Seperate SSD Drive instead of Oxford Chipset
 

Hi Guys,

over here in Europe, I find it very difficult to get a drive that meets the Avid requirements for seperate drive.

What about SSD Flash HDD drives. They should be fast enough.

Any view on that?

Re: Seperate SSD Drive instead of Oxford Chipset
 

Hello.

I'v been an avid user of SSD's for 1 1/2 years now. I must admit that they might not be the best disks for recording as they supposedly get slower and slower after a relative short time. Last night when I copied about 10 GB of data from a 7200 SATA2 disk to my Kingston SSD Now S2BN/64GB disk I was dissapointed to see that the average transfer rate became as low as 20MB/s. When I copied the data from the SSD back to the SATA2 disk the average transfer rate was round 90MB/s.

So for the moment I'm using the SATA2 spinning disk for recording sessions. I might be getting a 10 000 rpm VelicoRaptor disk for recording/sessions.

But, when it comes to read speeds, boot times and program loads SSD can't be beaten! So I would reccomend SSD for system drive, but not for recording/sessions.

Re: Seperate SSD Drive instead of Oxford Chipset
 

Bought one of these from the States, came in 4 days and wasn't charged import tax in the UK:

http://oyendigital.com/2.5-portable-hard-drives.html

Re: Seperate SSD Drive instead of Oxford Chipset
 

SSD is great as a system drive, but not great as a recording drive. Are you running a laptop or desktop machine? If you can use another internal drive, you will get the best performance(and the lowest price). Lacie and OWC drives are both compatible(OWC are better quality). Check at www.otherworldcomputing.com to see if they ship to your part of the world.

Re: Seperate SSD Drive instead of Oxford Chipset
 

Whatever external drive you get, the controller HAS to be an Oxford one.

They're not too expensive if you don't mind 50Mb/s maximum, you can get a 750Gb Seagate Barraccuda 7200.12 with 8.5ms access time for £43 and a 3.5" Startech SAT3510U2FGB (Oxford934 based) Firewire 400 case for £37:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Seagate-Barr...=11EEGOKOKZ46R

http://www.amazon.co.uk/StarTech-com...=11EEGOKOKZ46R

Specs for the case here:

http://uk.startech.com/product/SAT35...losure#tchspcs

There's are plenty of Oxford based cases available all over the place but once you go the Firewire 800 route, 3.5" enclosures tend to be £80+ without a drive!

http://www.span.com/product_info.php...ducts_id=26115

Add a 150Gb Velociraptor to that and you're pushing £200 for a 150Gb external drive!

I've looked into SSDs and the only kind worth considering are the ones based on the Sandforce Controller. They clock 230Mb/s read and 170Mb/s write and they're available in lower capacities such as the Corsair Force F40. I'm sure with the next to instant access time, one of those would be better than a raptor and if you just HAVE to have 100Mb/s on your recording drive and were looking at going the Velociraptor route, consider this:

£65 for a 2.5" Oxford based Firewire 800 case

http://www.span.com/product_info.php...ducts_id=26111

£127 for a 90Gb Corsair Force SSD

http://uk.buy.com/pr/product.aspx?sku=219170988

or if you go the cheapest route, £74 for a 40Gb Corsair Force SSD

http://www.crescentelectronics.co.uk...lid-state.html

You could always archive old sessions to DVD or your back up drive.

Personally, I'm going to compromise and get the 3.5" Firewire 400 case and 7200rpm drive as soon as I can afford the expense.

I get 12.5Mb/s out of my recording drive on the ATA connection below the DVD drive in my G4 and over 50Mb/s on my system drive so going the external Firewire route is my only option and means I can just plug it in and go when I eventually get a more recent Mac and the Pro Tools 9 crossgrade!