Changing HDD to SSD on AE Global cache and OS

[Vince Becquiot]

Hi Donald,

One minor thing, cheap SSDs have limited amount of writes, that’s why they are cheap… and the cheaper they are, well you get the picture…

They work well as OS, but for continuous writing, Enterprise grade drives are the way to go.

Vince Becquiot

Kaptis Studios
San Francisco – Bay Area

[Donald Riley]

Thanks Vince

Sometimes I get carried away, always trying to make everything faster. Your right i can imagine how the AE cache would eat that baby up after reading some of the reviews on Enterprise SSD’s, some have cooling pads on them never mind the price 5X or more, so thats out for me. I should have done that first.

I haven’t used SSD’s anywhere except for the Cameras, do you think I would be alright changing my OS to a Raid zero? I do clone it every week to a bootable HD and tested it with Lion recovery, so for safety I have that covered.

Thanks so much.

Don
MP 12 core 2.9 GHZ
32 GB ram
Quadro 4000
2 Ext. Raids 180 Mbps

[Vince Becquiot]

I mean, you can always use an SSD just for the OS, in fact it will make things a lot snapier.

As for cache, I would keep it on a separate RAID array anyway, and yes, RAID 0 is the way to go, and it’ s cheap.

Vince Becquiot

Kaptis Studios
San Francisco – Bay Area

[Donald Riley]

Thanks again for your time Vince.

I don’t know what I was thinking being new to PP I’m just settling in. (FCP refugee) My cache is on a Raid 0 and further, I just completed a new Comp in AE a big one and all processors were pegged at 100% and RAM was utilizing 21 to 25 GB with no dropped frames (a first) which means I think, its the best I’ll get.

Thanks for taking the time to help me get things right, I think I’ll wait on the SSD for the OS, I have other things to buy (cameras) in the meantime.

Don
MP 12 core 2.9 GHZ
32 GB ram
Quadro 4000
2 Ext. Raids 180 Mbps

[Scott Novasic]

OWC’s Mercury Accelsior PCIe SSD seems to still be expensive but an amazing alternative too a raid array.
A lot of us AE animators are doing 10 – 60 second projects… not long form work and dont need terabyte sized raids for current projects. Im like you Donald in wanting every ounce of performance from AE… the OWC card IS raid 0 and from all the reading ive done with AE 6 and its global cache I would get 2 of these… one for the startup drive…. one for the cache…. then the raid for storage and reference… like the many reviews say… once you experience the Accelsior SSD and working in that env you NEVEr want to go back… time is money and to be able to turn a 4 yr old mac pro into a screaming demon id install 2… a 240 boot and a 480…. these are UPGrADEABLE, and OWC has NONE of the issues Vince mentioned as far as degredation and lifespan… these are the real deal and prices are shrinking by the month… for about 1k you can do what I said and get scorching read write speeds… SILENCE… and buy time for the 2013 mac pros we were promised… even transfer your Accelsior into the 2013 MP…. no brainer for a lot of us… if I was working long form, editing etc… I may just do the startup… but im greedy for speed… max ram… max boot drive and max Cache drive and Nvidia Card w/Cuda for AE… then use the cheap raids and drives for fast local storage of projects and source you want quick but not ssd quick access too…

SuperNova
Animation & Visual Effects
Scott Novasic
Los Angeles Ca
https://supernovavfx.com

[Michael Jones]

Hey Scott,

I have the Mac Pro 4,1 and Just ordered the Accelsior 480! I also ordered their OWC 3G SSD. I was thinking that the Accelsior would be my “RAID” and the 3G would be my OS/APP drive. I’m new to Premier (FCP User) but I think Premiere’s Mercury system “Conforms” the original media. (With Premiere, I simply point to the media source) So my question is… can I just keep the original footage (In my case XDCamEX) on regular HDDs and tell premiere to send the Preview and Renders to the Accelsior for greater performance, Or do I need to keep the media files on the Accelsior as well?

Let me know if my question makes any sense!

[Michael Heid]

I’m new to the SSD world and want to buy one Accelsior for my Mac Pro. The big question. Is this drive best served as the OS or as the render drive? I do lots of AE and C4D work and want to get the most out of the performance upgrade, but with only one drive, not sure where to put it. Any advice would be MUCH appreciated.

[Vince Becquiot]

At this point, SSD are mostly used for the OS.

They have a limited amount of writes so they are not well suited for renders.

Vince Becquiot

Kaptis Media

Indigo Live
San Francisco – Bay Area

[Michael Heid]

Thanks for the reply and info. I had read this from OWC

“Unlike many/some SSDs on the market today, the Mercury family uses advanced DuraWrite™ wear-leveling and block management technologies to keep Read/Write performance at peak levels while others see performance fall.

Some of the drive space in OWC SSDs are allocated for RAISE – which provides real time data redundancy, ECC Error Correction, and reserve cell space.

Example: An OWC Mercury Electra SSD that’s 240GB in size is actually a 256GB drive with 7% allocated for data management, and to maintain the SSD’s high-performance “

RE: https://eshop.macsales.com/shop/SSD/PCIe/OWC/Mercury_Accelsior/RAID
Is that just sales mumbo-jumbo?

[Vince Becquiot]

Good question, only time will tell. But I think you would benefit more on the OS side. You could always make a cheap RAID 0 on the render side if you are on a budget.

Otherwise you should look at the Cadigit 4 drives RAID arrays. (Around $1000) You can store everything on there including the render files.

Vince Becquiot

Kaptis Media

Indigo Live
San Francisco – Bay Area