Who is running a SSD for their internal system drive?

[mhschmieder]

Yep, I bought OWC because Didilloyd did a very thorough (and up-to-date) survey of SSD's, but I wasn't familiar with the Sandforce terminology itself.

[HCMarkus]

Here is some good info/test results from Barefeats of some of the new SATAIII SSD's:

http://www.barefeats.com/ssd6g02.html

Tim, google Sandforce and you will find a lot of info on their SSD controller. I'm sorry I don't have any links that consolidate, but Wiki has some good discussions, along with many other sites. Essentially, Sandforce appears to use a scheme that minimizes Write Amplification (google that too!) extending drive life and providing very robust error correction.

[kwiz]

Here is some good info/test results from Barefeats of some of the new SATAIII SSD's:

http://www.barefeats.com/ssd6g02.html

Tim, google Sandforce and you will find a lot of info on their SSD controller. I'm sorry I don't have any links that consolidate, but Wiki has some good discussions, along with many other sites. Essentially, Sandforce appears to use a scheme that minimizes Write Amplification (google that too!) extending drive life and providing very robust error correction.

Wow that new 6G drive is crazy!

[HCMarkus]

You got that right Kwiz! It's almost like having giant chunks of RAM. Wait. An SSD IS giant chunks of RAM!

I like the approach mentioned by timriley, where he runs his OS and the current project from the SSD. With one of these new SATAIII SSD's, I can only imagine how SNAPPY things must feel!

[kwiz]

I like the approach mentioned by timriley, where he runs his OS and the current project from the SSD. With one of these new SATAIII SSD's, I can only imagine how SNAPPY things must feel!

Yep, I do the same thing on my MPB 2.53 which is my portable rig. (see the third post) It's incredible how quick and responsive that system is!

[wabbitguy]

I have two OCZ Vertex 2's 80GB SSD's in my MacPro. One is for the boot drive and it contains all the apps that I commonly use in the studio (Wave Burner, DP, Addictive Drums, etc).

The second SSD is my project drive where all the recorded audio goes and nothing else.

There's a third drive Seagate Barracuda that holds the finalized projects and it's linked to an off site backup that holds a copy of the data from this drive.

What I noticed right off was that the whole system is up and running from a cold start in a matter of seconds (20). It used to take a couple of minutes to get it booted. When I used to launch DP, I could read the plugins names during the startup phase. Not any more. Just a blur.

Opening a project, roughly 12-16 tracks, 2 to 12 takes per track, is faster off the SSD than off the regular hard drive, but not as dramatic as boot time or running apps from the SSD's. Switching between projects is slightly faster once DP is running. I've noticed that on projects that have Addictive Drums on them, the audio loads quite fast, but there's a stall as Addictive Drums initializes itself. For projects that contain nothing but audio, they do appear in about three seconds.

I've really come to appreciate the speed of the SSD's and they've really helped with my workflow. I can't imagine not using them. Now I'm looking at the other Macs I have in the office and longing to add an SSD boot drive to them...

[amergin]

For those looking to understand SSDs check out the recent 'typical macuser podcast'

http://typicalmacuser.com/wordpress/201 ... t-moulton/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

It would appear that OSX 10.7 Lion has specific support for SSDs. It also appears to be the case that it is best suited to mainly read access rather than frequent read/write access.

[bayswater]

Has anyone tried the hybrid drives? They use SSD for frequent reads, and a regular drive for high volume less frequent work. The makers claim to get very close to the performance of a pure SSD at a much lower price.

I know a few people using them, but not for audio or video. They agree that the performance is very good.

While there are reports that SSDs will start generating write errors after a while, supposedly after 10,000 writes on a specific sector, no one I've spoken to is experiencing problems.

[kwiz]

Has anyone tried the hybrid drives? They use SSD for frequent reads, and a regular drive for high volume less frequent work. The makers claim to get very close to the performance of a pure SSD at a much lower price.

I know a few people using them, but not for audio or video. They agree that the performance is very good.

While there are reports that SSDs will start generating write errors after a while, supposedly after 10,000 writes on a specific sector, no one I've spoken to is experiencing problems.

The hybrid drives aren't ideal for Audio/Video since they're designed to add your frequently used files/apps to the SSD portion of the drive which is limited to 4 gigs.
Its probably great for an OS drive though.

[timriley]

I like the approach mentioned by timriley, where he runs his OS and the current project from the SSD. With one of these new SATAIII SSD's, I can only imagine how SNAPPY things must feel!

I got the idea from someone on here. I think it was from James actually.

As wabbitguy said, the computer startup times and DP7 load times are staggering at times, especially for audio only projects. Loading sample based VI's does slow things down a touch but barely.

Yes apparently the Sandforce technology drives are best for Macs. I went with Corsair.

[bayswater]

The hybrid drives aren't ideal for Audio/Video since they're designed to add your frequently used files/apps to the SSD portion of the drive which is limited to 4 gigs.
Its probably great for an OS drive though.

I agree. It would make no difference when tracking or playing large audio files, but what about edits (which for me is most of the work)? Updates to audio edits, waveform images, backups, MIDI data, fades, etc. Wondering if all that would speed up. Wouldn't it also provide a very large cache that could improve repeated pre-renders, short playback loops, etc?

[kwiz]

I agree. It would make no difference when tracking or playing large audio files, but what about edits (which for me is most of the work)? Updates to audio edits, waveform images, backups, MIDI data, fades, etc. Wondering if all that would speed up. Wouldn't it also provide a very large cache that could improve repeated pre-renders, short playback loops, etc?

After further listening to Scott Moulton's comments, I think I'll stay away from hybrid drives.
He stated that the technology is limited due to the 3-4 gig ssd and that the benefits of the drive isn't all that great. I think the SSD is the way to go since it's what I'm using on my MPB 2.53 and it's blazing. But, as soon as Lion is released, I'll update the OS immediately to take advantage of Trim. I'm starting to think that the hybrid drive is cool for casual users that want faster performance for gaming etc....

[labman]

This has all been great help folks. Appreciate it.

For a test, I put in an OWC 115GB into a MBP 2010 model. The boot time is now 5 seconds. Yikers.

Will probably put some into the production drives for DP mid-may.

Our research does bear out that the OWC units are far and away better in the long run.

[kenrinc]

So you guys are dragging a copy of each project to your SSD drive, working from there and then saving changes to a standard drive correct?

I work IT for living and the experiences I've had with SSDs was not good. We purchased Dell laptops with SSDs as factory and although they were amazingly fast for boot and regular office duties, I found that after 4 or 5 months I was getting complaints from my users that the system was really, really slow. Particularly with apps that used some form of localized database like Outlook. Just opening mail would grind to a crawl when accessing messages and the like. We ended up converting them all to 7200rpm drives and they were happy. I will say that this was some time ago, a little over a year, a lifetime in computer hardware time so no doubt things have improved but I'm still a bit leary. Nice thing is that they have come down low enough in price to be worth experimenting with which is what I might do.

Ken-

[wabbitguy]

So you guys are dragging a copy of each project to your SSD drive, working from there and then saving changes to a standard drive correct?

I work IT for living and the experiences I've had with SSDs was not good. We purchased Dell laptops with SSDs as factory and although they were amazingly fast for boot and regular office duties, I found that after 4 or 5 months I was getting complaints from my users that the system was really, really slow. Particularly with apps that used some form of localized database like Outlook. Just opening mail would grind to a crawl when accessing messages and the like. We ended up converting them all to 7200rpm drives and they were happy. I will say that this was some time ago, a little over a year, a lifetime in computer hardware time so no doubt things have improved but I'm still a bit leary. Nice thing is that they have come down low enough in price to be worth experimenting with which is what I might do.

Ken-

I did a complete fresh install of SL and DP on a OCZ Vertex 2 80 GB drive last year. A second identical drive holds my projects. I've been using them both daily for months and I haven't noticed any slow downs at all.

I still back up to yet another regular HD in my tower and from there, off site. When I first thought of trying out SSD's, I was kind of leery but so far, for me, they just work. As for how long they last, no idea. I'd be happy with a couple of good years out of them.

Actually now that I think of it, the slowest thing on my Mac is the carbon based mouse pusher...

Mel