Anyone using external SSD to record audio

[sunburst79]

Originally Posted by pgripp

So an SSD would make a great sample library drive, correct? Ignoring the price per/GB.

Absolutely! and in 6 months to a year I suspect we all will be doing just that.

[Rail Jon Rogut]

Originally Posted by pgripp

So an SSD would make a great sample library drive, correct? Ignoring the price per/GB.

Yes!

Rail

[roberts]

Originally Posted by pgripp

So an SSD would make a great sample library drive, correct? Ignoring the price per/GB.

$700.00 for a 250GB OCZ if you need speed it well worth it IMO

[K.I.]

Hi.

I changed everything to SSD Drive.
It is comfortable and as for anything, unquestionable.

OCZ Vertex Series SATA II 2.5" SSD
http://www.ocztechnology.com/product...ata_ii_2_5-ssd

[cheekypaul]

Originally Posted by zodo

...In effect, when the drive is brand new, you'll see amazing read AND write performance...until you've written to every block on the drive once, then you have to begin erasing before writing, causing a sudden performance drop-off. That kind of variation makes an unpredictable media drive...

hi zodo, would erasing the drive , and re-installing everything , fix this problem?
or
having a partition?

best wishes

[gearhead2010]

I would just get a new Samsung Spinpoint F3 1 TB drive and partition it (maybe 200-300 GB), using the outer edge partition, (the fastest part of the platters) for audio...

These drives beat out the Velociraptors and can be had right now for $89 at Newegg.

I just had an Intel X-25M SSD for my boot disc in my MacPro but returned after testing. Boot time was cut by only 10 seconds and PT launched exactly the same as it did on my HDD boot up disc - 9.5 Secs.

Considering that the SDD would start to slow down after a short time, and time consuming maintenance would be required to get it back up to speed, I couldn't justify the high price for such a small drive.

A well maintained modern 32-64 Meg cache HDD will really kick but, and in the real world, the speed difference between SSD and HDD for average users is not that noticeable, at least on my MacPro. I guess it's pretty fast to start with and efficiently utilizes the SATA bus etc.

I know when running benchmark tests and the like the SSD's report amazing results, but those tests are generally not real world based actions.

I've done a lot of research on this, believe me, I wanted SSD's really badly and was expecting these amazing results etc, but they just weren't there.

They're truly bleeding edge tech right now, and if you're seriously needing a stable, working system, I would go with some fast HDD's.

-Gh

[drenkrom]

Originally Posted by cheekypaul

hi zodo, would erasing the drive , and re-installing everything , fix this problem?
or
having a partition?

best wishes

No. When you delete files from SSD drives, the sectors are not cleared, they are simply flagged as available. It is when new info will be written to it that it'll erase. A low-level format would work, but would take quite a while.

There have been improvements to the block-rewrite penalty, espcially TRIM technology. The results aren't always that impressive, though. TechReport did a recent look at new models and the article describes SSD's problems and advantages very well. Most of the general info is on pages 1 and 2.

http://techreport.com/articles.x/18757/1

[cheekypaul]

Originally Posted by drenkrom

No. When you delete files from SSD drives, the sectors are not cleared, they are simply flagged as available. It is when new info will be written to it that it'll erase. A low-level format would work, but would take quite a while.

There have been improvements to the block-rewrite penalty, espcially TRIM technology. The results aren't always that impressive, though. TechReport did a recent look at new models and the article describes SSD's problems and advantages very well. Most of the general info is on pages 1 and 2.

http://techreport.com/articles.x/18757/1

..thx...
and could you add anymore thoughts/wisdom now we know the 512gb ssd in the macbook pro is a Toshiba THNS512GG8BBAA?

cheers!

ps. i'm about to buy and i really want to find out a lot. so far, it looks like ssd is still better than a hdd even when the ssd slows down from being filled up. and the issue with rewrites seems to be a problem after , maybe 3-5 years. i mostly playback, and would record on an external if needed for a big session...

[drenkrom]

I'm not sure I can provide wisdom, but thoughts I have plenty of.

From what I understood from Toshiba's very cryptic SSD nomenclature, the THNS512GG8BBAA is part of the HG2 line. That's not good news. An excerpt from the Tomshardware review:

The Toshiba drive's I/O performance is dramatically low; the drive actually does not even deliver better I/O performance than a mechanical 2.5” hard drive. The only exception is the Web server test, which doesn’t include any write activity. The slow I/O write performance also applies to 4K random writes, where the drive really falls behind.

However, the application benchmark results don’t reflect these poor low-level results. The overall score is only 15% behind Crucial and OCZ, or around 50% of Intel’s result if you want to take the X25-M G2 as the basis. So far, the Toshiba HG2 SSD does well when it is supposed to execute read operations, but its real benefit is low power consumption.

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/...im,2593-6.html

So it reads OK, but its IO performance is awful. It has insanely-fast access times and its power consumption is very impressive, but the Toshiba HG2 line is not about performance, it seems. And you most definitely don't want to be recording and reading audio on it simultaneously.

Once again, I am completely puzzled by Apple's hardware choices. There must be some political/financial/contractual reason they don't put an Intel SSD in there, but the MacPro would be screamingly fast with those onboard. Mind you, they shouldn't be too bad with the Toshiba either. It just could've been better.

Personally, I'd be putting a mechanical HDD or two in that MacPro as well.

[cheekypaul]

Originally Posted by drenkrom

...So it reads OK, but its IO performance is awful. It has insanely-fast access times and its power consumption is very impressive, but the Toshiba HG2 line is not about performance, it seems. And you most definitely don't want to be recording and reading audio on it simultaneously.

Once again, I am completely puzzled by Apple's hardware choices. There must be some political/financial/contractual reason they don't put an Intel SSD in there, but the MacPro would be screamingly fast with those onboard. Mind you, they shouldn't be too bad with the Toshiba either...

thx.
your tomshardware review also says this... "I/O tests have little relevance in everyday life unless your applications trigger requests similar to the workloads we utilize. If you multitask a lot, Iometer results might prove relevant. Otherwise, I/O shouldn't be a major factor in your purchasing decision...." (clarification needed - put that in audio terms)

i found another type of review here http://www.legitreviews.com/article/1230/1/ which says something similar re i/o but other figures, including rewriting, working when full and power are good.

is i/o THE important factor for us audio users?

it seems the ssd apple are using is incredible for low power consumption, but not for power users...

am i becoming knowledgeable?

ps. how is your log in name pronounced?