Tell me 'bout Solid State Drives..
- Thread starter mixsit
- Start date
spin up some time in the future 
CoolCat
Well-known member
How Stuff Works site has a article on the SSD.
For me, not needed. I do like the no moving parts thing.
It supposedly has some benefits but if you aren't a geek and aren't crunching 30-0 VST's with 65 tracks...does the Hardrive really ruin life? Does waiting 20 more seconds for a boot up worth the investment? not for me.
And for the small memory sticks, USB sticks.. those are great, robust...mine went the through the washing machine a few times and still work. They are easy to make a complete copy of and are cheap. +5stars
SSD... I think they will eventually replace the big bulky harddrives, in a way the flat panels replaced the CRT's, the manufacturers don't want to build different types, streamline the portfolio etc...everything Flat Panels, then everything LCD or LED....plasma and DLP dropped, CRT dropped and become technology dinosaurs. Eventually we'll all have SSD I'm guessing. They are surely cheaper to manufacture than the old moving parts of metal and sealed boxes of weight for shipping etc..
For me, not needed. I do like the no moving parts thing.
It supposedly has some benefits but if you aren't a geek and aren't crunching 30-0 VST's with 65 tracks...does the Hardrive really ruin life? Does waiting 20 more seconds for a boot up worth the investment? not for me.
And for the small memory sticks, USB sticks.. those are great, robust...mine went the through the washing machine a few times and still work. They are easy to make a complete copy of and are cheap. +5stars
SSD... I think they will eventually replace the big bulky harddrives, in a way the flat panels replaced the CRT's, the manufacturers don't want to build different types, streamline the portfolio etc...everything Flat Panels, then everything LCD or LED....plasma and DLP dropped, CRT dropped and become technology dinosaurs. Eventually we'll all have SSD I'm guessing. They are surely cheaper to manufacture than the old moving parts of metal and sealed boxes of weight for shipping etc..
PTravel
Senior Senior Member
SSDs are considerably faster than thumb drives. The advantage is speed: they're an order of magnitude faster than hard drives. They also use considerably less power than hard drives. I have SSDs in my laptop and in my music computer and editing computer. For the latter, I also have hard drives for data storage, with a RAID 5 array in the editing computer. I use the SSDs for the OS and for program storage -- everything loads dramatically faster.
SSD prices have come way down and, almost certainly, will continue to drop. However, hard drives will have a significant price advantage for the foreseeable future.
There is one downside to SSDs: they are capable of a limited number of write cycles. However, in an average application situation, by the time the SSD wears out, the computer it was in would have been obsolete for some years.
SSD prices have come way down and, almost certainly, will continue to drop. However, hard drives will have a significant price advantage for the foreseeable future.
There is one downside to SSDs: they are capable of a limited number of write cycles. However, in an average application situation, by the time the SSD wears out, the computer it was in would have been obsolete for some years.
ashcat_lt
Well-known member
I don't run 65 tracks, but I was running into playback issues which were eventually narrowed down to sheer disc speed. So I dropped an SSD in for my "in progress" projects and haven't had the trouble again. I didn't really take any meaningful metrics, but projects that wouldn't play before will now.
Pinky
and The Brain...
The increase in performance from platter to SSD is HUGE! Load/save/processing times all increased across the board. I probably shave enough time after a few projects to pay for the increased price.
For archiving, you really want to burn the project to DVD or Bluray. Hard drives and SSDs are magnetic storage and the data can/will degrade over time. They're also susceptible to failure through contact with many external factors like magnetism and heat. I've seen too many drives die arbitrarily over the years to place any archiving value in them, especially if the drive is being used regularly. If you've not had a drive fail, keep using them - it's only a matter of time until one does. Discs (cd/dvd/bluray) also degrade but on a longish timeline. They're a little more tolerant of some external fail factors, not as tolerant of others. Neither is an ideal archive solution, and really - for digital information there is NO PERFECT SOLUTION. The ease at which all the data can be ruined on magnetic media (think - extended contact with the numerous electromagnetically charged/emitting things we use everyday) makes me nervous.
For archiving, you really want to burn the project to DVD or Bluray. Hard drives and SSDs are magnetic storage and the data can/will degrade over time. They're also susceptible to failure through contact with many external factors like magnetism and heat. I've seen too many drives die arbitrarily over the years to place any archiving value in them, especially if the drive is being used regularly. If you've not had a drive fail, keep using them - it's only a matter of time until one does. Discs (cd/dvd/bluray) also degrade but on a longish timeline. They're a little more tolerant of some external fail factors, not as tolerant of others. Neither is an ideal archive solution, and really - for digital information there is NO PERFECT SOLUTION. The ease at which all the data can be ruined on magnetic media (think - extended contact with the numerous electromagnetically charged/emitting things we use everyday) makes me nervous.
Pinky
and The Brain...
I keep a cheap firesafe lockbox for all my discs. I recently went through and pruned a bunch of older recordings that just weren't of any value, mostly old 4 track cassette tapes. Yes, you read that correctly. 
I just figured with burnable media, in the event of a fire for example, in the safe most of the discs will likely survive. If there was ever contact with magnetism they would sruvive. The technology to read them is likely to be grandfathered into newer players indefinitely, mostly thanks to CD audio discs being mainstream enough they'll never completely be rid of CD/DVD playback.
Looks like Google has some information on archiving strategies, like these:
http://www.techrepublic.com/blog/10-things/10-things-you-should-know-about-long-term-data-archiving/
http://agogified.com/97
http://www.pcworld.com/article/124312/article.html
[2-5 years for burned discs is, like, 10% of the 50 year estimate I've read in other papers... fwiw... but it is true that the quality of burnable media varies greatly and plays an important role in longevity]
I just figured with burnable media, in the event of a fire for example, in the safe most of the discs will likely survive. If there was ever contact with magnetism they would sruvive. The technology to read them is likely to be grandfathered into newer players indefinitely, mostly thanks to CD audio discs being mainstream enough they'll never completely be rid of CD/DVD playback.
Looks like Google has some information on archiving strategies, like these:
http://www.techrepublic.com/blog/10-things/10-things-you-should-know-about-long-term-data-archiving/
http://agogified.com/97
http://www.pcworld.com/article/124312/article.html
[2-5 years for burned discs is, like, 10% of the 50 year estimate I've read in other papers... fwiw... but it is true that the quality of burnable media varies greatly and plays an important role in longevity]
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dobro
Well-known member
Everything on the one SSD? OS, DAW and recording files?
jonny deep
Disappointing Member
I run that way. I have a second SSD that I could use for projects, but I don't really need to right now.
ashcat_lt
Well-known member
My studio machine has a separate spinning SATA drive for OS and programs, and acouple more for backups/longer term storage. Only active projects are on the SSD. Page files go to the part of my 8G RAM which XP cant address via RAMDisc. It works quite well.
My live laptop has a single SSD for everything, and also works fine for what I do with it.
After doing some poking around (StorageSearch for example SSD Myths and Legends - "write endurance" article in StorageSearch.com ) .. wow, this is a way deep subject 
There was an interesting opinion (lost the link) that basically said that running near full capacity flash type SS memory drive you could see it degrade in a year or two. Where if it has lots of extra space to spread the read/write cycles out, could tend to out last a spinning drive.
And am reminded once again us audio folks are but the bottom price - bottom performance largely irrelevant niche' part of the industry
There was an interesting opinion (lost the link) that basically said that running near full capacity flash type SS memory drive you could see it degrade in a year or two. Where if it has lots of extra space to spread the read/write cycles out, could tend to out last a spinning drive.
And am reminded once again us audio folks are but the bottom price - bottom performance largely irrelevant niche' part of the industry
'Archive' to an external USB/Firewire attached drive. Don't waste money on a high performing low storage SSD. Its like paying to use a bank deposit box as your sock drawer. And no, SSD is nothing like 'Thumb drives', though, that still a better option given the size/price for thumb drives compared to high performance SSD.