MBP + SSD for video?

[Steve Eisen]

Since it’s not recommended to store your media files on your system drive, you are better off taking the extra money that was going to spent on a ssd drive and put it toward other hardware and/or software.

Steve Eisen
Eisen Video Productions
Vice President
Chicago Final Cut Pro Users Group

[Bj Ahlen]

It’s early days for SSD, although the fastest current units can be more than 3x as fast as a regular HD.

Just get a fast regular drive, and if you get a 17″ MBP, consider an external eSATA drive instead of FW800. Better performance and in practice more reliable imho, not to mention it leaves the FW port free

I like FirmTek’s boxes and ExpressCards. Pretty much bullet proof, quiet, reliable, great performance including in RAID if you want, slide-out trays, not expensive.

When buying an MBP, it makes sense to try to find the most recent previous version (within a major hw update), often differencing only in disk size.

And if you want to keep your sanity, get the antiglare version over the shaving mirror (just a personal opinion, I know some will disagree).

[Zane Barker]

Im going to disagree with the other responses.

SSD drives are great. They are fast and much much less prone to failure. If the boss wants to pay the hefty price tag then why not.

Sure you also want to get a nice media drive. Esata would be better then FW800 but esata is only available on the 17″

But with the wide verity of ProRes codecs you might be ok with FW800.

Hindsight is always 1080p

[Jean-christophe Boulay]

SSD’s as system drives are not a bad idea at all. The Windows-gamer-son-in-law scores a point there. The WGSIL does lose that point he just scored by forgetting eSATA and suggesting FW800 though.

SSD’s do have speed issues if you’re constantly writing to and clearing the same blocks, which is why they’re a bad idea as media drives, but as system drives they rock. Especially if the boss is footing the bill. It’ll get even better once Apple are bothered to implement TRIM support so their OS actually works as it should with their hardware (/rant). Even when an SSD gets to the block-rewrite cycle and slows down, it’s still faster than a platter drive.

System drive speed is not something that makes you go “Wow!” with a new computer, but it’s never lost. If the computer is ordered and everything, I’d just smile and roll with it. Anything else would be like waking up to find a Porsche GT3 in your driveway and wondering where your Hyundai went.

JC Boulay
Technical Director
Audio Z
Montreal, Canada
http://www.audioz.com

[Phil Smith]

Thanks to all for the input. I hope this thread becomes useful to others too.

After getting this last project in the can, I got a chance to do some more research this morning. Kudos go to Jean-Christophe, as his workflow advice seems to be spot on. I hate the idea of lugging around a 17′ laptop + RAID, but it doesn’t look like I have much choice considering that I can’t be guaranteed that I can find a good post facility everywhere we go.

When you raised the issue of TRIM support, I started looking around to see if TRIM can be implemented AFTER the installation of the SSD (as if by updating OSX it would then begin to fix the stuff that it could), but I still can’t find anything on that.

One thing that I found very interesting though was this: Apparently, there is a new method of handling garbage collection and block recovery (TRIM’s housecleaning duties)… It’s basically a utility that resides on the firmware of the SSD, and doesn’t actually require the OS to support it. I have a call in to Toshiba’s SSD support, hoping that they will be able to confirm that this feature is implemented.

Bottom line is, I’m letting the boss spend the money, but it’s also been fun getting educated in the process… 😉

[Urs Lotze]

Hi there,

Thanks for all the info.
I have the “same” problem. I’ve placed a SSD Kingston V+100 512GO in my MBP 17 Alu (Core 2 Duo 2,6 GHz, ram 4GO) with fantastic results for the system overall (OSX 10.5.8). By overall I mean for the sys and all applications.

For all apps…? Not realy… Not for FCS…
FinalCut runs way slower with the SSD !
The original disk was a Hitachi 200GO/7200tm and the SSD is “one of the best” on the market with Intel inside and one of the best controler Hitachi T6UG1XBG. In addition this SSD has a “TRIM like” function inside de controler. Therefore it does’nt need TRIM and should not decrease in speed with time…

Never the less, FCS runs far slower than before. With the datas on external FW800/7200tm drives, or even with the datas placed inside de sys disc. (no eSATA connection available on my older MBP 17).

If nobody has any clue to what I realy could do to get better perfs with FCS using SSD for the sys and FW800 for external datas, I’m gonna go back to my original 7200tm sys disc…

This SSD priced a hefty $900 … 🙁
Thanks in advance for some help.

Regard, Urs