Are Solid State Drives Better?

[Gromit137]

I have a Sony Vaio ... works well with Vegas BUT want to get another...
are the solid state drives (available on this model) worth the extra cost and lower GB ... I think 125GB.

What I've read ... they're faster for editing and have a more solid build/longer life.

What's the consensus?

[ron spencer]

there is no consensus....they have not been around long enough.

too expensive for me....I like hard drives can get a bunch for the cost of one SSD

[redwudz]

Just my opinion. I've used one for about six months and they are really fast. Boot times were cut about half. Program loading speeded up also. Actual program operations, such as encoding, editing, stayed about the same. Some boot processes like loading AHCI and add on card drivers at boot didn't speed up, mainly because they also have to detect the drives.

Mine is much too small, 60GB. They perform best with lots of free space due to the on-board firmware. I keep my free space at about 50%. It regularly moves the data around to keep from burning out individual cells from overuse. The resulting small usable space really wasn't practical for OS's like Vista or W7 and I ended up having to move a lot of files like temp and page and many of my larger programs off it to keep adequate free space, defeating the purpose of having a faster boot drive.

Defragging kills them quickly, as it reuses the same cells repeatedly. You have to turn that off. They do have a limited lifespan on individual cells. Mine was eventually unstable for use as a boot drive and finally got corrupted, so I use it for a scratch drive now and use a Raptor for boot. I don't mind waiting a couple of seconds more for boot. I think if you do use a SSD for boot, you need to add a back up program like True Image or Ghost to be able to reload the OS in case of data corruption.

If you can afford a 120GB or larger, I think they are a good option, especially the newer models, as a boot drive. Mine was one of the earlier ones. But for the price of a 120GB SSD, you can buy several larger rotary HDDs, and have quite a bit more storage space. I see them as a waste of money for most video operations that are more dependant on CPU and RAM speed than HDD speed.

As for faster editing, maybe, if you have two of them and move the data between the drives. If you also have one for boot, that would require three SSD drives for best performance. $$$$


I think they still need a bit of time to mature as a dependable and cost effective option to a rotary drive.

[lacywest]

Interesting ... I saw them at Newegg and wondered how I can put one to use

[Bwizzy]

Well I have a slightly different view of this. I built a separate PC for encoding and things of that sort. I only use the SSDs for the OS and my coding programs. redwudz is right about a lot of things. If you are going to be using the PC, with the SSDs, as your main PC it would behoove you to get another HDD for storage of movies, docs, etc etc. That's what I did. I have a 1TB in my PC. I can't deny, that having 4 SSDs in RAID 0 is ill as a mofo. I start up in 10, shutdown in 5. Check out my Computer Details.

[Webster]

One peculiar thing I found about SSD drive (at least in my case) is that for some reason, it work faster in FAT32 than in NTFS. Also redirect your TMP files to ramdisk also help.

Now if you want really fast drive for fast boot or encoding scratch file and have money to burn, then you may want to check out RAM-drive. Those sucker are really fast but cost per GB is kinda high and they are mostly for system that always on. Below is a benchmark for SSD for those interested.
http://benchmarkreviews.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=308&Itemid=60&li...1&limitstart=3

[ron spencer]

Defragging kills them quickly, as it reuses the same cells repeatedly. You have to turn that off. They do have a limited lifespan on individual cells. Mine was eventually unstable for use as a boot drive and finally got corrupted, so I use it for a scratch drive now and use a Raptor for boot. I don't mind waiting a couple of seconds more for boot. I think if you do use a SSD for boot, you need to add a back up program like True Image or Ghost to be able to reload the OS in case of data corruption.

If this is true, then I see no point to them at this stage of their development....just a waste of $...suppose fun to try though. Maybe for a linux box.

[jman98]

I don't have one and don't know what to think after reading the above. The mean time between failure is rated on some of them as millions of hours, which works out to over 100 years if you do the math. Disk drives won't last that long under normal use. Due to cost, I personally don't know anyone who has one, so if I get one in the near future, I guess I'll just have to plunge in and see what happens.

[redwudz]

They use an internal system to move data around, eliminating fragmentation problems, so defragging isn't necessary. My SSD was corrupted by something the OS or programs did to it, not by the SSD itself. It may have something to do with using AHCI for my drives, which wasn't recommended for that SSD.

Mine is an early model and I used the most recent firmware. Newer models are much faster and much stabler. If you use them properly, they can have a very long lifespan. I would recommend at least a 120GB SSD and just use it for boot. When the prices come down a little, I'll probably pick one of those up. But my present 150GB Raptor also works well for boot. Larger rotary HDDs work fine for the rest of the system and SSDs there would seem to be a waste of money, IMO.

[jman98]

Thanks very much for the follow up post, redwudz. I found it very helpful. I am planning on building a new PC in early 2010 and I'd like to have an SSD as the boot drive. After reading your follow up, I feel a lot better about taking a chance on it.

[Ron B]

I just built a new workstation; I would really like to try an SSD boot drive. I have 5G of 7200rpm disk drives for storage; I could probably get by with an 80G SSD as a boot drive.
The Intel Mainstream seemed the most appealing; I've always had good luck with Intel core components. Tough to justify the $300 price tag; there would really have to be a significant performance at that price. Plenty of rave reviews for gamers and benchmarking fans; but for real work like video and photo editing; opinions seem a little more mixed.
With the increasing demand and somewhat limited supply of these devices; it does not appear the price is going to drop anytime soon; some of the prices have actually increased.
Might have to wait six months or so and see what happens.

[redwudz]

The price of all RAM fluctuates and SSDs use the same type of chips. At present RAM prices are a bit high, so I would wait a bit.

If you want to use a 80GB SSD for boot, just be aware of their limitations. Defragging damages SSDs and using AHCI mode seems to be a bad idea, at least with my SSD.

Some of the better drives also use a 'trim' command that can restore performance to a SSD drive. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TRIM Mine doesn't have that, but I was able to find a program that did similar to restore the original performance which had deteriorated.

I would also move the page file and the temp files off the SSD and don't allow your programs to use it for temp or archival storage or it will fill up quickly and the performance will suffer. Vista and W7 are optimized for SSD operation, XP and other's usually aren't, so something else to consider.

[mL999]

From the replies above it seems that the time taken to process video (convert or render) is dominated by the processor speed and that the faster access and read/write times of solid state drives have little overall significance .
It seems that at present a wise policy would be to aim for

-- fast processor
--2 or maybe more gigabytes of random access memory for use during processing.
--good quality optical drives for program and data storage. probably having external removable drives for fairly secure final storage
--move complete files into the main computer internal drive(s) when they are to be manipulated

.........from mike

[ocgw]

Well I have a slightly different view of this. I built a separate PC for encoding and things of that sort. I only use the SSDs for the OS and my coding programs. redwudz is right about a lot of things. If you are going to be using the PC, with the SSDs, as your main PC it would behoove you to get another HDD for storage of movies, docs, etc etc. That's what I did. I have a 1TB in my PC. I can't deny, that having 4 SSDs in RAID 0 is ill as a mofo. I start up in 10, shutdown in 5. Check out my Computer Details.

Just for fun would you run HD Tach (freeware), only takes a couple minutes and post your awesome benchmark, I bet burst speed will be "off the chart"

http://www.simplisoftware.com/Public/index.php?request=HdTach

pretty pls

wow us lol

ocgw

peace

[Ron B]

I've always configured my video workstations with a boot drive for progams and a "work" drive for scratch and temp folders, etc.; that would be the plan for a SSD to limit writing to the flash drive. From what I understand though; the life cycle of the current SSDs are in the tens of thousands of hours; that would outlast the rest of the components in the computer.

-- fast processor
--2 or maybe more gigabytes of random access memory for use during processing.
--good quality optical drives for program and data storage. probably having external removable drives for fairly secure final storage
--move complete files into the main computer internal drive(s) when they are to be manipulated

--Video rendering is all CPU. More power=less rendering time.
--RAM is what you use when you are "working"; like editing video. The more the merrier; especially with Vista and Win7. My XP Pro machine had two gigs of RAM and did OK, my new Win7 rig has 8G; that's the minimum I would want. The mobo holds 16G.
--DVDs don't hold enough data. Hard drive storage is the way to go. 1TB drives are pretty cheap right now and you can get deals on enclosures if you check around. newegg.com has good deals from time to time. I don't trust drives over 1TB; seems like the failure rate is higher than it should be. Maybe they will get more reliable in the near future. "Green" drives; back in the 5200-5900rpm range are making an appearance. They would be fine for backup drives.

[jman98]

From what I understand though; the life cycle of the current SSDs are in the tens of thousands of hours; that would outlast the rest of the components in the computer.

They are actually listing mean time between failure (MTBF) values of over ONE MILLION hours. If you crunch the numbers, that's in excess of 100 years of constant use.

[The village idiot]

SSD are really of the most use in battery powered devices to reduce over all draw. Go with Velociraptors for spinning drives and RAM based disks for the swap portions if you want things faster.

[Ron B]

Go with Velociraptors for spinning drives and RAM based disks for the swap portions if you want things faster.

These "eggXperts" claim some 7200 rpm drives are faster than 10K drives and the WD Caviar Black is faster than any of the Raptors.

[ocgw]

Go with Velociraptors for spinning drives and RAM based disks for the swap portions if you want things faster.

These "eggXperts" claim some 7200 rpm drives are faster than 10K drives and the WD Caviar Black is faster than any of the Raptors.

The Samsung Spinpoint F3's w/ 500GB platters and some of the 2TB HDD's do indeed have faster sustained average read and write speeds than the Velociraptor, and even my Fujitsu 15,000rpm SAS drives

The 10,000 rpm and 15,000 rpm enterprise drives still enjoy superior seek times and random access times, so while high density drives offer fast shuttling of video files, and fast boots, Raptors and SAS drives are still desirable for the many small files of the OS

ocgw

peace

[Ron B]

I'll take two of each........