I was reading about solid state drives and their benefits, such as a
essentially zero seek time. Seems to be very useful for
databases. However, SATA format solid state drives are priced very
high.

What about use of flash thumb drives for storing a database?

Has anyone tried it?

One issue of flash memory, which is that it can only take so many
writes, is resolved by hardware by periodically relocating sectors.

I believe that the thumb drives advertised to be ReadyBoost ready for
Vista (to be used as swap by Vista) do support that sector shuffling,
so they could take a database as well.

Most of my queries involve either single record selects or updates, or
some moderately expensive joins.

My database is about 1 GB in size right now.

The obvious benefit would be zero seek time and just a quicker
turnaround.

Anyone tried using flash thumbdrives for mysql?

i

On Thu, 03 Apr 2008 09:49:37 -0500, Ignoramus18496 wrote:
> I was reading about solid state drives and their benefits, such as a
> essentially zero seek time. Seems to be very useful for
> databases. However, SATA format solid state drives are priced very
> high.
>
> What about use of flash thumb drives for storing a database?
>
> Has anyone tried it?
>
> One issue of flash memory, which is that it can only take so many
> writes, is resolved by hardware by periodically relocating sectors.
>
> I believe that the thumb drives advertised to be ReadyBoost ready for
> Vista (to be used as swap by Vista) do support that sector shuffling,
> so they could take a database as well.
>
> Most of my queries involve either single record selects or updates, or
> some moderately expensive joins.
>
> My database is about 1 GB in size right now.
>
> The obvious benefit would be zero seek time and just a quicker
> turnaround.
>
> Anyone tried using flash thumbdrives for mysql?

How much writing are you doing in a burst? Unless it's bigger than your
write cache, you may gain more just making sure the write cache is
turned on, and doing some hardware-based striping if that's not enough.
Mostly I see flash drives doing about 18-20 MB per second in sustained
bursts and even ATA-133 drives can generally manage at least that, if
not twice that in over-cache-size writes. You might pick up a little in
letency on tiny reads, though, if you're doing lots and lots of random
ones in a row.

--
They got rid of it because they judged it more trouble than it was worth.
(And considering they'd gone to great lengths to minimize its worth,
I suppose they were right.)
-- J. D. Baldwin

"Ignoramus18496" <ignoramus18496@NOSPAM.18496.invalid> wrote in
message news:joidnRsRE6scc2nanZ2dnUVZ_vXinZ2d@giganews.com ...
>I was reading about solid state drives and their benefits, such as a
> essentially zero seek time. Seems to be very useful for
> databases. However, SATA format solid state drives are priced very
> high.
>
> What about use of flash thumb drives for storing a database?
>
> Has anyone tried it?
>
> One issue of flash memory, which is that it can only take so many
> writes, is resolved by hardware by periodically relocating sectors.
>
> I believe that the thumb drives advertised to be ReadyBoost ready
> for
> Vista (to be used as swap by Vista) do support that sector
> shuffling,
> so they could take a database as well.
>
> Most of my queries involve either single record selects or updates,
> or
> some moderately expensive joins.
>
> My database is about 1 GB in size right now.
>
> The obvious benefit would be zero seek time and just a quicker
> turnaround.
>
> Anyone tried using flash thumbdrives for mysql?
>
> i

I would not do it. Better to increase memory so the tables will be in
there.
Write times for flash mem are bad.

But why not try?
Get a compact flash card, they are cheap these days. Connect them with
adapter to IDE.
I think that is still faster than the USB drives, if you get a speedy
CF card.

I have been using Compact Flash as main "disk" in a laptop and
installed Win2000.
Its been running fine for almost 2 years now.

Richard.

On 2008-04-03, Richard <root@localhost> wrote:
>
> "Ignoramus18496" <ignoramus18496@NOSPAM.18496.invalid> wrote in
> message news:joidnRsRE6scc2nanZ2dnUVZ_vXinZ2d@giganews.com ...
>>I was reading about solid state drives and their benefits, such as a
>> essentially zero seek time. Seems to be very useful for
>> databases. However, SATA format solid state drives are priced very
>> high.
>>
>> What about use of flash thumb drives for storing a database?
>>
>> Has anyone tried it?
>>
>> One issue of flash memory, which is that it can only take so many
>> writes, is resolved by hardware by periodically relocating sectors.
>>
>> I believe that the thumb drives advertised to be ReadyBoost ready
>> for
>> Vista (to be used as swap by Vista) do support that sector
>> shuffling,
>> so they could take a database as well.
>>
>> Most of my queries involve either single record selects or updates,
>> or
>> some moderately expensive joins.
>>
>> My database is about 1 GB in size right now.
>>
>> The obvious benefit would be zero seek time and just a quicker
>> turnaround.
>>
>> Anyone tried using flash thumbdrives for mysql?
>>
>> i
>
> I would not do it. Better to increase memory so the tables will be
> in there. Write times for flash mem are bad.
>
> But why not try? Get a compact flash card, they are cheap these
> days. Connect them with adapter to IDE. I think that is still
> faster than the USB drives, if you get a speedy CF card.
>
> I have been using Compact Flash as main "disk" in a laptop and
> installed Win2000. Its been running fine for almost 2 years now.

I started really looking at this stuff. There are CF to IDE adaptors
that are not too expensive. The most obvious use for one, would be to
replace the hard drive in my 6yo kid's laptop, as soon as it breaks.

Secondly, you are kind of right about RAM. My soon to be placed in
service server, has 16 GB of RAM and can probably hold the entire
database in memory easily as it gets cached. However, response times
would still be better with flash disk, if Linux un-caches some areas
of the database.

Thirdly, I do not care about write times, as I rarely do sustained
writes, and Linux buffers writes anyway (which I like a lot after a
bad Windows experience).

I am a conservative person and want stuff to never break. So I have
not, yet, decided, but it is interesting to experiment with.

i

On 2008-04-03, Peter H. Coffin <hellsop@ninehells.com> wrote:
> On Thu, 03 Apr 2008 09:49:37 -0500, Ignoramus18496 wrote:
>> I was reading about solid state drives and their benefits, such as a
>> essentially zero seek time. Seems to be very useful for
>> databases. However, SATA format solid state drives are priced very
>> high.
>>
>> What about use of flash thumb drives for storing a database?
>>
>> Has anyone tried it?
>>
>> One issue of flash memory, which is that it can only take so many
>> writes, is resolved by hardware by periodically relocating sectors.
>>
>> I believe that the thumb drives advertised to be ReadyBoost ready for
>> Vista (to be used as swap by Vista) do support that sector shuffling,
>> so they could take a database as well.
>>
>> Most of my queries involve either single record selects or updates, or
>> some moderately expensive joins.
>>
>> My database is about 1 GB in size right now.
>>
>> The obvious benefit would be zero seek time and just a quicker
>> turnaround.
>>
>> Anyone tried using flash thumbdrives for mysql?
>
> How much writing are you doing in a burst?

Very little, it is a webserver. here, content element there,
etc.

> Unless it's bigger than your write cache, you may gain more just
> making sure the write cache is turned on, and doing some
> hardware-based striping if that's not enough.

I thought that Linux always does write cache???

> Mostly I see flash drives doing about 18-20 MB per second in
> sustained bursts and even ATA-133 drives can generally manage at
> least that, if not twice that in over-cache-size writes. You might
> pick up a little in letency on tiny reads, though, if you're doing
> lots and lots of random ones in a row.

I thought it would really with joins...

i

On Thu, 03 Apr 2008 12:51:28 -0500, Ignoramus18496 wrote:
> On 2008-04-03, Peter H. Coffin <hellsop@ninehells.com> wrote:
>> Unless it's bigger than your write cache, you may gain more just
>> making sure the write cache is turned on, and doing some
>> hardware-based striping if that's not enough.
>
> I thought that Linux always does write cache???

Beats me. I'm an OpenBSD guy at home, and that doesn't turn on ANY drive
features by default, nor does it turn on OS write caches by default
either. You want it, you have to go look for it in the docs. That said,
smartctl and softdeps go a long long way to making stuff work nicely.

>> Mostly I see flash drives doing about 18-20 MB per second in
>> sustained bursts and even ATA-133 drives can generally manage at
>> least that, if not twice that in over-cache-size writes. You might
>> pick up a little in letency on tiny reads, though, if you're doing
>> lots and lots of random ones in a row.
>
> I thought it would really with joins...

Most of the work of JOIN is does in RAM anyway, especially after you've
done it once already since the database started up.

--
This was, apparently, beyond her ken. So far beyond her ken that she was
well into barbie territory.
-- J. D. Baldwin

"Ignoramus18496" <ignoramus18496@NOSPAM.18496.invalid> wrote in
message news:i9udnWBvpq1DhWjanZ2dnUVZ_rmjnZ2d@giganews.com ...
> On 2008-04-03, Richard <root@localhost> wrote:
>>
>> "Ignoramus18496" <ignoramus18496@NOSPAM.18496.invalid> wrote in
>> message news:joidnRsRE6scc2nanZ2dnUVZ_vXinZ2d@giganews.com ...
>>>I was reading about solid state drives and their benefits, such as
>>>a
>>> essentially zero seek time. Seems to be very useful for
>>> databases. However, SATA format solid state drives are priced very
>>> high.
>>>
>>> What about use of flash thumb drives for storing a database?
>>>
>>> Has anyone tried it?
>>>
>>> One issue of flash memory, which is that it can only take so many
>>> writes, is resolved by hardware by periodically relocating
>>> sectors.
>>>
>>> I believe that the thumb drives advertised to be ReadyBoost ready
>>> for
>>> Vista (to be used as swap by Vista) do support that sector
>>> shuffling,
>>> so they could take a database as well.
>>>
>>> Most of my queries involve either single record selects or
>>> updates,
>>> or
>>> some moderately expensive joins.
>>>
>>> My database is about 1 GB in size right now.
>>>
>>> The obvious benefit would be zero seek time and just a quicker
>>> turnaround.
>>>
>>> Anyone tried using flash thumbdrives for mysql?
>>>
>>> i
>>
>> I would not do it. Better to increase memory so the tables will be
>> in there. Write times for flash mem are bad.
>>
>> But why not try? Get a compact flash card, they are cheap these
>> days. Connect them with adapter to IDE. I think that is still
>> faster than the USB drives, if you get a speedy CF card.
>>
>> I have been using Compact Flash as main "disk" in a laptop and
>> installed Win2000. Its been running fine for almost 2 years now.
>
> I started really looking at this stuff. There are CF to IDE adaptors
> that are not too expensive. The most obvious use for one, would be
> to
> replace the hard drive in my 6yo kid's laptop, as soon as it breaks.
>
> Secondly, you are kind of right about RAM. My soon to be placed in
> service server, has 16 GB of RAM and can probably hold the entire
> database in memory easily as it gets cached. However, response times
> would still be better with flash disk, if Linux un-caches some areas
> of the database.
>
> Thirdly, I do not care about write times, as I rarely do sustained
> writes, and Linux buffers writes anyway (which I like a lot after a
> bad Windows experience).
>
> I am a conservative person and want stuff to never break. So I have
> not, yet, decided, but it is interesting to experiment with.
>
> i

LOL!
Set up a Compact Flash RAID?

R.