Running Cyclone or Register on External SSD hard drives

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Damien3D
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Running Cyclone or Register on External SSD hard drives

Post by Damien3D »

Hi all,

is it possible to run Cyclone or Register on external hard drives?
Say one for projects + one for temp folder instead of using C:

We are stuck with Dell catalogue and cannot get a machine with more than 500GB hard drives.
The last scan session we did was 800+ scans with full HDR which is something around 600GB of data.
There was no way we could process the whole thing in one shot so we had to split it which took extra processing time.

My idea was to make it run with 2 x 1 TB NVMe SSD external Hard Drives.
Anyone done it or know if it is possible?

Thanks for your help!

Damien
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Re: Running Cyclone or Register on External SSD hard drives

Post by smacl »

I helped a client put together a twin SSD setup in an external enclosure connected via eSATA for his Dell laptop, which was pretty much the same speed as an internal SATA drive.
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Re: Running Cyclone or Register on External SSD hard drives

Post by tbwester »

it is possible, but can cause problems. Go for it!
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Re: Running Cyclone or Register on External SSD hard drives

Post by dineshkimraj »

We're currently doing that and its working. We have multiple projects that are quite large so right now this is the only option. Just make sure no one unplugs them.
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Re: Running Cyclone or Register on External SSD hard drives

Post by James Hall »

This is close to how I've been running things. I have two 10 terabit external USB 3.1 drives used for job storage and back up. The back up drive gets cycled to our main office for offsite back up. The computer I use has an M.2 SSD hard drive I keep mostly empty. I create new data base on my computer and load the raw files from the external drive. When the job is complete. Two copies are made of the raw and completed job on each drive.

In the past I have used separate External drives for the Page file and Cyclone's Temporary files folder. If I tried this again I would use USB C external drives with M.2 cards.

If you keep your separate drives on separate USB BUS's you will help eliminate bottle necks. Each bus has its own I/O controller, If you can minimize read / write cycles to the same drive at the same time things go much faster. Adding a PCI USB C / USB 3.1 card to a workstation would add this second BUS. Your computer also my have a different BUS for it front of case USB ports then the USB port on the back. Wroth checking in to.

For your setup, getting a USB C External SSD would work. Get one that is 3 to 4 times the size of the large jobs you work on. Cyclone dose not work properly otherwise.

It is not hard to install a larger M.2 hard drive in you workstation and this is your best option. By default you Page file and Cyclone's temporary files folder are on your C drive. If your C Drive is not big enough you will have problems with larger jobs.

James,
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Re: Running Cyclone or Register on External SSD hard drives

Post by Damien3D »

tbwester wrote: Sun Oct 13, 2019 11:46 pm it is possible, but can cause problems. Go for it!
What kind of problems should I expect?
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Re: Running Cyclone or Register on External SSD hard drives

Post by jsteinert »

Look at what internal expansion options you have available. Even if it means replacing your os drive (c:). That is going to be fastest and cheapest route.
External options certainly exist. I have even thought of how a large NAS with fast connection would be a viable option if i needed to work on multi seat configurations.
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Re: Running Cyclone or Register on External SSD hard drives

Post by Rikore »

External drives work well with Cyclone. I regularly have projects well over 1TB. You do have to update Cyclone to handle more than 1TB which is the default. I use 2 8TB drives with larger projects, one to process and 1 for the temp files. Cyclone does slow some when writing to externals.
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Re: Running Cyclone or Register on External SSD hard drives

Post by tbwester »

Damien3D wrote: Mon Oct 14, 2019 8:52 pm
tbwester wrote: Sun Oct 13, 2019 11:46 pm it is possible, but can cause problems. Go for it!
What kind of problems should I expect?
just re connecting to a drive over the course of a week or longer seems to cause problems (or at least it's one of the first things we think to ask when someone on our team has an error in cyclone).

I would still do it, but just keep it in mind.
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Re: Running Cyclone or Register on External SSD hard drives

Post by Jb293 »

This is how I've been working in Register.

Our IT department bought a bunch of 1TB and 2 TB external drives for me to utilize on projects. I slap a label on them and have an empty folder structure I paste into each new one to keep things consistent.

I make sure it's always the first usb drive plugged into the machine so it gets mapped as the same drive letter. This way I never need to mess with changing my storage directories or any confusion when plugging them back into the machines. Believe me you don't want to play the guessing game of what letter the hard drive was mapped 6 months later if you need to access the registration again. They've really got things locked down.

The deliverables then get off loaded to a server for teams to access. Externals are then moved to storage. Cheaper this way then trying to host all the raw/project data somewhere.

I can't say I've had an issue yet working this way but there was no way for me to handle the amount of data I was turning over on the weekly before.
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