Multiple drives and the new Mac Pro

[jloeb]

When I did my swap, Native Instruments libraries needed reauthorization from the Service Center and/or to be deleted from the Library column & relocated by Kontakt, Amplesound libs needed reinstallation. I think that was all. CCC is outstanding, have used it on every swap - use block level cloning wherever possible.

As to the drives themselves, I'd suggest going with Crucial M500 (512gb or 960gb) for write intensive drives such as startup volume and recording, and Samsung 840EVO for your sample/VI streaming volume. I did so. Why?

- The Crucial M500 series was vastly overprovisioned with extra memory space for error correction and cell sparing (thus i.e. the 960 instead of 1GB volume size). Crucial's subsequent series (M550) has far less overprovisioning, reportedly because Micron (Crucial) learned what they needed to know about the stability of their NAND from the M500 and found them overbuilt. That design decision tells you something. My guess is that in 5 years these will show themselves to have been among the most stable and robust SSDs out there. Anandtech wrote that they make the most sense for a "write-heavy" scenario such as enterprise or server. That's exactly what I want in a heavy-use volume such as a startup/system or recording drive.

- The Samsung 840 EVO uses a theoretically less robust NAND fabrication scheme (triple layer). When files size is plotted against transfer speed, it ramps up more quickly than the Crucial M500 although they top out at roughly the same place - so it is just a little speedier at smaller file sizes and its capacity is a little larger. This is perfect as a VI/sample drive, whose use pattern is that of one or a few big writes and then 99.999% reads, which don't wear the NAND.


If you have a 2009-2012 Mac Pro and you're going with a pair of 1TB or other large drives, I'd spend the little bit extra and get a Sonnet Tempo SSD for around $100 to get their full 6G bandwidth (there's no need for the $200 Pro version unless you're going to RAID them for 4K video work - the card speeds are close to identical as JBOD). This lets you put a pair on a PCIe slot inside your Mac Pro case (elegant! compact! full speed!) and later install them in external Thunderbolt enclosure when you finally move to a Vader Hat or whatever succeeds it.

TRIM: current drives have hardware based garbage collection when the drives are idle. You shouldn't need it at this point. See e.g.: http://www.neowin.net/forum/topic/12010 ... rket-ssds/


Do the upgrade whenever you're ready, Shoosh. Your system will become unrecognizably fast to you.


P.S. ( re: HC - as far as I know, partitioning an SSD to "leave a little extra space" won't help because the extra space is on a different volume = off limits to the reprovisioning algorithm!)

[mikehalloran]

TRIM: current drives have hardware based garbage collection when the drives are idle. You shouldn't need it at this point.

All current reports and reviews with data graphs disagree with you on that point. The current Crucial, Sanyo and SandBridge are Trim enabled for a reason. I posted a number of links in another thread.

Is it absolutely necessary? Probably not. Does it make your drives run faster longer? All benchmarks that have compared say, Yes.

There are some better ones than this testing many drives but this covers the nuts and bolts of the issue with benchmarks:
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/mac ... ,3538.html

[jloeb]

I have had TRIM enabled on all of my drives in my Mac Pro under 10.8.5 since installation. I used the Terminal sudo commands. I know they are complementary and TRIM should usually be beneficial.

But I don't know whether we should get too attached to it, because in the past month I have been unable to get TRIM to work at all on the SSD in my MacBook Pro under Mavericks. The commands worked, and then suddenly they ceased working. Apple may have become more hardcore about restricting TRIM enablement to OEM drives, which is a little frustrating if true. If you have a good set of commands that work in Mavericks since the latest update, Mike, I'd appreciate a link or paste.

Crucial itself says the following:
http://forums.crucial.com/t5/Solid-Stat ... a-p/100276

For a sample streaming drive that you load up and read from, TRIM simply won't be needed or useful.

For a startup/ main use or recording drive, I agree that it's better to have TRIM enabled over the long haul.

[HCMarkus]

jloeb, I wrote this before you posted your most-recent comments. No offense intended, but I think the following warrants sharing. And your point re: sample streaming read-only drives is a good one, although enabling Trim (using Trim Enabler from Cindori) applies Trim accross all SSDs, and Trim won't hurt drives that are predominantly read-only.

TRIM: current drives have hardware based garbage collection when the drives are idle. You shouldn't need it at this point.

I'm sorry, but Mike is right; this is not good information. THIS is good information, courtesy of AxoNeuron in this thread at MacRumors http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?t=1754767:

On an SSD, data is stored in "blocks". When some data in a block is marked as being no longer needed by the OS, the best thing the SSD can do is to copy the "good" data out of the block and in to a new sector. The reason for this is because an SSD cannot choose to only delete part of a block, it is an all-or-nothing process. So if you have some good data in that block, it needs to be copied to a new location before the entire block can be erased.

And that is where the problem is, and why TRIM is so vital with SSD's. When the SSD goes to consolidate its "good" data to free up space, if the OS has not told the SSD which data has been marked as no longer needed by the OS, the SSD will write this "unneeded" data to new blocks during garbage collection. This is a huge waste of time and greatly increases the number of writes that the SSD performs over its lifetime. With TRIM, the OS tells the SSD which data is no longer needed, and the SSD will know that it doesn't need to save this data to new blocks during garbage collection. This reduces the average number of writes to cells in the SSD and can greatly prolong the lifespan of the SSD as well.

Check this link for Trim info from LSI/Sandforce, the folks that make the controller chip used in OWC SSDs (who famously stated some years back "no Trim is required" on their drives): http://www.thessdreview.com/daily-news/ ... sd-primer/

P.S. ( re: HC - as far as I know, partitioning an SSD to "leave a little extra space" won't help because the extra space is on a different volume = off limits to the reprovisioning algorithm!

Actually, no. Within the SSD, there is no partitioning of the physical memory locations. Partitioning the drive is at the OS level. So the OS simply reserves a portion of the SSD's capacity for each partition. Internally, the SSD sees the space as free space, effectively creating "overprovisioning."

[frankf]

The thessdreview is very convincing. Thanks for the link.


Frank Ferrucci

[jloeb]

No offense intended

None taken! I am never offended by seeing more information here rather than less. I agree with everything you and Mike cited.

Remember that the context of my response, though, is Shooshie's question about whether one should wait to buy SSDs to put sample libraries on, or stay out of SSDs based on the threat of degrading performance as the drive fills up.

The answer to that question is unambiguously no, this is not going to be an issue if the SSD is a sample drive. Moreover TRIM does not help there unless you are for some reason swapping libraries like a madman. My 840EVO is literally filled almost to capacity (980GB) with samples. I have been unable even to begin to strain its performance in that state.

My statement was not intended to disparage the utility of TRIM overall. As I said above, I use it on every drive that I am able to.

Actually, no. Within the SSD, there is no partitioning of the physical memory locations. Partitioning the drive is at the OS level. So the OS simply reserves a portion of the SSD's capacity for each partition.

Well, all of that is true of platter drives as well...

Internally, the SSD sees the space as free space, effectively creating "overprovisioning."

I'd be surprised if an SSD controller were written so as to allow dipping across volumes for this purpose. I'm open to being proven wrong though.

[Shooshie]

This thread is singularly the most informative collection I've read on the subject since SSDs came on the scene. Previously, to get this much info, I'd have to comb Google and its links for hours, still wondering how it applies to MY situation. You guys laid it out: bada-bing, bada-bam, bada-boom.

Thanks!

Shooshie

[HCMarkus]

Gee Shooshie... you've NEVER helped anyone out 'round here...
Very glad to share information that you find useful.

As for the overprosvisioning/partitioning discussion...

Spinning HDs actually allocate physical portions of the HDs platters to each partition. That's one reason why partitioning HDs can be so helpful. Put your backup on the slower, innermost (last on the list in Disc Utility) partition, and put the "speed required" partition on the outermost, fastest portion of the platters (first on the list in Dic Utility). Try it at home; you'll note substantially faster performance when reading to and writing from outer vs inner partitions.

SSDs don't work like that. While I can't claim to have a firm grasp on the science (laziness and time constraints often conspire to halt my personal growth), research has me convinced that partitioning an SSD, then not writing to a partition, allows the SSD to use that partition's area as overprovisioning. (On the other hand, we can accomplish the same thing by simply leaving some space on our SSDs.) Anandtech has a good discussion on overprovisioning... take a look here: http://www.anandtech.com/show/6489/playing-with-op

PS: all SSDs have some internal overprovisioning built in. So don't worry about it too much.

[HCMarkus]

Just saw this at Anandtech, something to keep an eye on if you are running a Samsung TLC SSD.

http://www.anandtech.com/show/8550/sams ... on-the-way

[kgdrum]

Just saw this at Anandtech, something to keep an eye on if you are running a Samsung TL SSD.

http://www.anandtech.com/show/8550/sams ... on-the-way

I bought the 1tb evo just last week,lol,to use as the boot drive for my new Mac Pro.
I never opened or used it so I'm actually seeing if I can return it.
I wonder if SSD technology is not quite ready for boot drive duties yet..... SSD's for sample drive duties seems like the way I'm going to utilize SSDs for now.

[HCMarkus]

Just saw this at Anandtech, something to keep an eye on if you are running a Samsung TL SSD.

http://www.anandtech.com/show/8550/sams ... on-the-way

I bought the 1tb evo just last week,lol,to use as the boot drive for my new Mac Pro.
I never opened or used it so I'm actually seeing if I can return it.
I wonder if SSD technology is not quite ready for boot drive duties yet..... SSD's for sample drive duties seems like the way I'm going to utilize SSDs for now.

KG, SSDs are TOTALLY ready for boot drive use. If you throw in the towel, you will be missing a joyful aspect of modern computing.

I fully expect Samsumg to announce a fix, but if you are concerned, go with a Crucial MX100, M500 or other drive instead. I have been running four Intel 330s for over two years now with ZERO issues.

I noted users have reported that refreshing the data on the SSD resolved the Samsung issue (which apparently only occurs on their TLC SSDs), so a clone, wipe, and reclone should do the trick for folks noting any slow reads on their Samsung drives.

[mikehalloran]

I noted users have reported that refreshing the data on the SSD resolved the Samsung issue (which apparently only occurs on their TLC SSDs), so a clone, wipe, and reclone should do the trick for folks noting any slow reads on their Samsung drives.

Since the TLC drives are the 840 EVO and 845 EVO, this might be an issue.

Trim should make this a non-issue if I am reading the reports correctly.

[jloeb]

Good note. I haven't noticed any performance drops, but all of the content on my 840EVO sample drive was dumped on in a single write about a month ago. Very glad that it's fixable in firmware.

+1 on using SSD as a system drive. It's the best universally applicable upgrade you can give your computer in 2014. My system drive and recording drives are Crucial M500s for reasons discussed above. Samples on an 840evo. Several months of heavy use, couldn't be happier.

I was worrying earlier in this thread about enabling trim on my 2010 macbook pro running Mavericks, which as far as I could tell ceased to be possible after the previous 10.9.5 update.
After the most recent security update a few days ago, I gave it another shot and was able to get TRIM enablement using the terminal commands reported here:

http://www.return1.at/trim-enabler-for-osx/

All three commands in bold must be issued.

[mikehalloran]

It appears that an extra command will be required for Yosemite.

https://digitaldj.net/blog/2011/11/17/t ... mavericks/

[kgdrum]

Just saw this at Anandtech, something to keep an eye on if you are running a Samsung TL SSD.

http://www.anandtech.com/show/8550/sams ... on-the-way

I bought the 1tb evo just last week,lol,to use as the boot drive for my new Mac Pro.
I never opened or used it so I'm actually seeing if I can return it.
I wonder if SSD technology is not quite ready for boot drive duties yet..... SSD's for sample drive duties seems like the way I'm going to utilize SSDs for now.

KG, SSDs are TOTALLY ready for boot drive use. If you throw in the towel, you will be missing a joyful aspect of modern computing.

I fully expect Samsumg to announce a fix, but if you are concerned, go with a Crucial MX100, M500 or other drive instead. I have been running four Intel 330s for over two years now with ZERO issues.

I noted users have reported that refreshing the data on the SSD resolved the Samsung issue (which apparently only occurs on their TLC SSDs), so a clone, wipe, and reclone should do the trick for folks noting any slow reads on their Samsung drives.

The news with the Evo line scared me, I already sent it back.
Waiting for Samsung to issue a firmware fix and hoping it does the job was not something I was comfortable gambling on.
Now I'm thinking about the Crucial drives, I need to understand the differences between the 100,500 & 550 line they sell.
Primarily what I want in a 1tb SSD that's being used as a boot drive is reliability .

Ultimately I agree SSD is the way to go but I think the technology is still very new and the reliability should improve as well as the prices SHOULD come down very soon.
I still think as nice as it is to have a SSD boot drive,sample drives based on SSD technology imo are more beneficial for our purposes,the Sonnet Tempo Plus SSD pcie card adaptor looks very cool(6G speed).

http://www.sonnettech.com/product/tempossdproplus.html