Hard Drive Latency Checks at Startup?

[lifeschool-amiga]

I notice the game runs slower on machines with the game installed on a slow hard drive. Many users today install the game to a WD Green HDD which has a park mode, and which can be slow to spin up and search for data. I have the full game installed on an SSD, and this removed the space to glide delay, and made jumping to familiar systems a bit quicker.

You could make SSD a recommended minimum requirement, so everyone plays at full speed, or maybe a quick read/write latency check, which flags up to the user if the speed is too slow, or might affect the game.

By 2025, everyone will have switched to NVMe, but even then, many will only run an operating system from it, and install games to a slow HDD.

 

[Factabulous]

Wat? People still use spinning rust? Weirdos

 

[Northpin]

Heh, i even fitted an external usb30 ssd on my xbox and moved the game on the ssd
There was a noticeable improvement.

 

[Deleted member 38366]

If a HDD is parking its heads and spins down in such a short period (again and again), you're literally killing the drive motor. Not recommended and not practical either.

Typically, it's merely a too aggressive Power Management and setting it to a more normal value instantly restores normal operation. No SSD needed.
Game runs just fine off a classic HDD.

 

[CMDR X]

Western Digital Green/Blue/Black/White/Pink/Mauve/Teal HDDs are all garbage.
Every one I had went the way of death. Prematurely.

Pro Tip: Do not buy WD.
X.

 

[Rick6549]

Ive got a seagate barracuda HDD and it works fine

 

[Lestat]

512 GB SSD drive no problem . My only game that on it is Elite Dangerous.

 

[Ascendingbike42]

I've been running on a barracuda for two years, only difference I got when I moved the game to an SSD was it started a bit faster.

 

[MickyG1982]

I notice the game runs slower on machines with the game installed on a slow hard drive. Many users today install the game to a WD Green HDD which has a park mode, and which can be slow to spin up and search for data. I have the full game installed on an SSD, and this removed the space to glide delay, and made jumping to familiar systems a bit quicker.

You could make SSD a recommended minimum requirement, so everyone plays at full speed, or maybe a quick read/write latency check, which flags up to the user if the speed is too slow, or might affect the game.

By 2025, everyone will have switched to NVMe, but even then, many will only run an operating system from it, and install games to a slow HDD.

Given that it doesn't slow anyone down but the user themselves (and even that is negligible) I very much doubt that its it's necessary at all. Once the game is loaded there is very little hard drive access anyway.

As it doesn't affect anyone but the user why would there even need to be a flag? Just to show that "player X" is too cheap to buy an SSD?

 

[Morbad]

It's usually possible to disable HDD power management via a variety of methods. Personally, I use task scheduler to load smartmontools and send a command to all of my mechanical drives to disable APM on each boot. This way, when I start recording (video recording and archival storage is all I use mechanical drives for at this point), there is no hitching in the saved video as the drives wake up.

Anyway, the odds of there being issues for a peer in ED because of the drive used are slim, but not non-existent. There could be mild delays to instance/matchmaking transitions that depended on that peer. I don't think any notification is required, especially since there are several other factors (CPU load and network latency, in particular) more impactful than disk I/O.

As for SSD vs. mechanical HDD performance, "works fine" is subjective, but you will almost certainly see objectively faster load times and fewer slowdowns if the game is run from almost any SSD, relative to a mechanical HDD. Given current prices, there is very little reason to be running games from a mechanical HDD and even titles that are relatively light on I/O will noticeably benefit.

Regarding WD reliability, statistically, WD failure rates are not exceptional. Anecdotally, I haven't had any reason to complain about my WD drives.

Generally speaking, every HDD fails eventually, and most mechanical HDDs are quite fragile, both in an electrical and a mechanical sense. Many people also keep their mechanical drives too cold. Cooler is usually viewed as better for electronics, and with few exceptions, this is true...for solid state parts. However, anything with a motor is going have lubricants whose viscosity is temperature dependent; too hot or too cold is bad for these parts. Optimal operational temperature for a mechanical HDD is in the ballpark of 40C. Below 30 or above 50 is usually undesirable.