Does size really matter?

[ingeborgdot]

I guess it depends on who you ask
Really, though I do have a question about SSD and size. It has been asked over and over but I have not seen any threads that really answer my question.
What size SSD would be the best option for me? I do your normal computer operation but do a lot of serious video work. I have many programs that I need to use for different things that I do. Several different things for video(large programs) office, programs that I have for home automation, hundreds of gb of music, hundreds of pictures, tb of video. Large programs for pictures. I know I won't store any of the music, pics or video on the SSD.
I have read many, many, many conflicting reports on what to do with your SSD. My big question is will I get faster video rendering if the program is on the OS drive? Where is the best place to put my programs. On another drive or on the same partition as the OS? I want what will be best for video work.

Where can I go to find the best possible way to set up a computer for building if not here?

[edDV]

...
My big question is will I get faster video rendering if the program is on the OS drive? Where is the best place to put my programs. On another drive or on the same partition as the OS? I want what will be best for video work.

Where can I go to find the best possible way to set up a computer for building if not here?

The main advantage of SSD is a faster OS boot and program launch. This is appreciated by the laptop and gamer communities that boot alot and load huge programs.

For general video work SSD shouldn't help much with render times. That is all CPU intensive work.

If you are capturing uncompressed SD video, an SSD is an alternative to a disk RAID. May work for HD as well in short segments (needs to be really large for HD capture -- approx 375-500 GB/hr). Most will find a RAID more convenient and cost effective for HD capture.

In general, SSD speeds opening apps. IMO for video work, your money is better spent on more CPU power.

[jagabo]

My big question is will I get faster video rendering if the program is on the OS drive?

The process of running a program involves first copying the program to DRAM then running it from there. You will only get faster loading of the program -- saving a few seconds when you start it.

Unless you are going from uncompressed (or lightly compressed) to uncompressed (or lightly compressed) there is little benefit from having the video files on an SSD. And if you are using uncompressed video SSD drives are too small.

The CPU is the key component for video encoding. GPU if you are using a GPU based encoder (though in my experience GPU encoders still deliver inferior quality).

[ingeborgdot]

So, an SSD drive is somewhat useless for video. It will help for boot time but that is not going to help save time for any of the video editing that I do. Would I be better off with a hybrid hdd or is that a non factor also?
I am actually looking at the i7 2600K for the CPU. Will ram make any difference or even GPU?
I use Sony Vegas Pro 9 at this time.
What would you use as your setup for a nice setup with this CPU?

[jagabo]

So, an SSD drive is somewhat useless for video. It will help for boot time but that is not going to help save time for any of the video editing that I do. Would I be better off with a hybrid hdd or is that a non factor also?

Unless you are using uncompressed video hard drive speed doesn't make much difference. Having two drives, one for source file, one for output file is enough.

I am actually looking at the i7 2600K for the CPU.

Good choice.

Will ram make any difference

No, not as long as you have enough. 4 GB or more for Win7.

or even GPU?

Only if you are using a GPU based encoder. I don't think Vegas9 supports that. Maybe edDV can verify that.

[ingeborgdot]

Now I just have to find a place where it shows how to setup a computer with the right setup for video.

[edDV]

Vegas 10 supports limited GPU support. Expect more in the future releases.

See the Vegas Pro 10 release notes.

[edDV]

So, an SSD drive is somewhat useless for video. It will help for boot time but that is not going to help save time for any of the video editing that I do.

Since most camcorder video is highly compressed to the 17-50 Mb/s (2-6 MB/s) range, hard disks are not stressed except during file copy. Uncompressed video is just the opposite. SMPTE 292M HD is 1485 Mb/s (186 MB/s) so requires a RAID.

[ingeborgdot]

Where would you run across this SMPTE 292M HD?

[jagabo]

Oh, it helps to have GPU decoding when editing high def AVC files. But pretty much all the current midrange and up cards have hardware decoding and encoding. Support for Nvidia is better than AMD/ATI.

Look for a motherboard with the Z or H chipsets. That will let you use the 2600's onboard GPU encoding/decoding features (Quick Sync) even if you aren't using it as a graphics card.

http://www.anandtech.com/show/4329/intel-z68-chipset-smart-response-technology-ssd-caching-review

[edDV]

Where would you run across this SMPTE 292M HD?

In any pro environment like a post house or TV network facility.

They usually compress only after editing is done.

[redwudz]

Just came upon this thread and I'll try to answer your original question. I agree with the other posts that SSDs are nice for speeding boot times and program load times, but not so useful for improving program operation speed.

That said, if you want to use a SSD for boot, I would recommend a 150GB to 200GB SSD. But those sizes aren't cheap. $$ I have a 60GB SSD and it was much too small for a boot drive, so I just use it for temp files. I have two WD 150GB 10K RPM Raptors for boot drives on a couple of my PCs and they seem to work very well for boot and much cheaper than SSDs in the same size. They are a few seconds slower than a SSD for loading the OS, but fast enough and quite a bit quicker than my other 7200RPM boot HDDs.

You can check your present boot drive and see how much space is being used and size a SSD or other fast drive accordingly. With a 60GB SSD, I was always having to direct software away from using the SSD for temp or other files or it would fill up too quickly and hurt performance. SSDs need to move files around to even out wear on the drives. They don't use defrag programs as those reuse the same area on each defrag and that can cause early failure.

I tried to keep it at about 50% free space, which limited my usable size to about 30GB, not large enough for my uses. My 150GB boot drives seem to be about the right size and it's easy to keep plenty of free space on them.

My usual PC setup is a small, fast boot drive, then two or three large drives, usually 1TB or more. I use them for video editing, encoding and storage. I don't use the boot drive for much of anything except program storage. The boot drive is constantly accessed by the operating system, so not a good place for captures or editing or some other hard drive intensive tasks. I do those operations with the larger drives.

The larger drives don't really have to be that fast, unless you do a lot of capturing, especially of raw video. Then, as mentioned, a RAID setup would be better. Encoding and most editing don't need fast HDDs. Just watch your HDD activity LEDs during either operation and you can see how drive intensive they are.

One other minor problem with a SSD drive is they don't work well with older OSs like XP or earlier. Vista and W7 have OS software that does work well with SSDs. Unknown about other OSs, such as Linux.

[jman98]

One other minor problem with a SSD drive is they don't work well with older OSs like XP or earlier. Vista and W7 have OS software that does work well with SSDs. Unknown about other OSs, such as Linux.

Linux has supported TRIM on SSDs since Feb. 2010. OS X Lion (due out July) will have support for this as well.

[ingeborgdot]

I may go with the new 6.0 Gb/s WD raptors. 15% faster than the old ones and cheaper besides. I don't need faster boot times so this may be a cheaper alternative.

[jagabo]

I may go with the new 6.0 Gb/s WD raptors. 15% faster than the old ones and cheaper besides. I don't need faster boot times so this may be a cheaper alternative.

Not worth it in my opinion. You can get similar performance using a 2 or 3 GB 7200 RPM drive with short stroking. Random seek will be a little slower but throughput about the same because of the higher data density of the bigger drive.

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/wd6000hlhx-velociraptor-600gb,2600-5.html

Note that 6 Gb/s is the speed of the SATA interface, not the speed at which data comes off the platters.

[TBoneit]

Wel I say add a SSD.

Faster boot times, faster program loads, faster shutdown. I put a 160Gb into a laptop and it made the laptop much nicer to use.

I replaced my Desktop i7 computers boot drive with a Intel 320 series SSD and it starts much quicker. The place I really appreciate it is that I have one program that used to take minutes to load to usability, now I start it and a few seconds later it is ready to use. The same program shuts down much quicker too. Since I use that program all the time I can now start it and stay at the computer, before I had plenty of time to watch some TV while it was loading. Less heat, less power usage. No noise. less wasted time waiting. After using the first SSD in the desktop, I switched everything to SSD boot drives. My two laptops and the computer build I did to upgrade my brother old P4 to I7 2600 too.

I'm frugal but time is money too. I'm sitting here trying to decide whether to buy a 96Gb SSD for $104.99 after MIR @
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820139408&nm_mc=EMC-IGNEFL062311..._-20139408-L0F
I'd use it here at work since I'm also the impatient type.

[ingeborgdot]

What is short stroking?

[jagabo]

What is short stroking?

Creating a partition at the outer edge of the drive where transfer rates are highest.
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/2tb-hdd-7200,2430-6.html

Then you use the rest of the drive for non time critical storage.

[ingeborgdot]

Is a 120GB SSD large enough? I have a chance to get a corsair force III for 159 delivered. Is that going to be large enough? Otherwise it jumps to much slower SSD for more money. This was a great deal.

[redwudz]

The 120 SSD should be large enough. For me a 60GB was too small, but you can always keep temp files and some programs from installing on the boot drive if space is an issue. For that price, a SSD would be very tempting.

[jman98]

ingeborgdot - I bought a 256 GB SSD. I thought I'd pass on my reasoning as it's something you might want to consider. If you look at the expected MTBF (mean time between failure) rates for SSDs and crunch the numbers, they could last for 100 years. Even if you don't get 100 years out of them, they should last a VERY LONG time. That means that any drive you buy now should still easily be good when you junk your current PC down the road and get something newer. I figured that in 5+ years from now when I replace my new PC that I'm going to pull out the SSD and use it in a new PC. I'd much rather have a bigger one than a smaller one 5 years from now. So while you will save money now on the smaller size SSD, I'd just ask you to consider if you think that in 5+ years you're going to be really happy that you skimped now instead of buying a bigger one.

[jagabo]

I disagree. The cost of buying a 60 (or 120) GB SSD now and a 256 GB SSD drive five years from now will be less than the cost of buying a 256 GB SSD drive now.