next Thread
Dayle Diamond
Senior Cruncher
Joined: Jan 31, 2013
Post Count: 440
Status: Offline
Project Badges:
Reply to this Post  Reply with Quote 
sad One terabyte written to my SSD since the stress test began

Ever since BETA we've been reporting extremely high hard drive usage on this project, as it does not obey BOINC limits. It writes every time it finishes a calculation, and as each work unit contains several dozen calculations, and it finishes them incredibly quickly, we're talking about a file that can save itself several times a second.

Early in the stress test, I opened my Samsung Magician software on my relatively new 860 EVO 2TB SSD to track writes.
I started with just under half the drive used for file storage and 6.6 TB already written. Then I left my computer alone, to not taint the measurements or lower its performance.
As of the morning of April 29th, I've reached 7.6 TB.

This is on Windows 10 with a 1070 Ti running a single task at once.
A three generation old card, and not the strongest one at that, was able to use this project to generate more writes than the size of every other file on the system put together over two and a half days.

At this rate we can void my warrenty (5 years or 1200 TB) before it would otherwise expire, especially when I start using my computer for personal use again on top of BOINC.

At least my storage is new, and at least half of it is empty. And at least I knew to look.
While I'd happily set my SSD on fire if it meant rapidly advancing COVID research, I'm sure there are contributors out there whose SSDs will expire earlier than anticipated, and out of warrenty, without their consent. Remember, plenty of top contributors aren't on the forums at all, and last they checked, World Community Grid had no adverse impact on their devices. That's changed.

Nobody should be told that to avoid a temporary WCG bug, they should buy a different hard drive or run their desktop off a new stack of RAM until the application is updated.

I know lowering the writes is on the WCG "to do" list.
Can we get it moved somewhere closer to the top?
[Apr 29, 2021 2:32:28 PM]   Link   Report threatening or abusive post: please login first  Go to top 
squid
Advanced Cruncher
Germany
Joined: May 15, 2020
Post Count: 56
Status: Offline
Project Badges:
Reply to this Post  Reply with Quote 
Re: One terabyte written to my SSD since the stress test began

I use a 4 GB SoftPerfect RAM Disk with an image file for the BOINC data directory.
[Apr 29, 2021 2:51:03 PM]   Link   Report threatening or abusive post: please login first  Go to top 
spRocket
Senior Cruncher
Joined: Mar 25, 2020
Post Count: 234
Status: Offline
Project Badges:
Reply to this Post  Reply with Quote 
Re: One terabyte written to my SSD since the stress test began

I've worried about SSD writes for a while, to the point of putting my (Linux) /var/lib/boinc-client on an old-school hard drive. Using ZFS's zpool iostat function with a ten-second interval, I'm seeing anything from 3-15 MB/second of writes edit: aggregate over two mirrored drives, so each drive gets half that with two GPU tasks running. Definitely not SSD-friendly unless you have some truly stout SSDs.
----------------------------------------
[Edit 1 times, last edit by spRocket at Apr 30, 2021 8:39:12 AM]
[Apr 29, 2021 3:07:06 PM]   Link   Report threatening or abusive post: please login first  Go to top 
Grumpy Swede
Master Cruncher
Svíþjóð
Joined: Apr 10, 2020
Post Count: 1868
Status: Offline
Project Badges:
Reply to this Post  Reply with Quote 
Re: One terabyte written to my SSD since the stress test began

Yes, not good for SSD's. I have my Boinc installed on a HD, and 3 GPU tasks running on my GTX980, +1 on the iGPU. up to 20 MB/seconds written to the disk. No CPU tasks running at all.

So, no way I'd install BOINC on an SSD, if I want to run WCG GPU tasks.
----------------------------------------

[Apr 29, 2021 3:33:51 PM]   Link   Report threatening or abusive post: please login first  Go to top 
Andyman
Cruncher
Joined: Apr 9, 2021
Post Count: 17
Status: Offline
Project Badges:
Reply to this Post  Reply with Quote 
Re: One terabyte written to my SSD since the stress test began

Thanks for posting, did not think about that!
I moved the data directory to an old 256GB SSD i use for temp stuff sometimes. I dont care if it dies as long as my main SSD is ok..
[Apr 29, 2021 5:22:35 PM]   Link   Report threatening or abusive post: please login first  Go to top 
Byteball_6393265
Cruncher
Joined: May 9, 2007
Post Count: 6
Status: Offline
Project Badges:
Reply to this Post  Reply with Quote 
Re: One terabyte written to my SSD since the stress test began

Thanks for sharing!
I am currently running a 1660S with 2-3 tasks concurrently* & it has used up close to 600GB writes on my 256gb SSD in the past 24 hours.
Will move the data directory elsewhere.

*Together with 8 CPU tasks running concurrently.
----------------------------------------
[Edit 2 times, last edit by Byteball_6393265 at Apr 30, 2021 3:22:02 AM]
[Apr 30, 2021 2:17:58 AM]   Link   Report threatening or abusive post: please login first  Go to top 
spRocket
Senior Cruncher
Joined: Mar 25, 2020
Post Count: 234
Status: Offline
Project Badges:
Reply to this Post  Reply with Quote 
Re: One terabyte written to my SSD since the stress test began

A bit of a correction on my write rate: I was misreading the output - cut those numbers in half, since what I was quoting was the aggregate rate over mirrored drives. Also note that besides the two GPU tasks, there were fourteen CPU tasks running.

Still, that's 1.5 - 7.5 MB/s, continuously. That will add up.
[Apr 30, 2021 2:34:28 AM]   Link   Report threatening or abusive post: please login first  Go to top 
Byteball_6393265
Cruncher
Joined: May 9, 2007
Post Count: 6
Status: Offline
Project Badges:
Reply to this Post  Reply with Quote 
Re: One terabyte written to my SSD since the stress test began

For reference, with 3 GPU tasks & 8 CPU tasks running concurrently, I was getting just slightly more than 20mb/s most of the time with the occasional dips.
[Apr 30, 2021 3:21:24 AM]   Link   Report threatening or abusive post: please login first  Go to top 
TripleTrouble
Cruncher
Joined: Nov 19, 2004
Post Count: 3
Status: Offline
Project Badges:
Reply to this Post  Reply with Quote 
smile Re: One terabyte written to my SSD since the stress test began

For those running windows 10 and frustrated with this... I have been able to successfully migrate my Data Directory to an old spinning Disk...

Try the following at your own risk...

1. Exit BONIC - and make sure it is not running in the system tray.
2. Edit the registry:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Space Sciences Laboratory, U.C. Berkeley\BOINC Setup\DATADIR
--Change the Data value to the path you WANT to move your data to i.e. E:\BONIC\

3. LAUNCH Bonic - it will error out, but in the process will build out the E:\BONIC folder, which must have some special permissions, as if you manually create it, it won't use it...
4. EXIT Bonic and again make sure it is not in the system tray
5. Browse to C:\Programdata\BONIC and copy all files and folders to your target directory. ie. (E:\BONIC) and overwrite the files in that location!
Note: c:\programdata is hidden, just copy/paste the folder path or just type it in... you'll get there...
6. Re-Launch Bonic - it will take a minute to read the data as it is SLOWER than your SSD...
7. Open Task manager and select the performance tab and validate you now see your HDD get busy...

My NVME is only about a 18 months old, but as per Magician, I have already hit 87TB of writes... so this had to be figured out...

Hope this helps at least one SSD owner make it through the pandemic.
----------------------------------------

[Apr 30, 2021 4:39:36 AM]   Link   Report threatening or abusive post: please login first  Go to top 
Grumpy Swede
Master Cruncher
Svíþjóð
Joined: Apr 10, 2020
Post Count: 1868
Status: Offline
Project Badges:
Reply to this Post  Reply with Quote 
Re: One terabyte written to my SSD since the stress test began

Edit your post please. You're writing BONIC all over the text instead of BOINC
----------------------------------------

[Apr 30, 2021 5:05:50 AM]   Link   Report threatening or abusive post: please login first  Go to top 
Posts: 81   Pages: 9   [ 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 | Next Page ]
[ Jump to Last Post ]
Post new Thread