New Solid State External Hard drives ???

[K Roche]

has any one tried one of the new external SSD hard drives like the Glyph for recording. I was curious about noise . Since my Glyph Drive is louder than my Imac ,I am always looking for less noise.. Besides the fact that they still seem prohibitively expensive has anyone used one ???..... And does any one understand the reason for this apparent contradiction of info on the glyph web site between track count for recording and track count for playback ?????????????????

Performance in an audio environment.

PortaGig SSD drives have extremely fast access speeds, making them a perfect match for remote audio and video work. In an audio environment, you'll experience ridiculous playback performance, even at high edit density. Using our Digidesign Pro Tools™ test sessions, (playback only) we were hard pressed to find the limits of the PortaGig SSD. Just to compare, our PortaGig 800 (using a 7,200RPM HDD) can reliably play 26 tracks of 48 KHz/24-bit audio, with 3 edits/second across every track. The PortaGig SSD can play 128 tracks in this scenario, hitting the limit of our test session. That's more than 100 tracks higher than our standard PortaGig 800, at the hardest edit density. While playback performance is off the charts, Glyph continues to recommend HDD versions to achieve high recording track counts. The PortaGig SSD can record up to 40 tracks of 48 KHz/24-bit audio simultaneously, while the PortaGig 800 (using a 7,200RPM HDD) can record up to 80 tracks simultaneously.

[John_Toolbox]

SSDs are completely silent, as they have no moving parts.

SSDs have almost instantaneous read times, so they are excellent for playback. They generally have slower write times, which can affect the amount of tracks you can simultaneously record, but with most of the newer, faster ones this is not an issue any more.

The specs for the glyph drive are really antiquated compared to some of the newer drives that are out there.

Take a look at OCZ vertex drives and this corsair:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16820233087

The corsair drive, according to it's advertised specs should have no problem simultaneously recording over 100 tracks.

But, considering you're limited to 18 i/o in PTLE, the glyph portagig SSD will be more than enough unless you are tracking a bunch of rewire inputs simultaneously with your 18 i/o.

The SSD's biggest advantage is in playback, with big sessions that have high edit density a regular hard drive is not able to keep up with constantly seeking for chunks of audio. compare the playback specs of other hard drives on the glyph page and you'll see what I mean. Most HDD's struggle with 30 tracks at high edit densities while the SSD has no problem maintaining 128 tracks at ANY edit density.

[K Roche]

Hey Thanks for the reply ,, Kev I just go to looking at the link but these seem to be internal not external ...

[John_Toolbox]

True, but these drives are easily installed in any 2.5 external case though. Ideally ESATA would be the best, otherwise FW800 would work as well.

[K Roche]

Originally Posted by John_Toolbox

True, but these drives are easily installed in any 2.5 external case though. Ideally ESATA would be the best, otherwise FW800 would work as well.

AHH I get it now.. I run an Imac so thus the need for external , Thanks ,Kev

[John_Toolbox]

If you aren't afraid of taking apart your imac, you also could remove your optical drive and put and SSD in one of these:

http://www.ifixit.com/Apple-Parts/12...sure/IF107-081

[K Roche]

Originally Posted by John_Toolbox

If you aren't afraid of taking apart your imac, you also could remove your optical drive and put and SSD in one of these:

http://www.ifixit.com/Apple-Parts/12...sure/IF107-081

Hummmmmm... I probably know just enough to be dangerous but it certainly sounds interesting.... questions... 1. so I'm assuming that would give me a second internal drive on which to record my sessions ?? but how would you route it ? (i.e. the glyph HD comes up on the desk top as an icon I can just select) and 2. But I would then, not have an optical drive, with which to record on to CD,s DVD's etc. correct ?

[getz76]

Apparently the (significantly) assymetrical read/write performance on solid state drives are problematic with streaming data, like audio and video capturing and editing.

Maybe in a couple of generations... they do make fabulous system drivers, though.

[Ken Burk]

SSDs also degrade in performance over time and will fail sooner than a spinning drive.

[Dism]

Originally Posted by Ken Burk

SSDs also degrade in performance over time and will fail sooner than a spinning drive.

Are you sure? As far as I've heard it's completely the opposite, since there are no moving parts. In fact, the life span should be several times longer. Have you ever had a flash drive or SD card crap out on you completely? Supposedly an SSD is meant to last decades or even outlive the original ower. SSDs are also far more resistant to shock which makes them ideal for portable media. Hence why the Macbook Air started off with an available internal SSD. I'm pretty sure that once the datarate specs are up to par, HDDs are going to drop completely from modern computing.