PCI-E/NVME SSD As Storage Drive

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Sovereign

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I have some moderate-sized CAD files (150-500MB).

They're annoyingly slow on my RAID6 array (13x 4TB) when it comes to opening and saving them (the I/O grinds the entire CAD program to a halt until it finishes).

My motherboard supports M.2 PCI-E 4x, so a drive like this would work. That it's bootable isn't a concern--this would solely be a drive to throw my CAD files on. Windows would remain on the 1TB SSD on which it is currently installed.

Would that actually speed load/save times for these files?

The application in question is Rhino 3D.
 
Very likely yes if it's an IOPS issue.

As already stated, try it out on your SSD. If it's better on your SSD then it will be as good or better on a NVME drive.
 
Sovereign said:
I have some moderate-sized CAD files (150-500MB).

They're annoyingly slow on my RAID6 array (13x 4TB) when it comes to opening and saving them (the I/O grinds the entire CAD program to a halt until it finishes).

My motherboard supports M.2 PCI-E 4x, so a drive like this would work. That it's bootable isn't a concern--this would solely be a drive to throw my CAD files on. Windows would remain on the 1TB SSD on which it is currently installed.

Would that actually speed load/save times for these files?

The application in question is Rhino 3D.
Click to expand...
I'm wondering if there's something wrong with your array, with that many disks (and your controller) your array should be able to load up files that size as fast or faster than the nvme drive you've got linked.
 
with that many disks (and your controller) your array should be able to load up files that size as fast or faster than the nvme drive you've got linked.
Click to expand...

It should have a fast sequential transfer rate but possibly poor IOPS depending on if you have the BBU enabled so that cache is write back. Even with the BBU enabled any SSD will have much better IOPS.
 
Toss some on the 1TB SSD you already have and find out.
Click to expand...

I would certainly do that. The problem could be the software you are using requires a lot of processing (CPU bound) to load / save the files.
 
drescherjm said:
I would certainly do that. The problem could be the software you are using requires a lot of processing (CPU bound) to load / save the files.
Click to expand...

Just tried a large file off my RAID array.

"100%" of one core is about 6.25% (16-thread, 8-core Ryzen).

It hit about 6% while loading, so it seems it's CPU-bound, unless it's IOPS bound. Further testing required.

EDIT: 750MB file.

39s load time RAID.
38s load time SSD.

Seems it is CPU-bound as an SSD should have higher IOPS and throughput than my RAID array.

Guess I'll just have to deal with the fact that my CAD files open slowly.
 
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