Yes, it absolutely will.
He was talking about HDDs, so the rule still holds true. Also, SSD performance does degrade (albeit to a certain point) depending on how much data has been written to it.
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How full is your hard drive?
- Thread starter gorskiegangsta
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Depends which computer... My iMac is a 640Gb is has 224.58 GB free. My MacBook Pro 2011 is 750GB, and has around 600 GB free. All the rest are pretty much within 10 or 20 GBs of being full.
Some people seem to not really understand how RAM and HDDs affect performance.
RAM affects performance because it allows more applications to run at once, Most people see a dramatic increase in speed when upgrading RAM because they're already low on RAM. Adding RAM when you're low on RAM is the single most cost-effective way to boost performance. It's actually better than an SSD in absolute terms, but because an SSD is so fast you can almost get by with low RAM if you have one.
Having a faster HDD allows for faster app launching times and faster response whenever you need to access the HDD. Having a bigger, but not faster, HDD is not a performance benefit unless you are running out of disk space. When you begin to run out of RAM, the system pages in information that it has previously paged out to the HDD. The faster your HDD, the faster your system can page the information back in. But, the more RAM you have, the less your system will have to page in, which is far, far faster. I have 6 GB RAM, and only when I really push my machine does it ever page in.
Getting a bigger HDD would have zero performance gain for me because I already have plenty of free space. Getting more RAM would also have little benefit because, apart from the fact that my machine can't accept more than I've got in it, I usually don't use all the RAM I've got. However, between getting more RAM and getting a faster HDD (assuming I'm not running out of space) more RAM would clearly provide the greater benefit. The only case where getting a bigger HDD would be more beneficial is if you are running out of HDD space.
RAM affects performance because it allows more applications to run at once, Most people see a dramatic increase in speed when upgrading RAM because they're already low on RAM. Adding RAM when you're low on RAM is the single most cost-effective way to boost performance. It's actually better than an SSD in absolute terms, but because an SSD is so fast you can almost get by with low RAM if you have one.
Having a faster HDD allows for faster app launching times and faster response whenever you need to access the HDD. Having a bigger, but not faster, HDD is not a performance benefit unless you are running out of disk space. When you begin to run out of RAM, the system pages in information that it has previously paged out to the HDD. The faster your HDD, the faster your system can page the information back in. But, the more RAM you have, the less your system will have to page in, which is far, far faster. I have 6 GB RAM, and only when I really push my machine does it ever page in.
Getting a bigger HDD would have zero performance gain for me because I already have plenty of free space. Getting more RAM would also have little benefit because, apart from the fact that my machine can't accept more than I've got in it, I usually don't use all the RAM I've got. However, between getting more RAM and getting a faster HDD (assuming I'm not running out of space) more RAM would clearly provide the greater benefit. The only case where getting a bigger HDD would be more beneficial is if you are running out of HDD space.
We're not comparing HDDs to SSDs. It is no secret that SSDs are much faster than any HDD. Between HDDs, however, the drives with higher capacity will perform better since it'll have more free space available (i.e. it'll have more of the data on outer part of the disk and thus be able to read it faster)
I stand by the comment that nothing will improve system performance more than adding memory when your system is memory constrained and paging. Tasks that normally take 10 seconds can take a minute or more if you are paging badly. You don't get that type of performance degradation because your drive is 95% full. More memory is more likely to improve system performance than more free disk space.
I would also say, in general, the placement of data is going to make a bigger impact on performance than the amount free space in the filesystem. If you have a large file that is very fragmented your access times will blow compared to a file that is optimally placed and contiguous... pretty much regardless of if the file system 20% full or 80% full. I'm thinking more about read performance than write performance because most disk IO is read and writes are cached anyway.
If I'm wrong, please explain to me how just having free space is going to improve performance more than RAM.
Ive got a 64gb SSD as a system applications drive. That has 10-15gb free.
500gb 7200rpm drive in where my optical drive used to be. That has 118gb free.
I'm a commercial photographer. So a lot of the SSD space is adobe CS5 suite.
The 500gb drive is full of mostly photos videos and music.
500gb 7200rpm drive in where my optical drive used to be. That has 118gb free.
I'm a commercial photographer. So a lot of the SSD space is adobe CS5 suite.
The 500gb drive is full of mostly photos videos and music.
I thought we were talking about increasing storage space. A gig on an SSD is the same space as a gig on a magnetic drive, isn't it?
Let's say it isn't. So in my hypothetical situation, the machine would perform better with 2 gigs less RAM and a 750 gig HD upgraded from a 500, with maybe 200 gigs in use?
Unless the drive is nearly out of space or massively fragmented, what difference would having 200 gigs or 2tb free have on the overall performance of a machine? I'm not trying to argue with you, I just want to understand what the underlying technical basis is of this theory.
Let me give ou an example:
People get a computer to perform specific tasks by running their favorite applications. The number and/or types of applications [most] people run on their computers will not change dramatically during the operational life of their machine, thus the amount of RAM is largely irrelevant in terms of increase/decrease in system performance.
The number one performance degradation in computers is having too many unnecessary files on the hard drive [PCs are particularly plagued by this, but Macs aren't immune to it either], not the lack of RAM. The RAM performance doesn't degrade over time and it doesn't get "used up" as Hard Disk does.
The only upgradable parts in portable computers are pretty much RAM and Hard Disk. Upgrading RAM just means getting higher capacity [to run more simultaneous tasks - not to run them faster], therefore the new RAM won't perform any better or faster than the previous one. Upgrading the Hard Disk can mean either getting higher capacity or faster operation [in rpm] or both. In the case of getting higher capacity drive, this means the files will occupy the outer rim of the disk and thus be able to get accessed [read] faster [write speeds will largely stay the same]. In the case of getting higher rpm drive, the performance will increase for both read and write operations.
Bottom line, getting higher capacity RAM will not make the computer load any files or apps faster. Upgrading the Hard Disk [in capacity or speed or both] will.
Not quite. SSDs are able to access [read] bits of data in parallel, even the fragmented files are accessed as fast as non fragmented. The HDD, on the other hand, needs to move its heads back and forth to access bits of data in different locations on the disk. Moreover, as the drive fills up, the data is stored on the inner part of the disk with lower circumference which further slows down the read times of the HDD.
You make a some good points.
In my opinion, you make 2 mistakes.
The first mistake is about memory usage.
The memory footprint of applications almost always get bigger over time. years ago you could get a workstation with 1 GB and it worked fine just surfing. How well would a system run today on 1 GB even if all you wanted to do was surf?
How well do you think Lion will run with 1 or 2 GB of memory?
Some people that got systems with 1 or 2 GB of memory and 80 GB hard drives years ago might still be able to get by with a 80 GB hard drive. Heck, some people replace their 250 GB HDs with 80GB SSD. However, no one can get by with 1 or 2 GB of memory today and not feel the pain if they plan to do anything other than boot up and do something very simple.
I think that the second mistake is assuming that the number cause of system performance degradation is having too many files. I will agree that it can be a problem but I wouldn't call it the number one problem. Unless you are running a database with constant disk IO, it will not be a huge deal on a Mac. Windows XP and a FAT32 Filesystem maybe but not a Mac.
I understand that SSDs are faster. I've been using them for 3 years. My point is that you made a blanket statement that a larger hard drive is the best single improvement that can be made to a system to increase. While that can be true in some cases, it isn't in all cases. Neither is adding more memory.
If a system runs normally with all of the user's applications running and there is spare memory, then adding memory will only add to the amount of unused memory. If a system's storage already has a large amount of empty space and isn't badly fragmented, adding more storage (of the same speed) won't increase performance.
I agree with all of this.
Regarding the RAM, that's absolutely true that the same application can use more memory depending on the situation. Photoshop is going to use less memory editing a 200k JPEG than it would editing a 200 meg hi res scan or a 1 gig poster or billboard. If adding additional RAM keeps the machine from going into swap, then performance would increase.
Gorskiegangsta, I don't think that you're completely wrong. I just don't think that your theory is not correct in every situation. Instead of the rule "increasing storage space is the best way to improve performance", I think a more accurate statement would be "when storage availability is what is constraining performance, increasing storage is the best way to improve performance".
When Peter Norton wrote that language many years ago which started this discussion, maybe his statement would have been true in more situations than not. But even then there would have been cases in which adding more RAM would have provided more bang for the buck.
This is very true. Application requirements do go up with newer versions. But this is also true for CPUs, GPUs as much as RAM. So the issue here is not upgrading to increase performance but upgrading just to keep the machine running properly.
If you're running out of disk space and out of RAM [application requirements wise] upgrading the hard drive [to faster and/or more capacious one] will indeed yield better results than upgrading the RAM since the Hard Drive is a bigger bottleneck, not the RAM.
Though I still disagree with you on the statement that "NOTHING improves system performance more than adding memory", You're right [on the whole] about Hard Drives. I guess I was defending Peter Norton's statement without realizing that he was looking at this from a different filesystem perspective.
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SSD: 10 GB Free of 60 GB
HDD: 156.5GB Free of 500GB (there's also a boot camp partition using 25GB)
HDD: 156.5GB Free of 500GB (there's also a boot camp partition using 25GB)
All modern OSes will cache directory files, so the number of files isn't really an issue for performance. The real problem is the aggregate size of the files. As the disk files the average seek time will increase, read times are longer on inner tracks (at least that used to be true, and probably still is), and the files will tend to fragment as there is less chance that there will be contiguous free space on the drive.
I try to avoid going over 50% using on any drive that is frequently accessed. OTOH I don't worry about RAM unless the Activity Monitor shows excessive pageouts are occurring.
I try to avoid going over 50% using on any drive that is frequently accessed. OTOH I don't worry about RAM unless the Activity Monitor shows excessive pageouts are occurring.
I have a stock 250GB drive and use only 28.65GB. I have two externals and another dedicated for Time Machine, so I am running as fast as possible. Perhaps my next MBP will have an SSD and 8GB of RAM.
BTW, digloyd has some great articles on this topic of why larger drives are faster and why having more free space on the drive leads to greater drive performance.
http://www.macperformanceguide.com/Storage-WhyYouNeedMoreThanYouNeed.html
Of course, in a perfect world I'd improve both ram and disk...
http://www.macperformanceguide.com/Storage-WhyYouNeedMoreThanYouNeed.html
Of course, in a perfect world I'd improve both ram and disk...
I have a stock 5400 RPM 500GB drive. I have about 100GB free. I understand that the filesystem is designed to not require defragging. Is anyone seeing a performance hit with free space around 20%?
I have a 15 inch 5,3 2009 MBP. I upgraded the RAM to 8GB and saw benefits there. I typically am running Chrome with 6 - 10 tabs open, Firefox with 2 - 3 tabs open, Skype (mainly chats with occasional calls), iTunes (playing something about 40% of the time), Mail, Excel, Powerpoint, Word, and VMware Fusion running a 2GB RAM XP VM for Lotus Notes, Sametime, Visio, etc. It is a working computer in every sense.
As my drive has filled, my performance is decreasing. I'm planning to get the 750GB WD drive. The system seems slow to me. I expected better with 8 GB of RAM. What is the typical experience? Time for an upgrade to an 7i quad core?
Thanks.
I have a 15 inch 5,3 2009 MBP. I upgraded the RAM to 8GB and saw benefits there. I typically am running Chrome with 6 - 10 tabs open, Firefox with 2 - 3 tabs open, Skype (mainly chats with occasional calls), iTunes (playing something about 40% of the time), Mail, Excel, Powerpoint, Word, and VMware Fusion running a 2GB RAM XP VM for Lotus Notes, Sametime, Visio, etc. It is a working computer in every sense.
As my drive has filled, my performance is decreasing. I'm planning to get the 750GB WD drive. The system seems slow to me. I expected better with 8 GB of RAM. What is the typical experience? Time for an upgrade to an 7i quad core?
Thanks.
I have 500 GB drive, with a 56 GB BootCamp partition. I've been running at 93% for a month with no apparent performance issues.
I should point out that I have 8 GB of memory and a 7200 RPM drive. I typically start all my apps at start up (Safari, Mail, iTunes, Xcode, VirtualBox, Terminal).