Is capturing or encoding safe with SSD?

[Lincoln Rising]

Greetings. First post here. Been coming to this great Forum for years for info, but finally post now.

I am setting up a PC with 3 SSD drives - one for the main one (C drive) as well as two other secondary drives. This PC will be primarily used as a capture/encoding box.

I have read somewhere, maybe here, that someone said that you shouldn't be using SSD drives for this type of work. I do not remember where, and it was about 10 years ago or so, and can't find it in any search, so I ask. Such a comment has stuck in my head, and it makes me concerned about things like dropped frames, bad encodes, or maybe even a fire hazard. So I ask to get some sort of sanity with this, ha ha.

My questions then: Is it safe to use SSD drives for capturing and encoding? Is it better to do such work with the C drive or main drives?

Thank you very kindly. I look forward to any wonderful discussion on this.

[lollo]

Is it safe to use SSD drives for capturing and encoding?

Yes

Is it better to do such work with the C drive or main drives?

Ideally you should capture to a different drive than the one runnig the OS, but on modern systems I captured hundreds of tapes in lossless format having a single drive not even partitioned.

[Cornucopia]

The ONLY issue with SSDs is with bitrot/corruption of memory cells, usually due to pervasive, repetitive overwriting (those memory spots have been overused), or for loss of magnetism due to VERY lengthy disuse.This is NOT the use case for most capturing, or (simple) editing workflows, which only write memory once or at most a few times, and then just read. Having multiple drives to bounce from A --> B --> A, etc actually is a performance enhancement and a best practice.

Former preferences for HDDs have long since been surpassed by steady improvements in SSD tech.


Scott

[lollo]

Endurance (number of write cycles) and data retention are adequate since longtime. Redundancy is used for large arrays. There is no loss of magnetism in Non Volatile Flash memories

[Lincoln Rising]

Hey there, thanks for the fast and thoughtful replies! Honestly, as much as I hear about advantages with SSD, I can't help but remember that one person making such a negative comment about them regarding capturing. Maybe I remember something wrong or he/she was smoking something at the time LOL.

Anyway, just for the record, I don't care for longetivity or archiving. Even speed isn't as important - most work will be done unattended (overnight, while at work, etc.).

If I get 2-3 years of good encodes and captures from this box I will be happy.

@lollo: Hey, good to hear some good experiences from your end. I will be choosing the secondary drives, but still very encouraged.

@Cornucopia: Like I said, long term endurance or eventual decline is not a big concern. I just want to make sure it does great work till then. If you, or anyone else, can tell me - If a drive is indeed failing, will it be easy to detect? I'd hate to do a ton of work then find out later it was all ruined from issues.

[lollo]

@lollo: Hey, good to hear some good experiences from your end. I will be choosing the secondary drives, but still very encouraged.

I am also an Analog Designer, and as such I designed many NVM (Non Volatile Memories) blocks, both Flash and EEPROM to be embedded in our ASICs/ASSPs and Standard Products (Atmel tecnologies)

edit: posted this just to attract attention from Bwaak ...

[Forenzik]

I use a NVM.e drive (dedicated, non-system) and it sure is nice to have a 3000MB/s transfer rate, mainly, I find there is little need to worry about imparting any sort of jitter anymore when doing any other work while capturing, processing, or encoding. When using HDD and SDD, it always seemed to be the drive speed that was the bottleneck.

[lordsmurf]

My questions then: Is it safe to use SSD drives for capturing and encoding?

Encoding, absolutely, I've done it for years, almost a decade actually.
Capturing, eh... There are problems.

Ideally you should capture to a different drive than the one runnig the OS, but on modern systems I captured hundreds of tapes in lossless format having a single drive not even partitioned.

Have you tried to install a larger 4tb+ SSD, then partition the boot C: to about 250gb, and the remaining D: open to the capture? I know many did this for "speed" for HDD, but I'm worried about data isolation. I may try that no a single-bay high-end 15" laptop (non-shiny IPS monitor, i7, etc), using a 4tb Samsung EVO.

I've run into too many issues with SSD capturing. The data rate bogs down SSDs worse than IDE HDDs, and it starts to drop massive frames.

The fragmented nature of SSD also does not work well with these large files. You can get away with capturing to SSD, if you format before each use. But cheap SSD start to drop heavy before 50% usage. I have some better/non-best 2tb SSDs that start to drop as you approach 75% usage. Capturing to SSD only works well if you're splurging on quality drives from Samsung, maybe WD Black. I decked out a capture laptop with pure Samsung EVO, but it cost me. I can capture to 90%+ plus capacity, before needing to dump the files. By contrast, I can capture to almost any HDD, fill to 95%+ capacity without issues, if formatted beforehand.

Even SMR 2.5" HDD are less problem.

I hate dropped frames due to hardware, such a waste of time to recapture.

[lollo]

The fragmented nature of SSD also does not work well with these large files.

I do not know what you want to explain. SSD is an array of "words" of certain "width", similar to RAM (Random Access Memory). Defragmentation concepts simply do not apply.

For all the rest, which is 100% non sense and not true, we already answered.

[Forenzik]

Whatever drive you get, I highly recommend Blackmagic Design Disk Speed Test to actually test bulk data transfer speed, CrystalDiskInfo to monitor drive temps and health, and of course if you're using Windows, additionally task manager to monitor disk response time and see what is hitting the drives. Even at many SSD speeds, a simple automated virus scan can randomly cause issues on a non-system drive. It is the disk response times that seem to really cause issues. It was horrible when I used HDD's, then almost always fine when I used SSD's, and that wasn't even high def video rates. If you're considering working with high def or above, I probably would use the NVM.e's; heck they're actually cheaper than many SSD's now. Crucial is a good SSD and NVM.e producer.

FWIW, on my NVM.e, I can capture a stream and run a deinterlacing/processing script in Avisynth+ on another file simultaneously. I have done this on hundreds of videos without any dropped frames or hardware related issues.

[Lincoln Rising]

Just for the record, my setup will be a cheapie SSD for drive C, but the two main ones I intend to use for the hard work, the secondaries, will be Samsung 840 Pros, about 10 years old but high quality.

@lordsmurf: Very discouraging for capturing, of which I also intend to do with this box. The two drives I have as secondary are top notch though. Yes, you can reformat before a capture, but this takes time, and I believe also drains the life of the drive unnecessarily.

I do believe if there's any problems it would be with capturing, which is what that one person mentioned a while ago which made me post this thread. (Encoding seems all clear with SSD).

I am thinking of including an IDE HDD as one of the two secondaries for now, for capturing.

Anyway. Enjoying the discussion and feedback. Thanks so far.

[lordsmurf]

Crucial is a good SSD and NVM.e producer..

That's not necessarily true. Micron (Crucial) makes lousy drives as well, under the same brand name. The exact drive is what matters, not the brand.

JYes, you can reformat before a capture, but this takes time, and I believe also drains the life of the drive unnecessarily. .

I don't think a quick format has much affect. The real issue is file deletion and reuse. When you delete files, it works harder to find "free space" than a drive that has been formatted to understand all space is free. I've tested this.

Delete-only non-format = more dropped frames.
Formatted = less/no drops.