Hard Drive for Pro Tools 11

[Becharax]

Let me understand something ... U mean putting the samples on the system drive which is the intel ssd wouldnt cause a lower performance than a separate ssd??

[Darryl Ramm]

Originally Posted by DJ Bechara

Let me understand something ... U mean putting the samples on the system drive which is the intel ssd wouldnt cause a lower performance than a separate ssd??

Doing more IO to any drive is always going to slow it down, but you may never notice with an SSD. It depends on the SSD, and its controllers, use/write history of the drive, the device driver, what you are doing, etc. etc..

Heavy VI users will also run out of space on their SSD boot/system drives if using lots of samples. So first thing is what is your space budget for the samples you want to load? If it will fit, ... you have the SSD, so stop asking questions and just try it.

You don't want to run SSDs right up near max capacity as it can hurt write performance (one reason to also over-provision the disk. I always leave 20% unformatted, manufacturer defaults are around 5-7% and a bit too low for good sustained write/GC performance... which a boot/system/sample drive does not really need, oh until you are trying to copy stuff over or do something similar, use it for some scratch/temp space etc. so yes for flexibility I still would tend to overprovision almost every SSD drive, even if its intended use is read-mostly).

Darryl

[mikeyanrol]

Originally Posted by Darryl Ramm

I would not ever want to enable TRIM on a Sandforce controller based SSD like the Intel 520. Can cause problems for no huge benefit. And that Sandforce controller is a reason to avoid them in the first place IMNSHO.

And I hope you are running the latest firmware on that drive. Installers are on the Intel website, not sure if they will work over Thunderbolt. I suspect not. But easy to find out....

I agree with Kelco83. sandforce based intel 520 is also working great for me. It has TRIM enabled by default and doesn't need anymore tweaks or config pains. It is ready to go right from the beginning :)

[Becharax]

Working as a charm ....

I just bought a Samsung 840 with a GoFlex Seagate Thunderbolt adapter ... I hope this works well as a sample drive

[Darryl Ramm]

Originally Posted by mikeyanrol

I agree with Kelco83. sandforce based intel 520 is also working great for me. It has TRIM enabled by default and doesn't need anymore tweaks or config pains. It is ready to go right from the beginning :)

How does it have "TRiM enabled by default" when that is an OS setting? What OS are you running on? Sandforce controllers really do not need TRIM enabled and this can help cause problems/corruption/total failure on these controllers. And they are not all "ready to go" -- especially make sure you are running the latest firmware, there have been bug fixes pushed for some nasty problems.

[Becharax]

Darryl ... I think the guy is referring to the garbage collection system sandforce controllers benefit from ... anyway I've been using an Intel 520 SSD in my Macbook Pro for over a year and i didn't ever notice any lack of performance ... everything opens in a blink of an eye ...