I'm preparing to do my semi-annual system drive wipe/fresh install and I'm considering going with an SSD for the system drive (Windows 7x64), and allocate my current HD system drive to another storage drive. Anybody here using an SSD for the system drive? Is the improvement in start-up and access time as noticeable as the manufacturers are claiming? Also, I've read that SSDs can have a shorter lifespan than standard HDs, so I'm wondering if anybody has had one die. Any other pros/cons you've noticed?

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Would normally say fuck off as this has been discussed but everyone gets one.

It is faster. But speed is relative. I don't notice it anymore but it was significant when I made the change. I started first with my OS then audio drive. Then expanded 2 more for certain libraries HS and HB. I noticed the biggest difference there were PlAY' piece of shit loading time was unbearable using hdd. Did this fir the 2 computers so they don't et jealous.

For the Audio drive, I noticed that I could have a lot more tracks. My overall CPU use went down. I doesn't run faster or feel faster really. It loads maybe 10 seconds? maybe 30 seconds with hdd.

I haven't had one fail yet and I have 14 is use right now. But most of them don't really do much. Loading samples , reading writing Audiofiles. I use my mepad to browse the net so none of that constant OS cache stuff.

I back up the audio drive 3 times a da, the OS once. The oneswithsamples, I am not too concerned ask have hard copies for most and. All of the backed up on a multi layered raid configuration.

I should show a picture with all my hardrives. It is silly.

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"This is why Superman works alone." GC
old stuff from days gone by (2001-2004)
Mad For Brad's gay little contest

I bought a 256 GB Samsung SSD drive some time ago and I couldn't be happier. Just for testing purposes, I tried rebooting my laptop just now and from hitting the reboot-button in Windows and to have Windows started with everything loaded again (this included typing in my password) it took only 26 seconds!

Copying stuff, extracting stuff and so on is done at a speed of about 200 MB/s and I don't even notice loading times in games and other applications anymore. Soo....

Buy one!!

Do you actually sit there and watch it load ? My shit loads on a timer and I'm eating am omelett. I doesn't really matter. My computer room is 2 degrees colder tho.

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"This is why Superman works alone." GC
old stuff from days gone by (2001-2004)
Mad For Brad's gay little contest

quote:

Originally posted by Looney4Clooney Would normally say fuck off as this has been discussed but everyone gets one.

I did a search using TA's shitty search function and google site:search and found nothing addressing my questions, at least not from any producers in this forum. But, thanks for the info.

When you say that you have 14 in use right now, those are all SSDs?

quote:

Originally posted by Lobst rebooting my laptop...took only 26 seconds! Copying stuff, extracting stuff and so on is done at a speed of about 200 MB/s and I don't even notice loading times in games and other applications anymore. Soo.... Buy one!!

I'm looking at some other forum discussions and that seems in perfect agreement with almost everybody's experience, so I think the decision is made, although I'll still keep an eye out for other responses. Thanks guys.

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cryophonik | myspace | facebook | soundcloud

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yup.

4 in each mac pro. 2X Intel 128, 2 X Vertex 256
Then my 6 raid 0 thunderbolt read time of death.
6 X Vertex 256
3 of the G drives have 2 SSD each.

i didnt' count the extra intel and vertex i have as backup. So i guess 16 ?

I recently I bought 2 more of those thunderbolt drives but they just have regular HDD.

ANd then i have let me count, 14 X 3TB g drives . MY old pc which has 6 x 3TB.

And then about 20 or so 500 - 2 TB drives which i no longer use because they aren't big enough for my files.


this is the old pic



I take storage super serial.
You should see my perfume collection.

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"This is why Superman works alone." GC
old stuff from days gone by (2001-2004)
Mad For Brad's gay little contest

For the last 3 years I've had all my sample and project data on one hard drive.

No backups.


Anyhoo


SSD's are ok for the OS drive, but I really don't see the point for sample storage. I suppose if you're streaming hundreds of channels of audio from them it's a different matter.

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if i lose data , i don't eat.

SSD for samples is merely for loading. I mean you are loading 16 gigs, you don't want to wait. And PLAY can take 10 minutes. Some things would take that long to load even with 32 gigs of ram. This way , i save ram, use more DFD cache. Stream more than actually loading from ram/

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"This is why Superman works alone." GC
old stuff from days gone by (2001-2004)
Mad For Brad's gay little contest

quote:

Originally posted by tehlord SSD's are ok for the OS drive, but I really don't see the point for sample storage. I suppose if you're streaming hundreds of channels of audio from them it's a different matter.

Yeah, that's exactly what I was planning - 1 SSD for the OS drive, and keep my 4 1TB HDs for my music projects, samples, media, and backup drives. I have a lot of sample libraries and they take up the better part of a 1TB HD, but I don't think I've ever needed more than 5GB at any given time, so conventional HD is fine, in terms of cost-effectiveness and performance, for my purposes.

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PreSonus Studio One V2 | Pro Tools 9 | Sonar X1 PE | Access Virus TI2 Keyboard | Kurzweil PC3X | NI Maschine

I've had an SSD for the better part of a year and really notice the difference when I have to work on a system with an old-school mechanical drive.

Aside from the obvious boot time improvement, I think what really makes a difference is the swap file, which is already completely random-access in nature. Microsoft introduced ReadyBoost in Vista for this very reason, but the performance of a USB thumb drive doesn't even begin to compare to a SATA3 SSD.

So you'll notice a huge difference if you're doing anything memory-intensive; doesn't matter how much physical RAM you've got, there's always going to be some paging going on, and an SSD makes that almost invisible.

That being said, if you do plan to get an SSD, make backups. I thought SSDs were supposed to be more reliable than mechanical drives - due to having no mechanical wear and tear, obviously - but less than a month ago, my drive (Vertex 2) suddenly died without any warning. I mean completely shitcanned, just blue-screened one day and the computer refused to recognize it after the reboot. Could not resurrect, the usual Linux Live CD standby and even the manufacturer's firmware tools wouldn't help.

I subsequently found out that the older OCZ drives (prior to series 4) have a reputation for this, as do all SandForce-based drives (which is... almost all of them on the market), and therefore chose to replace mine with a slightly older model that has a proven track record (Plextor M3). Still, I feel a little like I'm walking on eggshells.

Even Intel, whose original X25 drives were rock solid, has recently switched to SandForce technology, and (surprise surprise) users are reporting a lot of problems with their newer drives (330, 520, etc.), specifically that "8 MB bug" which they've supposedly fixed, but reports are still coming in that the fix isn't 100% effective.

So, expect a noticeable performance improvement, but just be prepared for problems. Fortunately, since throughput is so high, you should be able to do a full restore in a matter of minutes - as long as you have a recent/recoverable backup!

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My party schedule:
2009-02-21 - DJ Attention @ I'm So Popular
2009-06-18 - DJ Annoying @ People Need To Know Where I'll Be
2012-11-32 - DJ Insufferable ɸ Or At Least the Stalkers I Complain About
2048-06-66 - Spastic & Whocares ¶ Although I'm Actually Flattered
9999-45-81 - Tweaker Gimp ☼ I Probably Won't Even Go To This But I Have To Make Sure I Fill Up All The Available Space Here

Does flash/ssd have any effect on audio?

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BT - Communicate (Juan Paulino 2012 Remix)

I tried an SSD recently but didn't notice much improvement. But this is because I just used an external case connected via Firewire 800 to an iMac, as I didn't have a 2.5>3.5" converter, and couldn't be bothered opening the iMac to replace its internal HD - you have to remove the glass and then the screen to get to the HD. If I was going to do such an operation I wanted to wait till I had a more useful SSD size. 128GB is not enough.

My DAW is on a PC system, and I never shut it down, so boot up times are a non-issue for me.