SSD Drive

[mikehalloran]

... I have three sitting in mine, on top of the optical drive which I moved from the top to the bottom optical bay. No bracket required, although a little double-sided foam tape will hold your SSD(s) in place if you are worried. If you have a 2009 or later Mac Pro, hook your SSD to the second set of power and SATA connectors located in the bay. If your Mac Pro is an earlier model, there are two "secret" SATA connections located, if I recall correctly, on the mother board. You'll need the appropriate cable to reach those.

HC - - you're a *MADMAN*!!
You've got...what...7 internal drives in your MacPro?? 4 x 3.5" & 3 x SSD's? Can you give a few more details to your drive setup? thanks

[twistedtom]

SSD made such a difference in the whole system.

[HCMarkus]

HC - - you're a *MADMAN*!!
You've got...what...7 internal drives in your MacPro?? 4 x 3.5" & 3 x SSD's? Can you give a few more details to your drive setup? thanks

That's FRAHNK en steeen, MIchael.

My studio burned up once in a wildfire and I have had drives fail, once (after not backing up for two solid days of work) costing significant $ to restore.

So, actually, I have four SSDs and three spinners. Plus two rotating external Time Machine drives.

In the Mac:

One 1 TB spare WD Green with old system data and misc

Two 3 TB Seagate 7.2k drives partitioned for long term and immediate backups of projects, samples, data, etc.

Two 120 GB Intel 330 SSDs. One is my boot drive, the second my current DP project drive.

Two 240 GB 330's housing samples.

External:

Two Seagate 3 TB drives rotated weekly on and off site - Time Machine drives.

Details:
All three spinners are housed in the Mac Pro drive caddies.

Boot SSD is is an OWC SSD caddy replacing the fourth internal drive caddy.

Remaining SSDs sit on top of the (disconnected) optical drive in the optical bay. SSD Two and Three are attached to optical bay SATA ports. SSD Four connects to a SATA PCIe card that also provides eSATA if I need it for client drives. Power for the SSDs is obtained by splitting one of the optical bay power cables.

Capiche?

[williemyers]

jay-zus, HC! when you fire that thing up, do your neighbors start singin' that old Jon Stewart classic,"Gold"? (("when the lights go down in the California town.....)
seriously though, getting my first SSD tomorrow and questions will follow, o.k.?

[HCMarkus]

jay-zus, HC! when you fire that thing up, do your neighbors start singin' that old Jon Stewart classic,"Gold"? (("when the lights go down in the California town.....)
seriously though, getting my first SSD tomorrow and questions will follow, o.k.?

Better than the G5 Space Heater!

You will be digging the SSD. Like getting a whole new computer.

[williemyers]

You will be digging the SSD. Like getting a whole new computer.

HC (et al), just to follow up. I got a Crucial M500 250GB to replace my system/apps drive. I installed it in my MacPro, partitioned it (DiskUtility) and cloned (CCC) the two partitions of my system/apps drive(OS 10.9 & OS 10.8.5) on to it. Then I booted from it.

Now, first off, I'm more than ready to admit that either; (a) I may have done something wrong in the installation or (b) I may have not yet "tweaked" it for max performance (if that's do-able?) or (c) I may have just expected a bit too much in terms of notable improvements with it....but, I have to say I'm not really seeing any impressive results since installing it?

Yes, boot up is faster and that's nice but what I was really hoping for was improvements in DP performance.
When I boot an existing DP project, it does open a bit faster than before and the *initial* loading progress of all of the Kontakt instances is improved. (a Kontakt instance requires two loads, if I'm not mistaken. The "initial" is Kontakt checking for the necessary samples and the "secondary" is Kontakt actually loading those samples in to RAM). Like I said, while the "intial" Kontakt loads are quicker, the "secondary" are as slow as before.

And once all of the Kontakt instances are loaded and I play the chunk, I'm still getting about as high CPU usage as before, about as many Audio Monitor Red spikes and about as many warning messages about DP not keeping up.

So.,,, like I said, perhaps my expectations of improved DP/OS/CPU performance from the SSD were too high? Or could there be tweaks or whatever that I should look in to? No software came with my SSD and I've read a bit about TRIM, but don't know what that is?

I'm really hoping for that "like getting a whole new computer" experience! Or something even close to it?

thanks,

willie

[twistedtom]

Where are the audio files coming from, a spinning HD? If so they will not load any faster. DP is still going to require the same amount of CPU as before. What speeds up is loading of samples, plug-ins and any thing you have them on the SSD, and virtual memory. I notice a big change in speed of most everything.

[HCMarkus]

Where are the audio files coming from, a spinning HD? If so they will not load any faster. DP is still going to require the same amount of CPU as before. What speeds up is loading of samples, plug-ins and any thing you have them on the SSD, and virtual memory. I notice a big change in speed of most everything.

Good reply Tom. I missed Will's post until now.

Will, startup and app opening are, as you note, positively impacted. Unfortunately, once up and running, DP is primarily CPU-bound. DO make sure you have adequate RAM, too.

Sorry if I got carried away with extolling the joi de SSDvre.

[williemyers]

hey Tom & HC, thanks very much for your responses.
As I noted, I successfully installed the SSD, replacing my "system" drive which, of course, holds my OS & all of my apps. But it doesn't have any audio/video files and/or any samples on it - - they're on other dedicated internal 10k drives. As budgeting allows, those drives will be replaced as well and perhaps that's when I'll see the kinds of improvements I'm hoping for!
I was just hoping that putting the DP app on an SSD might make it run - - oh, God...here comes that term!! - - snappier?!

[twistedtom]

Just for a test put some samples on the SSD and you will see.