Solid State Drives

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rimisrandma

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Are solid state drives a better option than the generally accepted 7200 rpm sata option?

People that I have talked to say that they are limited in amount of write times. From the Wiki link their is a SSD based on DRAM that is not susceptible to this write limit;
Solid-state drive - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

What is this about and how do tell the write life on an SSD?
 
The "write-life" is limited, but - to my understanding - it's not that limited.

DRAM isn't a great choice for a hard-drive replacement, as - again, to my understanding - it's volatile, i.e. if you turn off your computer it goes away. Seems to me you'd be better off adding more RAM to use as - well, you know - RAM, rather than trying to treat it like a hard drive somehow.

The main issue is just a simple cost-benefit analysis. The cost is considerably higher than a mechanical hard drive, and - if you're just doing ordinary audio processing and defragmenting, etc. - the benefit may not be significant. If you're a gung-ho gamer, the answer would likely be different.
 
rimisrandma said:
Are solid state drives a better option than the generally accepted 7200 rpm sata option?

People that I have talked to say that they are limited in amount of write times. From the Wiki link their is a SSD based on DRAM that is not susceptible to this write limit;
Solid-state drive - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

What is this about and how do tell the write life on an SSD?
Click to expand...

A better option in what regard? Playback sounds the same from a platter or SSD.
 
Also, you can get 2 300gb 10000 rpm raptors for what a single 200gb SSD will cost you.
 
Supercreep said:
A better option in what regard? Playback sounds the same from a platter or SSD.
Click to expand...

To further reduce Latency issues, basically get Latency as low as it will go.........Or is this absurd to approach it this way??
 
It's not absurd if hard-drive speed (particularly hard-drive read speed, as SSDs read faster than they write) is the "weak link" in your system. I suppose that might be the case, through a combination of:
- high bit and sample rate
- lots of tracks, and
- enough processor power and RAM that those won't hold you back anyway.
How likely that particular combination is depends on your equipment and how you're using it, I guess.

One other thing to note: where SSDs have a huge advantage is non-sequential reads. That is: reading data that's scattered all over the place, which is something an SSD can do considerably faster than an ordinary hard drive, as the hard drive must physically relocate its head. If the files you're reading aren't fragmented, and you're using a separate drive for your recordings, the advantage becomes less pronounced.
 
HDD's do not cause latency issues. CPU and RAM are the usual suspects. At least up to 16 or so tracks, probably 24 or more.
 
An HDD can be holding back your entire processor, so unless you want all of the other processor speed to go to waste grab a SSD.
 
Just to clarify my own earlier post slightly:

It is possible that your mechanical hard drive is the weak link. It does not seem highly probable
 
sjjohnston said:
Just to clarify my own earlier post slightly:

It is possible that your hard drive is the weak link. It does not seem highly probable.
Click to expand...

I would go as far as to say.... it might as well be impossible.

A HDD is only involved in recording if you run out of RAM
 
arcadeko said:
I would go as far as to say.... it might as well be impossible.

A HDD is only involved in recording if you run out of RAM
Click to expand...

How much ram gets you over the point where you wouldn't be concerned about running out of ram?
 
arcadeko said:
I would go as far as to say.... it might as well be impossible.

A HDD is only involved in recording if you run out of RAM
Click to expand...

That's not true.
All audio data is written to disk.

If your disk write speeds are slow, then it's not gona happen.

This is why most daws have a cpu, ram and hdd usage meter.
 
The advantages of SSD are not enough to warrant the significantly higher price tag for a much smaller amount of storage. Something to look forward too in the future but I don't think it will be in our immediate future. As stated above, HDD's don't cause latency. What you record is stored in RAM until it needs to be dumped. This goes on seamlessly in the background unless your PC is very badly built or ancient.

DRAM isn't a great choice for a hard-drive replacement, as - again, to my understanding - it's volatile, i.e. if you turn off your computer it goes away. Seems to me you'd be better off adding more RAM to use as - well, you know - RAM, rather than trying to treat it like a hard drive somehow.
Click to expand...

I don't think you have a clear understanding of a RAM based SSD. Yes, common DRAM is volatile but SSD drives based on it use a battery backup system when power is removed. It works the same way as the battery backed CMOS in your PC. When was the last time you had to change a CMOS battery?

Still my opinion stands for me. Its too expensive right now to justify the benefits. Wait about 5 years.
 
All the responses, so far, seem to assume the discussion concerns storage when using a PC or MAC based recording system. Although that is probably the most likely scenario, there are other systems that are still viable.

The Alesis HD24, for instance, uses one or two IDE hard drives, the program is recorded directly to the hard drive. Recently, a smart egg has figured out a way to use SATA drives in place of the obsolete IDE drives (see yahoo group HD24) and there was discussion and work on building an adapter for solid-state drives, but so far, it has not gone too far- and probably will not as long as SATA drives are readily available. HD24's are still in production, and used fairly frequently for multi-track live recording and some studio recording. It is the preferred medium in our own studio 101 (studio101nola.com) because it is stable, easy to use and provides more-than-adequate recording quality. We have not noticed any latency issues when over dubbing. SATA drives (IDE drives even more so) are very cost-effective ways of storing a session, at least for short- to medium-term storage. (It is my belief that "digital archival storage" is a false myth.)

Audio recording is a capacity-hungry activity- I would think SSD would NOT be very cost effective, at all.
 
How much ram gets you over the point where you wouldn't be concerned about running out of ram?
Click to expand...

Ive been getting on fine with 4GB's recording in 32bit 48k. I only record a track at a time but then you gotta consider all the plugs I use and that near completion my mixes average about 8 32bit tracks playing simultaneously while recording others and during some sections use as many at 12 or more. As for my drives I just have two cheap Western Digital 300gb SATA drives in RAID 0. The RAID config doesn't add much to recording performance as I have done it the same way with only one drive without a hiccup. The RAID setup was mostly one of those "I have it so why not" things. If you have a fairly modern system (DDR2 or 3) RAM is pretty cheap these days and so are SATA Hard Drives. If you reach a brick wall in your setup and have room to expand why not? But consider you can get a 2TB multidrive RAID setup for the cost of some single 300gb SSD's.
 
To add further...I checked out Newegg to make sure I was still current on this issue. A 300GB SSD can be had for under $600 on average. For $179 you can have a Hitachi 3TB SATA drive. That means you could have a RAID setup with two of these for less than $400 and depending on how you set it up you can have up to 6TB storage and fault tolerance. A 1TB Seagate drive can be had for $54.99 making a two disk 2TB RAID about $110 and 4 of them can be had for $220 for either a 4TB non-fault setup or a 2TB RAID 0+1 with both performance increase and total fault tolerance. An OCZ 500GB SSD can run up to $1200. For roughly the same money you can get twenty 750GB WD caviar drives. I think you get the picture. SSD may be the future, but for now it's a serious waste of cash.
 
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Steenamaroo said:
That's not true.
All audio data is written to disk.

If your disk write speeds are slow, then it's not gona happen.

This is why most daws have a cpu, ram and hdd usage meter.
Click to expand...

RAM is how audio is recorded. Your DAW may be dumping the audio to a file as it is recording, but it's doing it through a RAM buffer - and the throughput bandwidth on that is not even close to maxing out a HDD made in the past 5 years. If this was an issue, people would be talking about it - the fact that no one is should make it obvious that it's not an issue. I have never seen anyone have a problem that their HDD is too slow to record their music...

The difference in speed when loading a tiny audio file is negligible...

Audio doesn't take up hardly any room - it's not like video.

If you have so little RAM that your computer is writing to disk as you are recording you have WAAAY bigger problems then the speed of your HDD :)

I have 4GB or RAM and record 8 tracks or more for up to 10 minutes and have never had a hiccup.
 
rimisrandma said:
To further reduce Latency issues, basically get Latency as low as it will go.........Or is this absurd to approach it this way??
Click to expand...

Latency is ONLY the interaction of the soundcard and its drivers. HDDs and cpus do NOT cause latency.

A 7200rpm drive can stream over 100 simultaneous tracks - this is NOT a problem.

What can be a bottleneck is recording on your OS drive....
Any time your OS or programs need to do housekeeping they can interrupt the flow of data.
So you should have your audio projects on a separate drive.
If you use large sample libraries they should be on a separate drive, too.

Here's what you want:
Boot drive - OS, plugins and apps
Second drive - Sample libraries
Third drive - Audio projects and misc. data

(When I started out I could run 30+ tracks on my ancient PentiumII-450mhz by using secondary drives.)
 
Yeah I'd stick with normal HDs til SSDs go down in price a bit more.
 
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