Solid state drives

[arturix]

My thought is that OSX, Pro Tools, plugins and other app will be installed on the SSD. Initial installation might take a few seconds longer than if I were installing to a mecahnical drive, but this is not really an issue. This way my application read times will be fast. However, since my Pro Tools sessions will be located on the external HDD's this means that my write operations will occur on the mechanical drives and not the SSD. This way I have all the advantages of a SSD and all the advantages of a mechanical HDD.

Is there any flaw to this logic that you can see?

MAC PRO 8 Core (2010)
2x Intel Xeon “Westmere” E5620 quad-core 2,4 GHz
16 GB RAM
OSX 10.6.4
PT HD2 v9
Apogge Rosetta 800

Arturix

[nst7]

That's a very good way to set it up.

[albee1952]

Just have a backup plan. I would clone to a conventional drive and keep that handy as a spare9just in case). Since SSD drive reliability is still in question

[Eric Lambert]

Originally Posted by albee1952

Since SSD drive reliability is still in question

It is? What have you heard?

SSD technology has improved since its earliest days. They're much more reliable now.

[Craig F]

there is still ware concerns but system should be better than audio drive

I'm looking for longevity numbers for reading. I thinking of putting our SF/Xs on SSDs for faster seek time...

[Tweakhead]

I would do all the installs, updates and tweaks on a conventional drive. Once it is all working flawlessly, then clone it to the SSD with Carbon Copy Cloner.

[twopike]

I've been using this method for a while now it is excellent. Modern SSD's from osz and even the cheap Kingston drives are very reliable now and if your prepared to have a 64G (massive for me in terms of a system drive) you can get excellent performance for not too much cash. Just cross reference the data rates from the drive you are looking at with a raptor or other fast mechanical. Steer well clear of ssd drives with flash cards. I use a macpro and fill the other three slots with terabyte sea gates and stripe them with osx I get insane data rates for my media and incredible boot speeds and software response. I have cloned SSD's sitting on a shelf and backup the raid regularly.

[squinkys]

Originally Posted by Tweakhead

I would do all the installs, updates and tweaks on a conventional drive. Once it is all working flawlessly, then clone it to the SSD with Carbon Copy Cloner.

There have been a few nasty bugs in CCC that would (in 10.6 I believe) corrupt some system files which would give users problems at later dates. Because of this, I've been using Disk Utility instead. A block level copy is definitely the best and more problem free way to clone!

[twopike]

just a quick update on my last post, I don't use the software raid as recorder locations, I record down to ISCSI volumes. recording to software raids is unsupported and has not worked well for me (white noise!). But as playback it's great for HD pic and large track counts.

[chrisdee]

Originally Posted by arturix

Initial installation might take a few seconds longer than if I were installing to a mecahnical drive

I have not noticed this. As a matter of fact I experience quite the opposite. Installation goes much faster aswell as booting and starting up programs.