Anyone using SSD for their primary record drives?

[IO Composer]

How are they working? Fast as all hell or slower than a standard 7200? I've been reading conflicting reports around the 'tubes and Avid hasn't yet approved them as primary drives so I'm polling around to see if it's time to make the plunge yet.

Curious to hear any real-world reports.

Thanks,
Jamey

[ZEUSS]

I am curious as well. Anyone using them for just the OS?

[jita1]

Great question. I read that Avid doesn't officially support SSD but I would think it would be super fast and more reliable than a spin drive.

[Bob Olhsson]

I've heard they are blazing fast at reading but slower than a 72k mechanical drive at writing. Can anybody confirm that?

[Rail Jon Rogut]

No idea, but they have limited writes.. and if they fail there's likely nothing to recover.

Rail

[Electrox]

The best thing is that they are quiet. The worst is that they aren't supported. I have had fair success on Logic, etc, but not yet ready for prime time...

[The Missile Silo]

I recently heard Leo LaPorte talking about SSD drives with someone who works in multimedia arts. Leo advised using an SSD drive for the OS/Applications, but using a traditional HDD for your media (in our case PT Sessions, Samples Libraries, Etc.)

Yes SSD drives are faster (in the Mac world the speed of a HD is determined by how many times an application bounces in the dock before it actually launches). With an SSD drive I have heard Leo and others report system boot-up times of 8 seconds and 1 bounce in the dock for an App to open. I know on my machines, my systems aren't booting-up in 8 seconds and Apps are bouncing more than 1 time in the dock (and I am a stickler about clean bare bone-essentials only OS's for my PT rigs).

The reliability factor of the SSD drives can be seen by the manufacturers specs on the MTBF rates:

SanDisk - 2 million hours MTBF
http://www.sandisk.com/business-solu...id-state-drive (scroll about half-way down the page to Key Features)

WD VelociRaptor - 1.4 million hours MBTF (I use these currently with my HD system)
http://www.wdc.com/WDProducts/Librar...178-001010.pdf (it's a .pdf so go to page 3 under Enterprise Drives)

One down side: They are expensive as hell! SanDisk 120GB - $399.

Here is an interesting read about Data Recovery for SSD's (full article): http://www.flashbackdata.com/blog/?p=6

Like the article ends with saying "Backup your data, no matter what you store it on".

BTW I am in no way taking sides on SSD's vs. HDD's, just providing factual information.

I hope that some of this helps!!!

Ron

[lode]

Don´t know if this is really an issue anymore, but the input buffer on SSD discs would sometimes "clog" and the computer would suddenly freeze up while the SSD was busy writing what was in the buffer, but that might be a thing of the past now.

I know this was something to watch out for on cheaper models a year ago.

This would be really problematic if you use the disc to write audio to. Not so much if you use the disc for video playback.

[IO Composer]

Originally Posted by The Missile Silo

BTW I am in no way taking sides on SSD's vs. HDD's, just providing factual information.

I hope that some of this helps!!!

Much appreciated, Ron.

I've just upgraded my system and bought an OWC 120Gb SSD for my Boot Drive, an Apple 512GB SSD for my sample drive and a WD 600Gb Velociraptor for my project drive. I was considering getting an OWC 256Gb SSD for my project drive but the write degradation factor has got me a little leary on that prospect. I work my project drives really hard day in and day out and I'm sure that I'd wear it out very quickly. Still, OWC gives them a 3 year warranty, so it may not be such a bad idea.

Would still love to hear some first hand experience on the issue.

Cheers,
Jamey

[Marsdy]

I've been using a OWC SSD in a Westmere 6 Core for nearly three months now.

It's just streaming samples all day so the write degradation issue isn't an issue! I think that may be less of a problem now SSDs are fully supported by OSX?

Anyways, the performance is blistering. Moving from a 2008 Mac Pro/WD Velociraptor drive to the Westmere/SSD, my Kontakt polyphony count has at least quadrupled. I'm now getting better performance out of one Westmere Mac than I was with the 2008 Mac Pro and four PCs running as sample slaves. I'm sure the SSD drive has a LOT to do with that.

I'm sure you knew this but when I looked into which SSD to get, the Apple SSD did not perform well compared to the competition.