Best usage for solid state drive

[lgonz]

We have 2 owc and one intel ssd as boot drive and sample playback for over 6 months, and they make a big difference in performance. No going back to regular HD here at least for those uses.

Luis Gonzalez

[apanacci]

Do Disk Warrior and Tech Tool pro work the same with these drives like they do with the others?

[PMortise]

Concerning SSDs - do the same things apply like spreading out your libraries, and how much you should fill them?

[Shooshie]

When people were first writing about SSDs and writing reviews about the different brands, I became aware of a problem inherent in the design of most SSDs. They would lose memory "cells" as you erased and rewrote them. Consequently, some manufacturers were sending them out with something like half-again their rated capacity, and as they lose cells the dead circuits are swapped out with live ones, all happening automatically without your needing to be aware of it. Does anyone know if that is still a problem? Have they conquered that little snag?

In any case, the SSDs in my iPads have been flawless in use, and very fast. I don't have any for my desktops or laptops yet, because I've been waiting to hear some good news about this memory failure problem.

Shooshie

[HCMarkus]

SSDs are perfect for storage of VI sample sets. SSDs used in this manner are being read from, and rarely written to. As such, any concerns of wear (as misplaced as most such concerns are, see below) are absent in this application.

Do a little Google research on SSD life expectancy, and you will quickly come to the conclusion that, for all but enterprise users, concerns in this regard are not based in reality.

As far as spreading audio samples across drives goes, compare SSD data transfer speed to that of spinners and you will quickly come to the conclusion that concerns in this regard are not based in reality. Am I repeating myself here?

I ended up buying two 120 GB Intel 330's for my new system. So far so good; very quick for boot drives, and they have Intel's proprietary firmware managing the Sandforce controllers. I plan to house my most often used polyphonic sample sets (BFD and Ivory) on one SSD, and use a portion of the SSD boot drive (I partitioned it 50-50) to house current working projects, backed up of course.

As SSD's get cheaper, it is very hard to justify not getting at least one to boot your system.

[PMortise]

@HCMarkus - Many thanks for your reply.

[mikehalloran]

Do Disk Warrior and Tech Tool pro work the same with these drives like they do with the others?

For the most part, yes.

TechTool Pro does tell you that de-fragging is never needed on an SSD.

[williemyers]

Are the OWC drives decent quality anyone?

We use all OWC SSD's here. Superb stuff. And their SSD's do not need trimmed.

OWC is offering a 30-day full refund trial on SSD's;
http://eshop.macsales.com/service/returnpolicy#s22
hard not to want to give one a try with those terms!

[kgdrum]

SSDs are perfect for storage of VI sample sets.
use a portion of the SSD boot drive (I partitioned it 50-50) to house current working projects, backed up of course.
.

Hi HC
I've held off on getting into SSD for the potential erase & rewrite issues.
I've been tempted to try for samples or boot drives.
I've held off as I'd need to authorize too many things on the boot(might do when I get a newer Mac) & the prices come down a bit more.
I'm surprised,you're actually saying on your boot partition that you intend to store current projects on : this will not become an issue when you trash and replace with new projects? On the partition?

[HCMarkus]

KG, I just saw your question... I will be using the second (non-boot) partition on my boot SSD to house working projects. The boot partition will be unaffected. The only thing on it will be OS and Applications, and the various things OSX doesn't make it easy for us to move.

As you know, I am just setting up a new machine, so my time to move to SSD is now. I'm still working on my G5 Quad as of today, but final master of my current project is to be completed on Sunday. Once that disc goes to replication, I'll be off to the races in rebuilding the studio around the new Mac. A great time to fix a lot of little things in my rooms, too.

[kgdrum]

You don't think this kind of use to 1/2 a drive could cause potential issues?
Interesting,I've always assumed SSD is great for a boot drive or sample drive,I've been working on the premise that SSD drives are not the best choice as a project drive under any circumstances.
I'd love to know this isn't an issue anymore.

[HCMarkus]

Well, if one does the math on read-write cycles, SSD life isn't really the issue some have made it out to be, certainly for the non-enterprise user. I'm not sure what kind of speed advantage using an SSD for a project drive will bring, but I'm thinking lightning-fast load times could be rather cool.

I'll report back on how it goes once I get things up and running. I don't even have DP installed on this machine (I'm typing on the new Mac) yet.

I was pleased that my Waves upgrade on the G5 didn't break DP... I cloned my system drive first, but I really wanted to give Waves L3 Multimaximizer a go. So I upgraded from V5.x, which I've been using forever, to 7.1,the last PPC version of Waves. I'm glad I did. L3 is an amazing plug in, even the "light" version that I got as part of my Gold to Platinum upgrade. I figured if I was gonna' take a WUPping, as is required to get the new Mac rolling, I'd make it hurt real good, and put the $200 I would have to spend regardless towards something useful, like Platinum. Waves has got the installer thing down now... used to always be a pain, but it was easy-peezy for me. And they tell me DP8 will work with Waves 9.

[Steve Steele]

Hello all, I have 1 bay left for a hard drive in my MacPro. Drive 1 is system, drive 2 I record to and then drive 3 has samples and Ivory stored on it. I want to buy one of the new solid state drives for bay #4. What would be the best to use that drive for ? System, record to, or sample/Ivory back up, thanks

Samples first. Also I did a lot of research on SSDs before buying. According to tests run by StorageReview.com the Samsung 830s are the only brand that don't get hit when r/w incompressible data. Crucial M4s might be ok too, not sure.

However, the Samsung's are slightly slower overall. But incompressible data sspeeds should make up for that if all is true.

"The Samsung SSD 830 wasn’t slowed down by incompressible data..."

This article explains why. but it's mainly due to their custom chipset and that they don't use the Sandforce controller.

http://www.storagereview.com/samsung_ss ... view_256gb

and

http://www.storagereview.com/samsung_ss ... aid_review

This is important because because most sample libs use NI compression. It's lossless, but still compressed.

And remember that access speeds doesn't just mean have fast samples load. It also means being able to read "direct from disk", which can save on RAM BIG TIME if your SSDs are fast enough. A RAID 0 would seem like a good idea, but Just be careful to measure sustained vs random 4k access times. Sample sizes vary but most are large enough that a RAID 0 would work well.

In real life, I've been able to save a lot of RAM, and have my RAM hungry libs run well in DFD mode. THAT's the biggest advantage of SSDs with audio at this point IMO.

[HCMarkus]

I'm pretty sure incompressible data only impact write speeds on Sandforce SSDs. If you are using the SSDs for sample data, you will be writing to it only when you first install the data. I don't believe WAV or AIFF files are incompressible, but MP3s and You Tube Videos are. Whatever SSD one uses, the speed is mind-blowing when compared to a spinner.

[Steve Steele]

I'm pretty sure incompressible data only impact write speeds on Sandforce SSDs. If you are using the SSDs for sample data, you will be writing to it only when you first install the data. I don't believe WAV or AIFF files are incompressible, but MP3s and You Tube Videos are. Whatever SSD one uses, the speed is mind-blowing when compared to a spinner.

Are you responding to me? Most Kontakt sample libs use NI's Lossless Compression Codec. That's incompressible data, and is a good reason to use Samsung's 830 series SSDs (which does not use a Sandforce controller) for your Kontakt sample libs over other Sandforce driven SSDs (which is most of them). WAVs and AIFFs are compressible, so no difference there.