Maximum PC

First i will ask the question, then i will explain why I am asking.

For the purpose of folding, does it matter how fast the RPM's (5400 vs 7200) of the hard drive are?

The reason i am asking is all my computers need to server as a folding machine and as servers. I found that a server OS and folding dont get along, so I came up with a new plan. All my computer build will be using the Antec 200 case. It has a hot swappable 2.5" HDD bay, so that I can swap drives. I can get a 5400 RPM drive for $39.00 to use for folding, then I can also get a 7200 RPM drive for $49.00 for server OS. All i would need to do is swap out the drive when I need the server functions. If RPM speeds dont matter, then I can save 10 bucks on a drive, if it does matter then i will just by the higher RPM drive.

Short answer is not in the slightest. It is also not recommended to use a solid state drive as they can age prematurely.

Awesome, thanks for the info.

Technically speaking the answer would be yes.

Each read and write of the folding data is on the HDD, the speed of the platter's rotation
has a direct effect on the reads and writes. If your checkpoints are set to 5 minutes the difference between
a 5400 and 7200 rpm drive would be more apparent than if your checkpoints were set to 30 minutes.

Even though, I don't think it would have a noticeable impact in daily ppd. If you were to monitor for
a month, I think you would see a difference, all other things being equal. How much of a difference?
I don't know.

Read times, somewhat. The question which I would then ask is: How often does the client actually read from the drive?
Write times however would be true *IF* the folding client is writing data that is larger than the buffer on the HDD. Now this is pure speculation on my part, but I suspect that the periodic save points aren't going to be bigger than the buffer, in any but maybe some of the -bigadv projects.

It would also depend on which way the wind was blowing.

Over a month yes you probably could notice. Unless its a dedicated folding rig there would be so many other variables that I dont think you could tell. How many points do you think it would change if you had to guess? 1-200 over a month? To me thats negligible.

Don't forget sun spots, electrical disturbance, phases of the moon, tides, gravitational pull and all "that kind of stuff" might have more of an effect.

Our winds come from the south bringing a lot of moisture from the Gulf of Mexico, would that have an effect?

Upon looking at the 2 drives closer it is best to go with the 7200 RPM drive. For $10.00 more you get 250 GB vs 160 GB, 16 MB cashe vs 8 MB cashe and 7200 RPM vs 5400 RPM. I think it would be short sighted to not just spring for the better drive.

Well I would say 90gb for 10$ is prob a good deal haha.

I'd say that's correct. There are two files associated with the checkpoint in your subfolder called "work,"

wudata_xx.ckp and wudata_xx.cpt (where "xx" is the queue number of the work unit)

The first file appears to list other files related to that WU, the second contains the checkpoint data. For the p 6900 bigadv I'm running now, the .ckp file is only 73KB, while the .cpt file is just over 25MB.

This has not been my same experience... Which server OS and which FAH client aren't getting along?

Windows server 2k8 and the gpu2 client (I think).





Ted

Wow, good memory you you got there Ted.

It was the 64-Bit version of Server 2k8 (not R2) and GPU2 console client. At the time I was trying to do this with a GeForce 8500 GT. But even if i could get the computers set up properly, it might just be best to keep the folding separate from the server stuff. That is shy I decided to use a hot swap bay. One drive set up with Windows 7 and the other with 2k8. Just swap as needed.

Confirmed with one dead SSD in Nov.