winUAE and ssd disk maybe a stupid question

[White]

Probably stupid question
I use an ssd 860evo from 500gb sata III where windows 10 is only hosted.
So I have 400GB free available.
The rest of the apps are all about classic 7200rpm hard drives
My question is this (I looked at the documentation) for RAW partitions and I read the settings to use.



If I dedicate a x76 partition on the ssd disk, do I somehow shorten the hard disk life due to the continuous readings and writes made by winuae for the 30gb partition I intend to use?



Or by now the ssd disks are reliable from this point of view?

Thank you for any advice and suggestions.

[Toni Wilen]

I wouldn't recommend using partitions because direct drive access bypasses all Windows caches. It probably won't make much difference with SSD but it most likely is noticeably still slower than a HDF. (and you also need to run winuae as admin every time to access the drive, moving them around or taking/restoring a backup is also more annoying and so on..)

You won't harm any modern (and non-crappy) SSD unless you write tens/hundreds of gigabytes every day, continuously for a few years.

[White]

Toni, thanks for the reply,
now I have the clearest ideas
of course i will try to see if the performance increases at least as the response time of the ssd using x76
Actually today I tried to move everything to .hdf and the performances seem identical to a 7200rpm hard-disk, in fact in some cases they seem better.

Only problem that I still haven't been able to solve and I don't understand why, but this is a problem apart from RunInUae it doesn't seem to work if you use a .hdf
Obviously the problem is not with winuae

[White]

solved RunInUae
the problem was in the filesystem of the E-UAE configuration
it was enough to correct a line
now also works with .hdf :-)

[White]

Toni,
Thank you very much, for the latest version you released.
and for all the useful advice, and your availability.
Thanks again!

[White]

I tried the performance of the SSD with 4.1
i am always curious i like to experiment.
In the end nothing special slightly increase the copy of the files
You can open for example without much effort such as RunInUae and simultaneously a video player almost instantly.
But then the bottleneck still has to take into account the emulation that remains almost the same.
So 4.1 "multitasking" has no advantage.
I wasn't expecting big things, so it's not worth it right now.
The benefits are minimal in terms of SSD disk performance.
Well I tried this was the test I wanted to do.
However I'm happy with how winuae now works with 4.1

The test was performed with a RAW partition with hidden X76
and initialized directly via hdtoolbox.

Once the partition is restored to its original size
sfc / scannow confirmed the integrity of the system files.

[White]

Separate note
the test was to work with multiple windows open simultaneously and therefore reduce waiting times with multiple open applications.
But I guess this can't be done (I guess)
It would be almost perfect for me to achieve this.
I didn't try ztools, I was told they would be good for managing process priority.
I will try to do some tests but I don't think you can get good results in emulation with 4.1

[hexaae]

Use hard disk files. They are safer, more practical (move, copy...), blazingly fast. Don't worry they are MUCH faster under WinUAE than hdf files under VirtualBox, if you're afraid of speed/performances you've nothing to worry about.

[White]

@hexaae

Thanks for the advice, undoubtedly the emulation of 4.1 and less used of 3.xx
I was actually trying to figure out if it was worth it.
For example I have seen that with these parameters on a real hd the speed increases a lot
SFS / 02 (53465302)
7FFFFFFF
FFFFFFFE
block size 512
buffer 5000 and above.
The problem is, I don't have a clue what I'm doing even if it works.
I don't understand the values ??listed above I found them here:
http://wiki.amiga.org/index.php?title=SmartFileSystem

Also I would like to understand if it is better to create single partitions for example HD0 = Workbench <--- single independent partition (real hd)
e.g. HD1 = Work <--- single independent partition (real hd)

Or if nothing changes in terms of performance and then create one individually and then divide them as is normally done.

I have no problem creating raw partitions and making them x76 hide for working on them
moreover acronis true image supports the backup of these partitions without problems in case of recovery including windows 10 all done individually.

Any advice and welcome, thank you!

[hexaae]

If you have SSD on Windows don't worry and use HDF, not real partitions.
Get SFS or PFS3 All-In-One (maintained by Toni himself), create the HDF in the bottom part of this panel (New hard disk image file):



set WinUAE like in the picture above to be able to boot, then format partitions from within WB with proper PFS3 or SFS tools in case (...)

[White]

I did various tests with the SSD with X76 filesystem,
unfortunately it seems that the performance is lower than an .hdf on SSD
While the 7200 rpm disk is faster when used directly with X76 filesystem partitions.

Too bad I thought that with the SSD it was faster.

[hexaae]

...Many understimate the importance of random read/write access and think it's more important sequential read/write with Crystal Diskmark... Remember always to buy SSD with good random read/write <--- more important!

[White]

Thanks for the advice, samsung 860 evo v-nand seems like a good 500 gb ssd (I think) with sata III