ACard ANS-9010 RAM Drive

[Clanked]

I'm going to start off by saying, this is a niche product. Even among us multiboxers.
I threw a link into some random post a while about, towards this product. Now I am making an actual thread so people can read about it/search for it.

ACard put together a Frankenstein of a "hard drive." They paired eight 240-pin DDR2 DIMM slots, with a 2400 mAh (around 4 hours) battery, and a forward accessible CF slot for backup purposes. According to the manufacturer: With the push of a button it takes ~20 minutes to back up 32GB to a CF card, and ~15 minutes to restore said backup.

RAM Drives are nothing new, but the last real commercial offering was the iRAM which had a limit of 4GB. This drive has a theoretical limit of 64GB, however there are no 8GB DIMMs listed on their compatibility list.

Now you may be asking yourself: “Self, why the hell would I care about this?”
Allow me to answer: Access Time.

WoW is largely affected by access times, due to the nature of having to load lots of very small files. As you are moving about the world (of warcraft), thousands of little texture/model/sound files are being loaded from your hard drive. Each time one of these is needed, the head must find the spot on the platter where the file resides and transmit it. This is why SSDs are much quicker at finding files than mechanical hard drives, SSDs have no moving parts.

Well RAM is even faster than SSDs. In the quest to read the most small files the quickest, the ANS-9010 takes the cake. Yes, I know what you are saying: “There is no cake.” Well that’s because the ANS-9010 took it.

I don’t expect you to believe me without tests to back up what I say, so without further ado I present TechReport.com’s Benchmarks.

The first test that pertains to WoW would be the IOMeter Webserver test. This test primarily consists of small reads, and well, look at the graph. TechReport IO Meter Test:
The ANS-9010 beats the Intel X-25 M (the fastest SSD on the market) by ~30%. (I eyeballed the graph, and pulled out a calculator, so don’t quote that percentage)

The second test that is significant is the HD Tach Random Access Time test. This is what we are really looking for. When the drive was setup in Raid0 it came in at .1ms response time. (So did the other SDDs test) When it was setup as a normal drive, without raid, it clocked a time of 0.0ms.

So, the bottom line is: This drive excels at handling small files.

The downsides are: You either have to backup the drive to CF each time you turn off your computer for more than 4 hours, or keep your computer turned on.
More CPU usage than a SDD.
The drive + the RAM will be about the same cost as an X-25 E drive.
However if you absolutely must have the best, this is the way to go.

[-silencer-]

It's on my purchase list once I find some decently-priced 4GB DDR2 sticks in stock.

[aboron]

Finally got back from my business trip to access my testing shots on this thing.

Here's what i got with Atto using the drive as a single sata:



Here's what HDTach got:



And HDTune:



I have to unload my camera if anyone wants shots of the actual unit, there seem to be plenty of those online though.

I also found another use for this drive - running a virtual machine disk image file off of it makes the virtual machine really fly.

If anyone has any other freely available benchmarks they'd like to see results from, I will be happy to run them against it.

[Sam DeathWalker]

Why are your tests so much worse then theirs (you have the latest firmware?):

http://www.2san.com/manual/english/9...t%20report.pdf

Can you try sandra, its free.

http://www.sisoftware.net/index.html...64&langx=en&a=

It seems impossible that Raid0 is SLOWER then non raid, basically they are saying you are worse off running in raid, then the $245 model might be better if 12G max is ok with you.

http://techreport.com/articles.x/16255/10

I have an iram but didnt see all that much improvement but thats with 4G only. I took it out....

[aboron]

Why are your tests so much worse then theirs (you have the latest firmware?):

http://www.2san.com/manual/english/9...t%20report.pdf

Can you try sandra, its free.

http://www.sisoftware.net/index.html...64&langx=en&a=

It seems impossible that Raid0 is SLOWER then non raid, basically they are saying you are worse off running in raid, then the $245 model might be better if 12G max is ok with you.

http://techreport.com/articles.x/16255/10

I have an iram but didnt see all that much improvement but thats with 4G only. I took it out....

You know, I didn't even think to look for a firmware update for this thing, but lo and behold they have a newer one. I will give that a shot later tonight, thanks for reminding me. (I've been thinking of it too much like a hard drive)

Also, I only have mine hooked up as a single drive, no RAID at all, since the ICH Win-Raid was acting funny and hanging now and then so it made things worse. But it seems that is one of the things this firmware fixes so i guess I'll re-raid0 it and try again. Since it restores for an image every time you restart the PC, it's very simple to change the configuration around.

[Starbuck_Jones]

What controller did you have this attached to? sata1 or a sata2?

[combhua]

It seems impossible that Raid0 is SLOWER then non raid

I recently read somewhere (maybe here) an explanation for this. Following the thought that random access times are important in our use case, it makes sense that finding a file split over 2 drives (2 seeks) takes a longer amount of time than the same file on 1 drive (1 seek). Perhaps my understanding of this isn't correct, but that's how I see it at the moment.

[Catamer]

i don't know. seems expensive for what you get.
$400 for the drive with no ram and no backup CF card.
typical CF backup cards are near $400.
the B version has 6 slots of DDR2 which if you use cheap ram 2G sticks, that's only 12G and not enough to put WoW on it.
and the 4G sticks are expensive right now ( near $200/stick)

The Intel X-25E is pretty close to this performance or better and 32G large for only $400.
and for the cost of filling this out with 24G ( or the 8 slot with 32G of memory ) and a backup CF you could easily have multiple Intel X-25E in a Raid-0 smoking it.

[Sam DeathWalker]

it makes sense that finding a file split over 2 drives (2 seeks) takes a longer amount of time than the same file on 1 drive (1 seek)

They both seek at the same time. Raid0 doubles transfer rate (with 2 drives) but does not impove access time, but should not make it worse ... unless the seek times are not sycronized for some reason.

[Sam DeathWalker]

The Intel X-25E is pretty close to this performance or better and 32G large for only $400.
and for the cost of filling this out with 24G ( or the 8 slot with 32G of memory ) and a backup CF you could easily have multiple Intel X-25E in a Raid-0 smoking it.

I dont think you need the backup card, just read the folder from a raptor before you play and return it to the raptor when done (WAY faster then the CF anyways).

if you went the X-25E route I would get two of these instead in raid0 ($320 for a pair of 16G's). "About" as good for less cost.

Ok here is a .11 ms access time ssd drive for $165 (i.e. for wow about as good as the Intel SSD): This seems a very very resonable and cost effective solution. Better to go to the Acard if you need more then 16G or you have the $400 (plus $12 per G of ram).

http://www.sandisk.com/OEM/ProductCa...A_5000_25.aspx

http://cgi.ebay.com/NEW-Sandisk-SSD-...3A1%7C294%3A50