Sorry your browser is not supported!

You are using an outdated browser that does not support modern web technologies, in order to use this site please update to a new browser.

Browsers supported include Chrome, FireFox, Safari, Opera, Internet Explorer 10+ or Microsoft Edge.

Geek Culture / Solid State Hard Drives

Author
Message
Fallout
22
Years of Service
User Offline
Joined: 1st Sep 2002
Location: Basingstoke, England
Posted: 16th Aug 2011 17:07 Edited at: 16th Aug 2011 17:10
Link
I was thinking about getting an SSD for my music production. I'm going to be constantly moving from working on my PC and laptop, and be without network connection (so no central server will do), so a portable harddisk seems to make the most sense.

I don't need masses of space. Each track in production will be in the region of a few hundred MB, and I won't have more then 5 or 6 GB of samples and other data. All I really need is 20-30 GB max.

So what are people's opinions of SSD drives? I've never seen one or used one (except the obvious memory cards). Is the performance increase noticeable? Are they actually more reliable in practice, or is that just a theory and they have their own problems? I have 80GB harddisks in my PC at the moment and they're only half full. I really don't need 640GB external HDs. I don't know how people use that much space without pirating movies!

Any advice or thoughts welcomed!

Back to top
Profile PM
Benjamin
22
Years of Service
User Offline
Joined: 24th Nov 2002
Location: France
Posted: 16th Aug 2011 18:25 Edited at: 16th Aug 2011 18:26
Link
You want a SSHD? Surely you mean SSD?

This article is pretty old but might give you some insight. Tried finding a more recent article on that site but to no avail. Take a look at this section in general.



Support a charitable indie game project!
Back to top
Profile PM Email
Fallout
22
Years of Service
User Offline
Joined: 1st Sep 2002
Location: Basingstoke, England
Posted: 16th Aug 2011 19:04
Link
I think SSD is correct, though there are other plebs like me referring to them as hard drives.

There's so much info, and like you said, lots of older info, much of it with horror stories about reliability. Those articles you linked to do mention error rate recovery, but I'm not finding much info with a categorical "SSD are less error prone and more reliable than HD". Why can't someone just write that for me?!

Back to top
Profile PM
sprite
19
Years of Service
User Offline
Joined: 22nd Apr 2006
Location:
Posted: 16th Aug 2011 19:12 Edited at: 16th Aug 2011 19:13
Link
Personally I think on a PC there is little point as power saving is not really a problem. Other than the speed we are talking half seconds here your better off putting the extra money in to something else.

On a laptop on the other hand they have advatages like power saving no running the hd up to speed after a sleep, they are fast but are you going to notice that. Also because of the no drive heads it can save the drive if the laptop is dropped.

Cons in my veiw its silly money for the newest one however give it a few years I feel SSD will have removed the current drive market only thing holding them back is cost and size.

I'll add something later on.
Back to top
Profile PM
Ocho Geek
17
Years of Service
User Offline
Joined: 16th Aug 2007
Location: Manchester, UK
Posted: 16th Aug 2011 19:32
Link
If you're getting an internal SSD, I'd only consider it if you're computer is writing slowly. Compile times for audio files might be more to do with the encoder than HDD speed.

For external, bear in mind the read/write times will only be as good as the connection, and a USB 2.0 will bottleneck the transfer


Not Spanish, Not Eight, Just Ocho

Back to top
Profile PM Email Website
Fallout
22
Years of Service
User Offline
Joined: 1st Sep 2002
Location: Basingstoke, England
Posted: 16th Aug 2011 19:47
Link
Yeah, it will be external and it will be USB2.0, so you're probably right about the bottlenecking. I'll have a look into data rates of different HDs vs USB2 and see what the deal is.

The thing is, there's no point me getting even a 200GB HD. I'd never use that amount of space. I always keep drives clean and organised and delete rubbish files, so while the cost per GB is better for HD over SSD, I only need 30GB and SSDs are pretty cheap in that range.

I will be moving it about a lot, chucking it into bags, balancing it on desks next to my lappy, so I'm thinking an SSD will be more reliable in the respect of getting dropped.

Back to top
Profile PM
The Wilderbeast
19
Years of Service
User Offline
Joined: 14th Nov 2005
Location: UK
Posted: 16th Aug 2011 19:59 Edited at: 16th Aug 2011 20:05
Link
It depends on whether you are just using it for music production or not. If you were putting the OS and programs on it then I would definitely go for an SSD, but for your purpose of removable media I would suggest a good old HDD.

Like Ocho Geek mentioned, the bandwidth of USB 2.0 will bottleneck your transfer rates and so the performance increase gained by using an SSD would be negated by this. Same goes for FireWire which only has roughly the same performance as USB 2.0. The solution would be USB 3.0 either as a PCIe card or built in to the mobo.


But that is irrelevant as, in my opinion, an SSD is wasted on music production. What sort of music production are you doing - Is it MIDI or wave based? If it's MIDI then your choice of hard drive will not matter at all as reading/writing MIDI data is not intensive. Again, wave data will be fine too as it is loaded into a buffer first. With a buffer of 128 samples being the norm, modern hardware should have no problem keeping up with demand on the HDD.


How many tracks do you usually have per piece? If it's <20 then just go out and buy yourself a USB 2.0 HDD. Anything more and I would recommend getting a USB 3.0 HDD. If you have the cash then I would get a USB 3.0 HDD just to be on the safe side and also to accommodate any future needs.

Hope that helps


And if it means anything, my usual production machine is a 2005 Apple PowerBook with a 5,400 RPM HDD. It can handle simultaneous read/writes of 10+ tracks without breaking sweat, so whatever you get you should be fine.

[EDIT] Sorry you replied while I was writing that. If you are worried about reliability either make your own enclosure (USB - SATA interface, 3.5" HDD caddy, 3.5" HDD), or purchase a rugged pre-built external. Western Digital's are more reliable than Seagate's, but are a lot noisier. This sort of thing: http://www.amazon.co.uk/External-SH93-500GB-Shockproof-Waterproof-Material/dp/B002TIOZZM/ref=sr_1_4?ie=UTF8&qid=1313514268&sr=8-4. Only I wouldn't trust the HDD inside it.

While I agree with an SSD being more reliable, if you are using it for recording you are soon going to knacker it out as of course NAND memory has a limited number of write cycles.


RSS ENABLED :: AV SECURED
Back to top
Profile PM
IanM
Retired Moderator
22
Years of Service
User Offline
Joined: 11th Sep 2002
Location: In my moon base
Posted: 16th Aug 2011 21:41 Edited at: 16th Aug 2011 21:44
Link
For your usage (portable file storage, not a system drive), and the limited capacity needed (< 30GB), just go for a standard 32GB memory stick with a reasonable speed rating.

It'll cost you anywhere from £20 to £40 - at around £20 a pop, you could have 2 - one backup in case you lose/trash the other one.

[edit]
Extra bit regarding 'write endurance' of SSD - most modern drives will tend to cycle their usage of storage blocks to minimise the problem, and some also include extra blocks that can be used to replace problem blocks, so it's much less of a problem than it used to be.

Get the latest Matrix1Utility plug-ins (20-APR-2011)
Back to top
Profile PM Email Website
MrValentine
AGK Backer
14
Years of Service
User Offline
Joined: 5th Dec 2010
Playing: FFVII
Posted: 17th Aug 2011 22:23
Link
If you have an SDHC/SD/SDXC port... get a 32GB card if your laptop supports it... will be better than a pen drive and external hdd and will have no sound other than your laptop... and fits beautifully into your wallet

If you dont... go for USB Pen Drive, an HDD/SSD is just asking for trouble...

Eitherway, these are your options as with the above mentioned...

The final choice is yours.

Back to top
Profile PM
Phaelax
DBPro Master
22
Years of Service
User Offline
Joined: 16th Apr 2003
Location: Metropia
Posted: 18th Aug 2011 01:19
Link
What about this?

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822148407

Back to top
Profile PM Email Website
Grog Grueslayer
Valued Member
19
Years of Service
User Offline
Joined: 30th May 2005
Playing: Green Hell
Posted: 18th Aug 2011 04:08
Link
If you have to have a SSD I'd go with IanMs suggestion or use DropBox. With DropBox you can store your files on the internet and it'll automatically update the files to any other device you use (multiple computers and your phone). You can store 2gigs of space on DropBox free, 50gig for $10 a month, 100gigs for $20 a month, or 350gigs for about $60 a month (5 users). They also have a referral program that (with enough referrals allow you to use 8gigs max for free.

http://www.dropbox.com/

Back to top
Profile PM Email
MrValentine
AGK Backer
14
Years of Service
User Offline
Joined: 5th Dec 2010
Playing: FFVII
Posted: 18th Aug 2011 04:13
Link
@Grog Grueslayer

Quote: "
I was thinking about getting an SSD for my music production. I'm going to be constantly moving from working on my PC and laptop, and be without network connection (so no central server will do), so a portable harddisk seems to make the most sense.
"


Dropbox = central server

just pointing out

Back to top
Profile PM
Grog Grueslayer
Valued Member
19
Years of Service
User Offline
Joined: 30th May 2005
Playing: Green Hell
Posted: 18th Aug 2011 04:17
Link
Oh, hahaha I didn't see that.

Back to top
Profile PM Email
MrValentine
AGK Backer
14
Years of Service
User Offline
Joined: 5th Dec 2010
Playing: FFVII
Posted: 18th Aug 2011 04:18 Edited at: 18th Aug 2011 04:18
Link
> Grog Grueslayer

you are welcome I miss stuff sometimes recently too... nobody is perfect specially when were on here at dead late times lol when we should be in bed lol.

Back to top
Profile PM
Fallout
22
Years of Service
User Offline
Joined: 1st Sep 2002
Location: Basingstoke, England
Posted: 18th Aug 2011 09:38
Link
You fools might be on late, but this mofo is on before 8am every day!!

I have a flash MMC/SD card etc. slot on my lappy, and I have a card reader in my PC. Maybe that is the way to go then. I just have this paranoia that SD cards aren't designed for lots of reading/writing, but I suppose I can make sure everything is backed up ....

Back to top
Profile PM
MrValentine
AGK Backer
14
Years of Service
User Offline
Joined: 5th Dec 2010
Playing: FFVII
Posted: 18th Aug 2011 09:44
Link
Hey Fallout buddy, In regards to R/W I used to use an 8GB SDHC card on my netbook when i used to have it as well on laptops to use Vista/Win 7 Ready Boost and that is R/W intensive!

I hope I helped here

Which Mofo?

Back to top
Profile PM
Back to top

Login to post a reply

Server time is: 2025-05-20 18:47:10
Your offset time is: 2025-05-20 18:47:10