System Drive

john_dennis wrote on 8/12/2011, 5:20 PM

I agonized over the answer to this question all afternoon. I spent time thinking about the performance continuum of a boot partition on a large fast drive where the rest of the drive is used for mass storage, then a dedicated boot disk of a few hundred GB where nothing else was on the disk. I thought about 10K Raptors and hybrid drives.

After my first rum and Coke the solution became perfectly obvious, however.

Go buy yourself a 120 GB Corsair SSD for less than $200 and move on with your life. That's what I did.

TomG wrote on 8/12/2011, 7:19 PM

Thanks, John

Can you point me to a review of the Corsair that looks better than the NewEgg reviews whereby over 50% (out of 90) gave it a 1 out of 5 rating because it was either DOA or died within several months? How long have you had your Corsair and is it working out for you?

TomG

John_Cline wrote on 8/12/2011, 7:41 PM

SSDs are not quite ready for prime time, some of the latest ones have serious issues. Even Intel SSDs which were previously considered bullet-proof have problems.

http://www.anandtech.com/show/4604/the-sandforce-roundup-corsair-patriot-ocz-owc-memoright-ssds-compared

john_dennis wrote on 8/12/2011, 9:00 PM

I've had mine about six months. No bugs, yet.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820233125&Tpk=120GB%20CSSD-F120GB2-BRKT%20FORCE%20CORSAIR

or

http://www.frys.com/product/6320651?site=sr:SEARCH:MAIN_RSLT_PG

I have an image of the boot disk. If it failed, though I would be annoyed, I would be back up in less than twenty minutes including the mechanical.
I've spent $200 on many things that have given me less satisfaction.

TomG wrote on 8/13/2011, 10:31 AM

John D

What did you use to make an image of your boot drive.

Also, what characteristics of a drive (other than an SDD) makes it a fast drive?

TomG

john_dennis wrote on 8/13/2011, 11:40 AM

"What did you use to make an image of your boot drive."

I use Ghost 15. I don't install it. Version 15 supports standalone backup and restore.

"Also, what characteristics of a drive (other than an SDD) makes it a fast drive?"

For the boot device, you want to minimize seek time, since the operating system and applications will be loading small files from different places on the disk. Seek time is measured in milliseconds where file transer completion times are measured in microseconds depending on file size. The difference between drives from the different manufacturers in the same market and price range is small compared to the difference between spinning disks and SSD or hybrids. Smarter people than I am have figured out that fab space is tight and flash memory is being rationed by price. That's probably why Seagate implemented SSD on spinning disk in the Momentus XT and why Intel implemented the SSD caching scheme on the Z68 motherboards.

If you look at the Newegg feedback for the device that I proposed 54% were happy as clams and gave it five stars. If you have a good backup/restore methodology, even if you fall into the other 46%, it won't stop the show.

warriorking wrote on 8/13/2011, 12:17 PM

I just went with the Mushkin SSD Drive and installed it on my Dell Studio..
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820226206.
Thus far I have had no issues, OS bootup is very fast and Vegas opens much faster compared to the old Seagate 7200 HD...I went with Mushkin due to its very low failure rate compared to other brands...
Best purchase I have made in a long time.....

TomG wrote on 8/14/2011, 5:49 AM

Thanks for the information John.

Warriorking, that must be a popular item you mentioned since Newegg is sold out already. Not sure how long it has been on the market since the earliest feedback was in 05/11.

Finally, it seems like most of the comments I've read about deals with program/system startup. Do you also notice a big difference in program/system speed in general since you probably have your data on the old clunker HDDs?

TomG

warriorking wrote on 8/14/2011, 7:04 AM

Did a little test comparing render times with the SSD..
Rendering project with media projects located one of my seperate 1TB internal 7200 HD's and being rendered to the same HD using Vegas 10, the total time of render was 4:34 seconds..
The same project source files moved to my SSD and rendered to the SSD drive gave me a 3:22 second render time...
Also keep in mind my Widows 7 disc rating went from 5.9 to 7.5 ...
I have found that all my programs run much better all around...

john_dennis wrote on 8/14/2011, 10:42 AM

"Do you also notice a big difference in program/system speed..."

Very much so.

"... since you probably have your data on the old clunker HDDs?

Most of my data consists of large photo and video files. "Old clunker hard drives" like my two 2TB Hitachi Deskstars do a decent job for large file transfers. Usually the processor or some other system component makes large file transfer speed less of an issue. I don't use high bit rate intermediates, much. About the only time it's really meaninful is copying all the data from one disk to another.

john_dennis wrote on 8/14/2011, 11:04 AM

@ John Cline

"SSDs are not quite ready for prime time, some of the latest ones have serious issues."

I agree with you. I would be reluctant to have to deal with firmware issues on a new build. That's why I didn't suggest a new SATA III SSD, but rather a Sandforce 2 version. Most of the benefit comes when seek time goes from mechanical to electronic, rather than the 600 MB/s transfer rate.

I agree that the economics in the consumer market don't make a lot of sense for the manufacturers or the end users. (Data centers and critical applications are the exception where managers are accustomed to paying higher prices and demanding higher performance.)

At the margin, though, the serious workstation user can experience improved "system" performance for a price that is reachable. To me the barrier to entry was about $200 for what I perceived to be the benefit. I am actually happy with my purchase. That price is a combination of factors:

1) Being less than a Raptor with better performance.

2) Using less power.

3) I don't have to listen to it.

4) I routinely spend $200 and never even mention it to my wife.

5) I actually don't know what her number is.

john_dennis wrote on 9/1/2011, 11:45 AM

If you're worried about SSD, this Raptor is proven technology with just the right capacity for less than $100.

Your Price at Newegg: $99.99 with Promo Code: EMCKAKJ23

It won't break the bank, but you have to listen to it.

TheHappyFriar wrote on 9/1/2011, 12:19 PM

I just have a 250gb IDE drive as my boot device. Why?
*I'm (generally) not rendering to it
*I don't store stuff I use for video editing on it
*it pretty much just contains programs
*Might as well use the IDE on the board since it's a waste of $$ if I don't.

I've always hit my bottleneck when rendering my outputs but since C is a boot drive being IDE doesn't matter. I could use another SATA to render to not a faster boot drive.

Magnetic platters have been around for ages and even cheap ones work. IMHO I'd rather spend less on proven tech that, 98% of the time will with vs (if we're assuming Newegg's rank is accurate) 54%. That would mean (because my computer almost never goes off, at best a standby) every 167.9 days I would need to re-install a back and PRAY I made one right before everything died. Even if my IDE was 98% working that would mean a back & restore about once per year. I've currently only reinstalled windows once since Feb '08 and that's because I messed it up.

Frankythefly wrote on 9/12/2011, 10:04 PM

I have been testing different components for my dad regarding a new system. One thing I have been trying to do is find out if the new SSD would benefit a Vegas Video user.

I for one will never go back to a HD as a boot drive, in my testing one component that made the biggest improvement in terms of speed was a SSD. To give a comparison the SSD setup that I am using is nearly 10 times faster than 1 western Digital raptor HD. What I also noticed was that there is a huge performance gain in moving and working with large files sizes. One thing though I have found since moving to a SSD is that most programs open instantly after clicking the mouse, larger programs like Photoshop and Vegas Video take about 1 to 2 seconds. I also allowed my friend to render his Autodesk inventor work on my machine to see if there was a difference, a rendering that took his machine 23 hours (using a Dual OS IMAC) took my machine 37mins.

What would be a good performance test(s) in Vegas that I could do that everyone could replicate?

robwood wrote on 9/12/2011, 11:14 PM

"What would be a good performance test(s) in Vegas that I could do that everyone could replicate?"

---

check out RENDERTEST-2010.VEG posted by John Cline.
http://www.sonycreativesoftware.com/forums/ShowMessage.asp?ForumID=4&MessageID=766002

Frankythefly wrote on 9/13/2011, 1:12 AM

Thanks for the link conducted the Test came up with 102 seconds

Now I have to figure out how to move Vegas onto the Hard drive and conduct the test from there.

Illusioneer wrote on 9/21/2011, 11:25 AM

Looking to the erudite scions of this forum for help.

Due to problems with the first one, I have a replacement Intel SSD (120GB) waiting to be installed in my video editing PC. In the meanwhile I installed W7 and VP10 on a 'normal' 80 GB HD. Should I:
1) Copy the HD image to a partition on the SSD, and use the remaining 40GB as work space, loose the HD completely
2) Install the SSD as work drive and use for rendering only
3) Install as 120GB system drive and keep the HD as rendering work drive
4) any other bright ideas?

I have listed the above in what I think might be the preference order but would appreciate ideas from the forum members.
TIA
Stefan

john_dennis wrote on 9/21/2011, 6:39 PM

I'm not sure I qualify as an "erudite scion(s)".

5) Restore the system image to the SSD and resize the system drive to fill out the SSD. I used GHOST 15 which gave me the option of using all the space available. Be sure TRIM is enabled.

I'm not sure I know what an "erudite scion(s)" is.

I'm not sure I want to know.

xberk wrote on 9/21/2011, 6:51 PM

If you don't want an SSD, I'd go with the Raptor at Newegg. A steal for $100. My last two systems had Raptor System drives .. faster .. smoother .. no problems.