SSD Performance Tests

We’ve been surprised that our very expensive Samsung SSD’s buyed some years ago for more CHF 800-1000 per 256GB of size (1+2) is not as fast as any other traditional Harddisk. Compared to actual newer ones from Samsung 470 series, I’m sure we were the ones that buyed for the technology research department of Samsung by buying the SSD’s for many bucks during their development.
By taking a look onto the newest model’s performance, it could be that the research was successful and the SSD’s we buy now are really performant ones.

(1) VBM2, Samsung 256GB, unknown model, black cover
(2) VBM1, Samsung 256GB, unknown model, silver cover
(3) AXM0, Samsung 470 SSD 128GB, shipped by Dell
(4) AXM0, Samsung 470 SSD 256GB, ordered in Switzerland
(5) 1.2, Corsair 128GB with Sandforce-2 Controller (uses compression)
(6) 391A, Patriot Wildfire 256GB black
(7) OCZ Vertex 2 128GB

Disk-ID	1	2	3	4
Seq-Read	156.56 MB/s	154.17 MB/s	243.48 MB/s	244.34 MB/s
Seq-Write	7.83 MB/s	151.14 MB/s	193.47 MB/s	235.91 MB/s
4K-Read	12.25 MB/s	12.27 MB/s	12.17 MB/s	13.29 MB/s
4K-Write	2.71 MB/s	5.82 MB/s	29.29 MB/s	42.89 MB/s
4K-64-Read	14.79 MB/s	15.95 MB/s	103.62 MB/s	106.99 MB/s
4K-64-Write	3.29 MB/s	4.98 MB/s	44.10 MB/s	47.56 MB/s
Acc.Time Read	0.47 ms	0.50 ms	0.28 ms	0.24 ms
Acc. Time Write	0.77 ms	0.61 ms	0.12 ms	0.11 ms
Score Read	43	44	140	145
Score Write	7	26	93	114
Total Score	70	97	307	337

Disk-ID	5	6	7
Seq-Read	194.71 MB/s	465.45 MB/s	200.87 MB/s
Seq-Write	79.17 MB/s	156.18 MB/s	82.94 MB/s
4K-Read	13.38 MB/s	10.10 MB/s	13.80 MB/s
4K-Write	10.07 MB/s	7.84 MB/s	24.16 MB/s
4K-64-Read	58.78 MB/s	111.76 MB/s	128.32 MB/s
4K-64-Write	38.69 MB/s	66.07 MB/s	75.99 MB/s
Acc.Time Read	0.19 ms	0.37 ms	0.24 ms
Acc. Time Write	0.36 ms	0.47 ms	0.33 ms
Score Read	92	168	162
Score Write	57	90	108
Total Score	195	332	353

Tests 1-6 made with a internal SATA Controller of Dell’s E6320 Notebook, AHCI enabled. For Test 7 I don’t have futher information about the controller and the configuration.

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My favorite Firefox and Thunderbird addons

What I really use in a daily frequency are the following Addons for Firefox:

– DownThemAll!
– LastPass
– PushBullet
– uBlock
– Video DownloadHelper
– Xmarks
– Zotero

Thunderbird addons:

– Addressbooks Synchronizer
– AttachmentExtractor
– Dropbox for Filelink
– Enigmail (for GPG signature/encryption)
– ImportExportTools
– LookOut

Last Updated 2-Jun 2016

SATA Native Command Queuing

Create Icons on your Linux Desktop

On Windows, you can right click on your Desktop to select New->Shortcut. On Linux, it isn’t as easy like this.

To be faster, I recommend to open a shell without root privileges. As an example, we’re goint to create a Desktop File that opens a Remote Desktop Session to “server2” using the “rdesktop” executable. To do so, we create a file, set it as executable and open it in gedit with the following commands:

• cd /home/username/Desktop
• touch server2.desktop
• chmod +x server2.desktop

A new Windows appears, where we now can insert the following text template:

—insert-from-here—
[Desktop Entry]
Type=Application
Version=1.0
Icon=/home/username/Icons/rdp.ico
TryExec=rdesktop
Terminal=false
StartupNotify=false
NoDisplay=true
Name=server2 (RDP)
Exec=rdesktop -g 1280×900 servername
Comment=Start Remote Desktop Session
—stop-insert—

Save the file and check out the new Icon on your Desktop. The Icon file defined in Line 4 can be created by searching for any Icon on Google Images and covert it using the following online Tool:

http://converticon.com/

Icon created !

Useful Linux Commands and Tools (Ubuntu)

These are just some notes on commands and hints I’ve found using Google during my Linux installation and daily tasks. Some of them are related to my Linux Mint Distribution, but should also work on others.

Helpful Commands

aptitude resp. apt-get
To search for a software bundle:
$> apt-cache search
To install a software bundle from the search above:
$> apt-get install

Install downloaded .deb or .pkg files

$> sudo dpkg -i software.deb

$> sudo aptitude install software.deb

$> sudo rpm -i software.rpm

Drivers
A lot of drivers are only available as i386 (32-bit) Installation Packages. If you have luck, the Vendors  made a Linux driver for their Device, but normally this is not the case. If you find one, the next problem could be that it is a 32-bit driver, that can only be used on 32-bit systems (I wasn’t able to install a 32-bit one on my 64-bit system).

Tools

Disktrim – A Disk Trimming Program
http://disktrim.sourceforge.net/  

Good Settings

/etc/fstab file
-> add the “discard” option to a filesystem to enable SSD Trim function
-> use “sudo blkid” to get a filesystem’s UUID
Information to fstab:  https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Fstab
Information to SSD’s: http://www.howtogeek.com/(…)

VMware Workstation with Linux Mint Kernel 3.0.0

Since Christmas 2011 I’m trining to work on Linux Mint at home. It was clear that it isn’t possible living without any Windows Operation system installed, so I’ve decided to use Windows 7 in a virtual Machine. In VMware Workstation there’s a very useful feature called “Unity”, that makes all Windows Applications seamless available in the host operation system. That’s what I need to have the best feeling in the daily business.

After installing VMware Workstation, the first start already stopped with a error message, that I had to search in /tmp/vmware-root/setup-xxxx.log. At the end of the Logfile was a message like “Failed to compile module vmmon!”.

Google told me this is a known error under different Kernel Versions. In my case, I’m using this version:

# uname -a
Linux laptop7 3.0.0-12-generic #20-Ubuntu SMP Fri Oct 7 14:56:25 UTC 2011 x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux

In VMware’s communities was a post explaining how to Patch my problem:
http://communities.vmware.com/thread/326180

Here’s how to in quick steps:

• mkdir /tmp/vmware && cd /tmp/vmware
• cp -R /usr/lib/vmware/modules/source/ .
• cd /tmp/vmware/source
• wget http://weltall.heliohost.org/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2011/05/vmware2.6.39fixed.patch
• if the link above does not work, an alternative is to wget http://kaslit.com/downloads/vmware2.6.39fixed.patch
• for i in ./*.tar; do tar -xf $i; done
• for i in ./*.tar; do mv $i $i.orginal; done
• patch –batch –force -p1 < vmware2.6.39fixed.patch
• tar cf vmblock.tar vmblock-only
• tar cf vmci.tar vmci-only
• tar cf vmmon.tar vmmon-only
• tar cf vmnet.tar vmnet-only
• tar cf vsock.tar vsock-only
• cp -vf *.tar /usr/lib/vmware/modules/source/

After this steps, the VMware modules can be compiled into the Kernel using the following command or by starting VMware Workstation again.

• vmware-modconfig –console –install-all