Thread: Open Boot Challenge 2009

Well have to make a new one when i finally get mine finished. I am going to try raid 0 with SSD and see if that helps boot.

Originally Posted by ZX1Cruizer

Well have to make a new one when i finally get mine finished. I am going to try raid 0 with SSD and see if that helps boot.

I would be really careful with RAID 0 SSD, I had that on my desktop (2 x OCZ 60GB Vertex) and my G/F turned on the oven and tripped a breaker that fed the outlet the computer was on. It corrupted the RAID array, and one of the drives died. I have since RMA'd the drive and put it in my laptop. I have to say though, that RAID 0 boot was really fast. My system (12GB RAM, 2 x quad core Xeons) booted after POST in like 7 seconds. (but the BIOS took 45 seconds [server board]) I would just be wary of a power issue corrupting the RAID array in a car, that's all.

Originally Posted by ZX1Cruizer

I am going to try raid 0 with SSD

i hate you! That setup will FLY...only thing to worry about is wear leveling but that shouldn't be an issue with modern hardware.

@Snootch:
Disable the write cache and that won't be a problem.

Originally Posted by kapone

Typical automotive batteries have a 70AH discharge rate.

i.e. it can discharge 70A for 1 hour

or

1A for 70 hours.

Mathematically, you make sense if you take physics into account this is simply not true unfortunately.

As the amp draw changes, the AH rating changes. A typical car battery has an AH rating of 70 with a 3.5 amp draw. So 20 hours with 3.5 amps. If you draw 70 amps out of that battery, good luck getting a half hour let alone an hour. Standard car batteries weren't designed for that. They won't do a decent sized load for more than a few minutes. Temperature is also a big factor in this.

If you use a deep cycle battery, you will have more luck. My deep cycle optima has a 55 AH rating. Give it a 55 amp load and it will get about 45 minutes. Even the optima is not actually designed to discharge at 55 amps.

A better number to do calculations on is the reserve capacity. If your battery doesn't have a reserve capacity rating, don't even bother with it. It's designed for starting the car and that's it.

Reserve capacity is the amount of time a battery can discharge at 25 amps at 80 degrees and still maintain a voltage of over 10.5 volts. My optima's reserve capacity is 120 minutes. If we do the calculation for AH at 25 amps...

120 minutes = 2 hours
25 amps * 2 hours = 50 AH.

Originally Posted by justchat_1

@Snootch:
Disable the write cache and that won't be a problem.

Seems a battery backup would be a better solution.

I have one for each of my PCs, even without RAID.

Originally Posted by justchat_1

i hate you! That setup will FLY...only thing to worry about is wear leveling but that shouldn't be an issue with modern hardware.

@Snootch:
Disable the write cache and that won't be a problem.

Doesnt Win 7 prevent wear from happening? I read that some place, thats why I dropped the idea of EWF and HORM on my main system. Plus another thing I am scared of is that I dont know what type of raid 0 my motherboard uses. I think i saw that there is software raid (which takes longer to start) and hardware raid. Could I be wrong?

If it's built onto the motherboard and the motherboard isn't a big expensive server board, chances are it's software/fake RAID.

Also, Win7 does play nicer with SSDs, but afaik it doesn't have anything built in to prevent wear.

Originally Posted by Tidder

If it's built onto the motherboard and the motherboard isn't a big expensive server board, chances are it's software/fake RAID.

Also, Win7 does play nicer with SSDs, but afaik it doesn't have anything built in to prevent wear.

Its a Zotac GeForce 9300 ITX.

Well as long as it has a 5 year life span, Im cool with the SSDs kicking the bucket. Anything less then that will have me worrying all the time.

Win7 supports TRIM, but wear leveling needs to be in the SSD controller.