Solid State Hard Drives

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noonie
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2008/10/02 11:16:51 (permalink)

Solid State Hard Drives

I just received a flash based solid state drive to try out on my laptop....I'm hoping I'll see some performance gains(I'm sure I'll see something, at the very least, it shouldn't run at 40,000 degrees F like the 7200RPM currently in there. [sm=rolleyes.gif]).

I've done some research on them but really only basic stuff. I've got a 128GB OCZ "core Series" SATA II drive.

My question is, considering that they work completely differently than regular HD's, do you think there would be any benefit in partitioning it? I plan on using this as a single drive system, so audio will be on teh same HD(I know, I know, but can't be helped)...so I'm thinking OS partition, App partition and an audio partition.

Anyone had any experience using SS drive with SONAR, or any DAW for that matter? Opinions and guesses welcome too
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    Adrys
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    RE: Solid State Hard Drives 2008/10/02 11:22:34 (permalink)
    Regardless of how you do it (seperate disks, seperate partitions, etc.) it's always a good idea to seperate your OS from your data.
    If you ever have an issue with your OS you can format and re-install your OS drive w/out losing your data.

    If your OS recognizes the drive as a HDD then you should be able to work with it just like your SATA II drive.


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    wogg
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    RE: Solid State Hard Drives 2008/10/02 11:50:56 (permalink)
    Partitions will be strictly an organizational and recovery benefit. SSHD have very low random access times so the performance benefit is no longer there.

    One thing about those OCZ drives, they suck at random read/write patterns. Audio is pretty straight stream so you may be fine, but check this article out: http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/intel/showdoc.aspx?i=3403

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    ohhey
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    RE: Solid State Hard Drives 2008/10/02 11:51:46 (permalink)
    Performace wise I don't think partitions will help. However, you might want to do two just for organization and if you use any type of image backup software for your boot partition (like Ghost) you would be able to restore that without losing any projects. Also, if you need to start over and reinstall Windows you could do that also.

    Please report back on the preformance of the drive, lots of us would like to know if it works.

    Frank Coffey - Songwriter
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    noonie
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    RE: Solid State Hard Drives 2008/10/02 14:20:23 (permalink)
    Thanks guys!


    Wogg, thanks for that link, very informative.....and depressing, hehehe.

    We'll see what happens. I'll get back with results.

    I've had very erratic results with the SONARBench thing on this laptop, so it may be tough to come up with actual number comparisons......may just have to rely on real-world evaluation.
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    noonie
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    RE: Solid State Hard Drives 2008/10/08 14:38:22 (permalink)
    DO NOT BUY ONE OF THESE DRIVES!

    First, my specs:

    Dell Latitude D830
    2.4Gh Core Duo
    2GB Ram
    Emu 1616m Cardbus AI
    Windows XP SP3
    SONAR 7.0.2


    Tested with a current project. 9 audio tracks, 13 softsynth tracks. Alot of resource heavy effects also

    In same system with Fujitsu 7200RPM drive, I get bad cracks and pops and dropoutsdue to CPU spikes unless I freeze all/some of the synths. Once all but a few are frozen, the project plays nicely..

    Onto the SSHD.....

    Actually seemed to play better with all of the synths unfrozen, still sounded like crap with tons of crackles and pops, but no dropouts. After freezing 11 of the 13 synths, this is where the problems start. So after freezing, that leaves 20 audio tracks and 2 synths....not only loaded with pops, but it sounded like I was running the entire tune though a stutter effect, literally. And it seemed to play noticibly slower than the project tempo.

    Not very scientific testing, but enough to convince me to not even bother testing recording(which is where I thought the problems would appear in the first place).



    Also FYI, the XP and SONAR installs seemed to take for ever......but then at the same time, the SampleTank install seemed to fly. Weird stuff.

    Anyway, definitely not good for audio apps, I'm gonna see how it works as a Visual Studio machine.
    post edited by noonie - 2008/10/08 14:40:20
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    jcschild
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    RE: Solid State Hard Drives 2008/10/08 17:44:15 (permalink)
    HI,
    as you already found out.. SSD is not all that and a bag fo chips

    1) the drive you have has the jmicron controller (not the best)
    2) while read speeds look great write speeds are horrid
    3) the write speeds look great however ther is buffering issues with these drives as you have found out

    SSD is NOT ready for price time and definately NOT for audio..

    Scott
    ADK
    Home of the Kentucky Fried DAW!
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