MadCap Software Forums

Hello,
Has anyone done research or created a business case to purchase Solid State Hard Drives for Flare that they would be willing to share? I'm looking for statistics in build times that would make a solid case for good ROI.

I have 2500 page guides that take around 60 minutes to build PDF's and 20 minutes to build webhelp. I'm running an Intel Core 2 Duo at 2.4ghz and 2GB or Ram with a 7200RPM hard drive. How much of an improvement with a SSD could I expect?

Thanks in advance for any help!

You could take a count of the number and size of the drive I/O operations and potentially calculate the expected gain. Your report should also include the option of running a striped array of discs to improve performance (and include proper system backups as the MTBF goes down by half), buying a 10k drive, buying a 15k SCSI drive plus controller, and buying no new hardware but changing build habits, such as building at the end of the day only and have the system work while you are not using it.
I know you want the SSD and given the price it isn't an insane request to ask for it, but the more arguments for it the more convincing it will be in the end. And maybe one of the alternatives will be less expensive and give about the same performance boost, although it might be less sexy/nerdy.

Uh, one more thing, also take more RAM into consideration, but not sure if that would make much difference in build times. But 2 GB for a Windows system is rather wimpy these days.

RamonS wrote:Uh, one more thing, also take more RAM into consideration, but not sure if that would make much difference in build times. But 2 GB for a Windows system is rather wimpy these days.

Right now I have Flare 7, Outlook (2010), Word, Excel, OneNote, Notepad++, SnagiT, Communicator, Internet Explorer, and Chrome Open - using 64% of my RAM. For day to day stuff 2GB is plenty for me. It's only when I build Flare PDF's that the system is sluggish. I've tried using Readyboost with an external flash drive, and that doesn't really seem to improve performance that I can notice.

Good idea on the I/O calculations. I can't seem to find any info on Dell's website about the read/write speed of my hard drive. Is there a performance monitor in Win7 that could tell me what I need to know?

Last question: is there any doc on Flare's website that gives specifics behind building targets that discuss the I/O speed issues? Maybe I need to send that question to Madcap....

Thanks for help!

Dell may just throw in whatever drives they can get for a set price when buying the hardware for a production batch. Download PC Wizard to get the exact make and model of the drive and then look at the manufacturers site.
If you really want to go all out, you should also consider the (controller) chipset used. Some chipsets perform better. Sometimes Dell puts chipsets on their board that are just cheap and nothing else.

As far as specifics about the build process, you'd need to ask support about that.

More RAM, More CPU. An SSD alone on that system won't be enough. I'm running a Sandy Bridge 2500K-based system with 8 GB and an SSD and I have to say, it just flies. Any SSD at 128GB on up should do the job - Corsair, Crucial, Intel and OCZ are all good.

rgrace wrote:More RAM, More CPU. An SSD alone on that system won't be enough. I'm running a Sandy Bridge 2500K-based system with 8 GB and an SSD and I have to say, it just flies. Any SSD at 128GB on up should do the job - Corsair, Crucial, Intel and OCZ are all good.

Thanks for info. My laptop isn't due to be replaced for another two years, so I won't be able to upgrade to a new CPU until that time. RAM and a SSD might be feasible. I purchased a Crucial 128GB SSD for $230 off Amazon and I'm going to swap it out without LAN knowing. I'll be able to do some testing and if I can justify it with the performance gains I'll most likely get reimbursed for it.