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2contagious

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Apr 29, 2008
755
0
UK
Hi,

Quick question: Should I format journaled or not journaled for a OWC 120GB SSD drive?

see you,
Chris.
 

2contagious

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Apr 29, 2008
755
0
UK
I chose Mac OS Extended (Journaled). It's how I formatted my HDDs, but what I am asking myself is if this is the best way to format an SSD.
 

johnnymg

macrumors 65816
Nov 16, 2008
1,318
7
I chose Mac OS Extended (Journaled). It's how I formatted my HDDs, but what I am asking myself is if this is the best way to format an SSD.

Check disk utilities............ there should be a tab at the top to enable/disable journaling.

You could then check the write/read speeds of the SSD (xbench, etc.) with journaling enabled and disabled.

FWIW, I formatted my SSD boot drive without journaling. Don't think it's a big deal either way.

cheers
JohnG
 

2contagious

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Apr 29, 2008
755
0
UK
Hi again,

Is it normal that my boot up time (from chime to desktop) takes 25 seconds with my OWC SSD? I saw people getting usually around 15 secs. boot up time. The boot up time with my stock HDD drive was 17 secs. :confused: What's going on..
 

johnnymg

macrumors 65816
Nov 16, 2008
1,318
7
Hi again,

Is it normal that my boot up time (from chime to desktop) takes 25 seconds with my OWC SSD? I saw people getting usually around 15 secs. boot up time. The boot up time with my stock HDD drive was 17 secs. :confused: What's going on..

Go into "System Preferences" and click "Startup Disk". Make sure the OWC SSD is selected as the startup disk.

ciao
JohnG
 

johnnymg

macrumors 65816
Nov 16, 2008
1,318
7
It's definitely the start up disc.. I took the hard drive out for now.

"hard drive" ............. ??? I thought you were using an SSD.

Did you use the factory MP OSX CD for the install? If not, then that could be he problem.

cheers
JohnG
 

Sean Dempsey

macrumors 68000
Aug 7, 2006
1,622
8
SuperDuper the SSD to a differnet drive.

Wipe the SSD, install OS X fresh.

Test the startup.


I have a feeling that cloning a system drive back and forth between drives does something to the optimization.
 

2contagious

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Apr 29, 2008
755
0
UK
"hard drive" ............. ??? I thought you were using an SSD.

Did you use the factory MP OSX CD for the install? If not, then that could be he problem.

cheers
JohnG

Yes, I meant that I took the HDD out and only have the SSD connected at the moment. I used the factory disc to do the fresh install and formatted in 'Mac OS Extended (Journaled)" before doing that.

OWC support says 25 seconds "sounds about right". How come some people are getting 15 second boot times? I do only have 3GB RAM installed at the moment, but RAM shouldn't have that much of an effect on boot time, no?

EDIT: Does this XBENCH score seem right? (my SSD is the red one).

http://db.xbench.com/merge.xhtml?doc1=469914&doc2=1&setCookie=true
 

Sean Dempsey

macrumors 68000
Aug 7, 2006
1,622
8
Yes, I meant that I took the HDD out and only have the SSD connected at the moment. I used the factory disc to do the fresh install and formatted in 'Mac OS Extended (Journaled)" before doing that.

OWC support says 25 seconds "sounds about right". How come some people are getting 15 second boot times? I do only have 3GB RAM installed at the moment, but RAM shouldn't have that much of an effect on boot time, no?

EDIT: Does this XBENCH score seem right? (my SSD is the red one).

http://db.xbench.com/merge.xhtml?doc1=469914&doc2=1&setCookie=true

Check your page ins/page outs.


Journaled formatting doesn't change anything with speed, it just helps the drive not lose data if there's a power outage.

Also - who cares about boot time?
 

johnnymg

macrumors 65816
Nov 16, 2008
1,318
7
Yes, I meant that I took the HDD out and only have the SSD connected at the moment. I used the factory disc to do the fresh install and formatted in 'Mac OS Extended (Journaled)" before doing that.

OWC support says 25 seconds "sounds about right". How come some people are getting 15 second boot times? I do only have 3GB RAM installed at the moment, but RAM shouldn't have that much of an effect on boot time, no?

EDIT: Does this XBENCH score seem right? (my SSD is the red one).

http://db.xbench.com/merge.xhtml?doc1=469914&doc2=1&setCookie=true

The xbench #'s look very good so I wouldn't worry about something being "wrong" with the HW or OS.

As far as your boot time goes.............. ??? In the big picture, does it really matter THAT much? I'd try some of the other standard benchmarks like cinebench and geekbench. If those #'s match the #'s in the following thread then all is well:
http://www.barefeats.com/wst10.html
 

OptimusP83

macrumors newbie
Aug 4, 2010
29
0
Do make sure the drive is selected in the startup panel. the computer could be spending that extra 5-10 seconds searching for boot drives since it can't find the HDD you yanked.
 

bkap16

macrumors member
Jan 11, 2009
81
0
The journal is used in case of recovery after an accidental shutdown or things like that. So I think it's useful even with a SSD...

Yes, it's still useful in the case of an SSD. But there's also a downside- you have a large number of writes to the journal. That will cause the SSD to fail faster. I'd go without journaling for it, and just try not to turn it off in the middle of something important.
 

OptimusP83

macrumors newbie
Aug 4, 2010
29
0
Yes, it's still useful in the case of an SSD. But there's also a downside- you have a large number of writes to the journal. That will cause the SSD to fail faster. I'd go without journaling for it, and just try not to turn it off in the middle of something important.

Technically you're right, but numerous tests have shown failure rates of SSD cells to be at the point now where that's not a problem. I think the potential to save your filesystem from corruption is a much bigger plus than the potential for cell death to be a minus. Also worrying about cell death on SSD's nowadays, especially the OWC ones with the sandforce "enterprise grade" controller, is being VERY paranoid. GO with journaling, don't worry about writing to your SSD.
 

lemonade-maker

macrumors 6502
Jun 20, 2009
497
4
SuperDuper the SSD to a differnet drive.

Wipe the SSD, install OS X fresh.

Test the startup.


I have a feeling that cloning a system drive back and forth between drives does something to the optimization.

Where do you feel this? All over or just in spots? Seriously, there's no reason to reinstall the os. It's not windows.
 

VirtualRain

macrumors 603
Aug 1, 2008
6,304
118
Vancouver, BC
Yes, it's still useful in the case of an SSD. But there's also a downside- you have a large number of writes to the journal. That will cause the SSD to fail faster. I'd go without journaling for it, and just try not to turn it off in the middle of something important.

This is like saying you shouldn't drive your new car because you will wear it out. To be on the safe side it's best you just keep the SSD in the box... It will last longer that way. :p

Seriously, this is completely unnecessary. Even with journalling active the SSD will likely outlast the usefulness of your Mac Pro by a significant margin. You'll replace it with something much faster, bigger, and cheaper, long before it's worn out.
 

mangrove

macrumors 6502
Jul 10, 2010
440
0
FL, USA
This is like saying you shouldn't drive your new car because you will wear it out. To be on the safe side it's best you just keep the SSD in the box... It will last longer that way. :p

Seriously, this is completely unnecessary. Even with journalling active the SSD will likely outlast the usefulness of your Mac Pro by a significant margin. You'll replace it with something much faster, bigger, and cheaper, long before it's worn out.

+1
 

mangrove

macrumors 6502
Jul 10, 2010
440
0
FL, USA
Technically you're right, but numerous tests have shown failure rates of SSD cells to be at the point now where that's not a problem. I think the potential to save your filesystem from corruption is a much bigger plus than the potential for cell death to be a minus. Also worrying about cell death on SSD's nowadays, especially the OWC ones with the sandforce "enterprise grade" controller, is being VERY paranoid. GO with journaling, don't worry about writing to your SSD.

Also +1 and then +1
 

Asylum Design

macrumors newbie
Jun 9, 2010
26
0
Your SSD drive speeds are fine from xbench... that's not going to take your G5 and make it boot that much faster... it's the CPU / Memory subsystem slowing you down at this point.

I boot OS X in just under 3 seconds (3 rotations under the Apple logo). AND I'm completely journaled.

My drive is only marginally faster than yours, but my CPU is running at 4.2Ghz.

Don't worry about boot times on a G5... just enjoy the ssd for it's quiet and quick nature, and be happy :)
 

Luis Ortega

macrumors 65816
May 10, 2007
1,132
318
I was able to improve my boot times significantly by doing a few things.
Reset PRAM and SMC and let it boot up several times.
Ideally, a fresh install of osx and software would be best so that any connections to your previous hdd are not still held by the cloned os.
 

MacMan2014

macrumors newbie
Feb 1, 2014
2
0
Journalling and SSD

Yes, I am reopening an old thread.

I have bought new SSD's with 75 TB useful write lives.

I was originally a little shocked when installed in one machine, running Mavericks, after 3 days I had already written 730 GB. At that rate, my SSD would be done in 100 days just like Ann Boleyn. I had already turned trim on and a few other tweaks that have been described adequately on the internet.

So I started working. First, I killed Symantec Antivirus. Whatever version I was running was a pig -- 200 GB per day! Now down to 10 GB per day. I'm looking for a replacement that doesn't write all over my SSD over and over again.

Then, RamDisk for Caches:

diskutil erasevolume HFS+ RamDisk `hdiutil attach -nomount ram://2000000`;
sudo rm -Rf ~/Library/Caches;
mkdir /Volumes/RamDisk/Caches;
ln -s /Volumes/RamDisk/Caches ~/Library/Caches;
sudo rm -Rf /Library/Caches;
sudo mkdir /Volumes/RamDisk/LibraryCaches;
sudo ln -s /Volumes/RamDisk/LibraryCaches /Library/Caches;

Still burning 8 GB for day while sitting idle. Lots of work with fs_util. Up to 9375 days while sitting idle till write exhaustion. I don't sit idle, so I didn't like that I was still burning through 1% of my disk's life every 100 days not doing anything.

sudo launchctl unload -w /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.systemstats.daily.plist

Unloaded similarly all other systemstat* daemons in ../LaunchDaemons and ../LaunchAgents.

Unloaded, killed, and renamed the Quicklook daemon so it would not come back to writing useless "quicklook files" (I don't need it that bad):
cd /System/Library/Frameworks/QuickLook.framework/Resources/quicklookd.app/Contents/MacOS
sudo mv quicklookd quicklookd.disabled
sudo mv qlmanage qlmanage.disabled

Unloaded residual Symantec daemons.

Finally, USED DISKUTIL WITH THE MOUSE+[option key] to turned journalling OFF! (I did this off line by booting with Alt-R).

Disk at idle is now down to 13.2 MB per hour, i.e. 300 MB per day! At that rate, the disk will last 684 years. I like both machines I am running on (MBP and MacMini), each now has maximum RAM (16 GB and 8 GB) and I intend to keep them operation at least 10 years. Running out of SSD life half way in between is now one less thing to worry about.

Bottom line is that journalling is worth at least 5 GB per day of disk writes, exhausting the multilevel cell technology in the consumer SSDs at an excessive rate.

I am going back to search for an Antivirus replacement that doesn't burn disk writes excessively.

With regards to journaling, I doubt I would ever need it on the macmini. I could have a brain farht and let the MBP run out of battery, so I will think about that.
 
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