Solid state drives

[Calum0405]

Has anyone here upgraded their hard disk to solid state? If so did you notice any dramatic improvements?

Also, if you purchase a solid state external disk and transfer all your sessions there as well as the digidesign folder containing the pro tools application then will that do anything towards preventing crashes and generally make it perform better?

I am asking because I am getting way too many crashes and cpu errors. I can't upgrade the processor so before I get a new computer I wanted to try a few last ditch efforts to fix this one.

[filosofem]

SSD are not recommended for use with Pro Tools as a system drive nor audio drive.

[Calum0405]

I've heard that you shouldn't record to a SSD. Do you know why??

[Bill Denton]

Originally Posted by Calum0405

I've heard that you shouldn't record to a SSD. Do you know why??

Supposedly, write speed is slower than on a spinning disk. Also, an SSD can only be written to a finite number of times. It's not a ridiculously small number like 3, but it is far smaller than that of a spinning disk.

Note that this info comes only from my research; I do not yet own an SSD. Also, SSD's may have improved in the three months +/- since I did my research...

[Calum0405]

Originally Posted by Bill Denton

Supposedly, write speed is slower than on a spinning disk. Also, an SSD can only be written to a finite number of times. It's not a ridiculously small number like 3, but it is far smaller than that of a spinning disk.

Note that this info comes only from my research; I do not yet own an SSD. Also, SSD's may have improved in the three months +/- since I did my research...

So in theory if you used a SSD for your system (including pro tools) and stored all your sessions on a HD then would you expect that to really make any noticeable improvements to the reliability, speed, crash prevention?

[DarylG]

Originally Posted by Bill Denton

Supposedly, write speed is slower than on a spinning disk....

I'm not sure this is true, but in any case you could write more tracks at the same time to a disc than is possible in PT, so it hardly matters.

Originally Posted by Bill Denton

Also, an SSD can only be written to a finite number of times. It's not a ridiculously small number like 3, but it is far smaller than that of a spinning disk.

Note that this info comes only from my research; I do not yet own an SSD. Also, SSD's may have improved in the three months +/- since I did my research...

This is true. However, I gather that they measure the time before failure in a kind of half life terms, and at last count it was about 57 years.

D

[DarylG]

Originally Posted by Calum0405

So in theory if you used a SSD for your system (including pro tools) and stored all your sessions on a HD then would you expect that to really make any noticeable improvements to the reliability, speed, crash prevention?

Your programs would load faster. That's about it. The real time saving is for people loading big sample libraries, because not only does it take a fraction of the normal time to load, you can also set the pre-load buffer much lower, meaning that you don't need so much RAM, and it therefore loads faster still.

The benefits for audio users are that you could read and write to the same audio drive with a load of tracks, and not have to split things over multiple drives, as is necessary at the moment with normal HD.

D