Journaling - any benefits for a MacBook?
in [Mac Systems]
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From: Kevin McMurtrie on 31 May 2010 03:29 In article <300520100806057875%aeiou(a)mostly.invalid>, Mark Conrad <aeiou(a)mostly.invalid> wrote: > I have been leaving journaling turned off for ages > on my MacBook Pro, with nothing bad happening. > > Is journaling just a placebo? > > Mark- It assists with recovery from panics and loss of power. I only recommend it for 10.6 or later. I've seen it mask volume corruption in 10.5 and earlier that lead to the eventual loss of files. A normal SSD should live at least as long as a notebook computer. They have wear leveling and hidden extra storage to replace worn areas. High-end SSDs will easily last as long as a desktop computer even when writing non-stop. If you're still worried about SSD wear, cram as much RAM as possible into your computer. What MacOS X reports as "inactive" memory is caches of files and code libraries. -- I won't see Google Groups replies because I must filter them as spam
From: Mark Conrad on 31 May 2010 04:50 In article <vilain-661E9E.19132630052010(a)news.individual.net>, Michael Vilain <vilain(a)NOspamcop.net> wrote: > Journalling, leastways on Solaris, has saved boot times for systems with > large filesystems that have crashed. Forgive me, but I have never (yet) had a MacBook crash while I was using it. If I had, I would probably agree with you, and use journaling. > Rather than take _hours_ to fsck a > volume that's "dirty"... If I had a volume dive into fsck, I would hit the power switch to abort it instantly, and use the next 50 minutes to restore both my OS X partition, plus my Windows-7 partition. But no fsck incident has happened yet in several years, so I have not had a chance yet to practice what I preach. > You may not care, Mark. Oh but I do. If I were in your situation, I would likely be a fan of journaling. Isn't that nice, we both get to choose what works for us. I get that extra 2% of speed, and you get the extra reliability. Kinda like two blind men decribing the part of the elephant that they feel. Mark-
From: Mark Conrad on 31 May 2010 06:11 At least this thread exposed why some people employ journaling, and other people don't. A lot of it hinges on past experiences, such as actually observing crashes happening often enough to justify using journaling, while ignoring the slight loss of speed associated with using journaling. And of course, crashes are going to happen much more often with desktop Macs than with MacBooks, because desktop Macs can have their files scrambled by momentary power outages. Other subtle things influence the decision whether to journal or not, such as the article from this server farm, found by Googling. Here are just a few of the comments there: > consistent small writes made to the disk will almost > obliterate the life expectancy of an SSD - - - and - - - > With that said, using an SSD for a versioning server would just be > suicide: constant writes would continually decrement the countdown of > write cycles SSDs carry, and if used in conjunction with a non-caching > journaling filesystem or used on the same disk as the logging that goes > with versioning, you�re guaranteed no more than a year and a half per > disk. Notice carefully what they said above about journaling, and how it can influence the life span of your Apple $1,300 SSD in your MacBook. If you want to find that site specifically, copy and paste the search string below into the web search box of Safari. It will take you to a Google page where about the 5th choice down is that exact string, which you can double-click on so it will take you to the server web site. (the capitalization of the string below is important, which is why it is a good idea to copy and paste this string) "Are SSDs Ready For The Data Center?" Mark-
From: Mark Conrad on 31 May 2010 06:33 In article <4c036576$0$22127$742ec2ed(a)news.sonic.net>, Kevin McMurtrie <mcmurtrie(a)pixelmemory.us> wrote: > If you're still worried about SSD wear, cram as much > RAM as possible into your computer. Yup, that is why I got 8 GB in my new MacBook. I will be glad when "real" 64 bit operation becomes commonplace on Macs, so that developers will actually write programs that can utilize 64 bit capability. Of course there will have to be a breakthough in RAM, so that we can install the great amounts of RAM without needing to sell our children, and an arm and a leg, and a kidney. I draw the line at selling my heart, and replacing it with a noisy artificial pump. Mark-
From: John McWilliams on 31 May 2010 10:06
dorayme wrote: > In article <9863241zz9.fsf(a)ethel.the.log>, > Doug Anderson <ethelthelogremovethis(a)gmail.com> wrote: > >> It works absolutely fine, unless you need to recover from a crash >> where data was lost. > > Keep repeating this. It is how these threads in Mac groups grow, > after all. Hardly the only way. Sometimes someone will jump in just to correct an erroneous statement, even one that's not directly connected to the answer. -- john mcwilliams |