My new machine has an Intel SSD, they seem the best of the bunch as they don't suffer from the same problem as the others that use the Sanforce chip.

Great for boot and app storage. Moving temp and scratch files to a spinning disk to extend the life of the drive is the trick. Other advantages apart from speed, is lower noise, lower power and hence less heat. Also of course much better vibration and shock figures which is why they're populat for laptops.
Another tip, buy a bigger one than you think you'll need, your money will not be wasted as thanks to wear leveling all of it gets used anyway.

Bob.

Thanks ritsmer and Bob,

To move temp and scratch files to another disk - I presume this has to be done from within each program, but what about Windows itself - presumably it does a fair bit of temp filing ....

Talking of Windows, the shop I'm getting a quote from include a "free" upgrade to W8 when it arrives.

"To move temp and scratch files to another disk - I presume this has to be done from within each program, but what about Windows itself - presumably it does a fair bit of temp filing ...."

Windows wise I believe the only thing you cannot move off the boot drive is the Registry. Most apps will use somewhere in the user folder(s) for their temp files by default at least. If you've relocated them anyway, job done.

Bob.

"My new machine has an Intel SSD..."

Well, geeez, Bob. As I recall a few parsecs ago (months?) you seemed somewhat hesitant about SSDs. I suppose a brand new system convinced you udderwise :D I'm still going to wait a bit -- maybe this coming Christmas or something. But my priority may be some more storage---maybe a 2T or something. And/but I've got to take my cat to the vet first. Money's a bit tight (as usual). My furball child-substitute comes first, computer second.

"Well, geeez, Bob. As I recall a few parsecs ago (months?) you seemed somewhat hesitant about SSDs."

True and I still am which is why I bought one that wasn't cheap and had good reviews that explained why cheaper ones can have problems.

The Intel SSD I'm using like others uses the Sanforce controller. Intel did a deal that permits them to modify the code inside the controller and they found a number of problems and fixed them. Catch is Intel are under no obligation to report what they found and how they fixed it back to Sanforce. No surprisingly people using other Sanforce SSDs are having problems like the unit refusing to talk to the outside world for periods of time or simply getting stuck for good.

The Sanforce controller does on board data compression to reduce the problem know as "write amplification" and to reduce wear. All that depends on how compressible the data is though.

The other factor that changed my opinion was spinning disks have become more expensive while SSDs have become a bit cheaper, not that the Intel 520 SSDs are cheap, I think around 2x the price of the cheapest ones.

So yes, SSDs look attractive as boot disks. As general purpose data storage devices for editing I'm not convinced of the benefits and the cost remains a major consideration. 2TB of Intel 520 storage would set me back around $3,000 :(

Bob.

Do you still have to have the software installed to keep the SSD drives cleaned out?
JJK

Thanks for reply with inside-info on Intel improvements, etc, Bob.

It gives me more reason to wait this out a bit more.Aside from cost factors, I don't have an editing business with deadlines that may rely on how long renders, etc. take. Likewise, SSDs aren't exactly new, but my sense (chosen perspective from the moderate research I've indulged in) is that it's a technology still going through a certain amount of growing pains or fine-tuning. I'm fine with being the tortoise and not the hare on this one :D

Now in terms of what some have brought up here -- moving as much Temp, pagefile and such off-system to other drives, it seems it can benefit whatever disk setup one has, SSD or otherwise.

So here are some queries to you and/or anyone who would like to respond:

Streamlining System Drive
What to Transfer to Other Drives?

A) C:\ Pagefile -- Keep or Not? Seems risky not have one even if one has them on other active drives though I may be mistaken in that assumption.

should each one have its own or does one allocate one mega one to one drive and the others would use that one?

C) Migration of C:\Programs and/or Program Orbitals (Temp and Such): what can one safely migrate to another drive?

D) Other Misc Migration off of C:\: Aside from misc data such as text files and "My Documents"* and such* would benefit said streamlining? (**In my case, I've got a separate partition for all of those though I'll probably put them on a separate physical drive once I get a couple more drives).

A) I can't really see any reason not to have one. Windows will make almost no use of it if you have enough physical RAM to supply all your programs' needs. If you don't have enough RAM then you need the pagefile so that Windows has room to shuffle things around when you switch between programs.

B) The page file is for the OS, not the drives. Windows will only use one. Having one on each drive is not only a difficult chore to accomplish, but is completely pointless. Personally, i'd keep it on drive C: because that's my least bottleneck drive. I keep all my data on other drives so having C: get a lot of overhead usage by the OS doesn't affect the others. Also, if heavy use of the page file eventually wears out that drive, it doesn't jeopardize my data.

C) I don't see the point with this either. C: is my OS & software drive. Everything defaults to installing on C: and everything expects to run from there. Why fight it? As far as software launch times, i don't really care. I launch programs very infrequently and just leave them running. Why should i care if it takes Vegas 15 seconds or 2 minutes to start when i only do it very rarely?

D) I avoid using Windows "My Documents" as much as possible. I don't like the restrictions Windows puts on that directory tree and find it just gets in the way. I haven't moved "My Documents" to another drive nor will i since there's no need. I just store everything in folders of my own choosing on other drives. The only things in "My Documents" are the very few tiny files the OS puts there "behind my back", so to speak. I've probably got less than a couple MB in that folder.

+ for Chienworks comments about these issues he pointed out.
I don't have any experience directly with SSD drives - but I think the argument for their use is still begging a lot of questions.

For those who are interested there has been some experimentation in the market by harddrive manufacturers to incorporate a hybrid hardware preprogrammed one-piece harddrive that has some SSD type features. AFAIK this has been reviewed and applauded whole-heartedly by critical media storage pundits and experts. They say bring-it-on, and I am becoming more convinced of that camp.

In another development I have been contributing to many other current threads in the last week critical about a given configuration's performance. And in combination with that I have been seriously studying the Adobe Premiere Users defined benchmarking with their own NLE. One theme is becoming evident - that NLE configurations can simply boost their NLE benchmark by switching back from a SSD native boot drive to a conventional small harddrive for booting of minimal cost. Now who would have expected that? This is showing some signs of system stress (depending on motherboard config) for SSD drive manipulation.

VideoITGuy wrote...

"... I have been seriously studying the Adobe Premiere Users defined benchmarking with their own NLE. One theme is becoming evident - that NLE configurations can simply boost their NLE benchmark by switching back from a SSD native boot drive to a conventional small harddrive for booting of minimal cost. Now who would have expected that? This is showing some signs of system stress (depending on motherboard config) for SSD drive manipulation."

Very interesting and could ruffle some SSD fans' feathers ;)
It would probably be wise for non-SSDers such as I to stay out of such rufflin's...

There are no pros. SSD = another useless device ( for anything other than tiny hardware that can't have any other drives )

You save 3-5 seconds opening a program. At that rate in about 5 years you will have made up all the time you wasted on setting up your new SSD and dealing with potential problems. And then the drive will die.

There are no cons to SSD's especially now that prices have dropped so dramatically.

Opening applications, opening webpages, saving data... all crazy fast. I could never go back to the spinning drive nonsense. I can't wait until I can make my storage drive a paperweight as I can't stand waiting for it to spin up as I don't use it that often and it seems silly to keep it spinning all the time since it's so noisy compared to the rest of my rig.

There is one really big con, which is cost for storage space. Taking a quick peek at newegg it looks like most of their SSD drives are running about 80 to 110 cents per GB. The largest one i see is 960GB at $2500 or a more moderately priced 600GB for $950. That's a lot of money, compared to about 3 to 5 cents per GB for spinning drives. Yes, SSDs are falling in price, but they're still WAAAAAAAY more expensive than traditional drives.

And, if you want to get more than 1TB (or say more than 400GB if you like reasonable prices) in each drive bay, SSD can't deliver.

"Yes, SSDs are falling in price, but they're still WAAAAAAAY more expensive than traditional drives."

Indeed. On the other hand the amount of storage required for the OS and application code and data storage is fairly minimal, a 120GB SSD should be more than adequate. Assumin then that you setup the drive as pretty much ROM the negative technical factors associated with SSDs become irrelevant.

Taking that on board my decision went something like this:
The total system build cost me $3,000. The impact of using a SSD compared to a spinning disk was less than 10% of the build cost. Certainly it isn't going to have a major impact on the user experience but neither does a lot of other things that add a larger factor to build cost. In that scenario it made sense to me. Time to load say AE has dramatically reduced. Not a huge factor in my life for sure, neither no doubt is the difference between a 4 core and 6 core CPU.

Bob.

Definitely for boot drive.

Possibly for work drive.

Just my opinion and how I work.

Mark

"What to Transfer to Other Drives?"

Email.
Move your email folder to another drive. Also your internet cache. These are two folders which get a lot of exercise.

For the record.... I've had an SSD root drive for a year now and love it to death. Everything is so much faster, and if you take care of it, it continues to be that way.

It should also be known that windows 7 is best for SSD's. There is a subroutine built into Win7 specifically designed for up-keep of SSD's and the prevention of slow-downs which some experience over time with them.

I just bought a desktop with an Intel 520 Series 240GB "C" drive. From what little I understand, TRIM control with the latest Sandforce controllers also help extend the life/speed of an SSD significantly.

Rob Franks


___________________________

Sounds good. I don't have that much activity but my Thunderbird can start to balloon if I don't compact once in a while and clean out stuff. The more "barebones" the system drive, the better.

On my Precision laptop, I have moved all the "special" W7 directories to my spinning drive, which is easy and straight-forward (there is the "Location" option in their properties). With "My Documents" now on drive D:, my outlook.pst files (email) are also there; I set up my Windows/User's TMP directories, as well as the swap file, on the D: drive too.

However, with my laptop's mSATA SSD drive being just 128GB, I still am getting close to fill it up with lots of applications installed in their regular locations. So I googled and found the way to move my Chrome's cache (and other user's data) from C; the recipe is to add this string:

--user-data-dir="YOUR DRIVE:\YOUR FOLDER"

- at the end of the launch shortcut's "Target" path (for those who didn't know :)).

Frankly, I'd like to also move all the %Userprofile% contents from C: to D: - but am a little hesitant to do that for fear something might go wrong, and create havoc on my otherwise clean and stable system. Anyone did that, and can reassure me it's safe?

Piotr

another + to chienworks comments.

i have a fully loaded ozc 128gb ssd (ie. win7, complete cs6, vegas, m$ office, and a large bunch of other programs and am only using around 40gb).

i like the speed of swapping / opening apps and boot up, otherwise i don't see any other advantages per se.

There are a couple of videos on Adobe TV that delve into system optimization for AfterEffects. Both recommend fast drives for temp/cache files. One mentions a RAID, and this one specifically recommends an SSD: http://tv.adobe.com/watch/learn-after-effects-cs6/optimizing-for-high-performance/

We recently set up CS6 on a new HP Z420 quad core workstation and experienced performance issues with the Global Performance Cache and Persistent Cache (didn't appear to be caching data) until we installed an Intel SSD for the cache files (i.e. not for the OS or data). Once the drive was installed the cache performance improved substantially.

As a boot drive, SSD drives are pretty zippy, although I'm not in THAT big of a hurry, I can wait a few extra seconds for my machine to boot or load a program.

One area in which I do find SSDs interesting is in capturing 1920x1080 uncompressed video, it requires a sustained transfer rate of around 120 megabytes/second, which is beyond the capability of a single, conventional hard drive. SSDs can handle this easily. An SSD used in conjunction with the SDI or HDMI capable Blackmagic HyperDeck Shuttle 2 makes for a exceptional video acquisition solution. A 240GB drive gives you about 25 minutes of 1920x1080 10-bit uncompressed recording time or considerably longer using the 220Mb/s 10-bit DNxHD option.

(Although it ended about 10 minutes ago, NewEgg just had a "Shell Shocker" deal for a 240GB OCZ Agility 3 SSD drives for $139.)