SSD Prices Halved Since Last Year

[Walter Soyka]

[Andrew Richards] “storage is now the single most significant bottleneck in any modern computer”

I dispute this claim’s truth in our niche here. I think way more people run into CPU bottlenecks than storage bottlenecks for video production work — especially with all the heavily compressed camera formats in use today.

Even when storage is a bottleneck, HDD RAIDs are a more cost-effective solution for most of us than SSDs since capacity also matters in video.

I won’t argue that SSDs have all the forward momentum, but I think that today, most of us would benefit from a hybrid approach of SSDs for boot (or any high IOPS work) and HDDs for media.

Walter Soyka
Principal & Designer at Keen Live
Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
RenderBreak Blog – What I’m thinking when my workstation’s thinking
Creative Cow Forum Host: Live & Stage Events

[Bernard Newnham]

There’s a how-to here –
https://macintoshhowto.com/hardware/how-to-speed-up-your-mac-with-a-ssd-drive.html

I don’t know Carbon Copy Cloner, but I know that Clonezilla does a good job.

B

Bernie

[Bernard Newnham]

“I won’t argue that SSDs have all the forward momentum, but I think that today, most of us would benefit from a hybrid approach of SSDs for boot (or any high IOPS work) and HDDs for media.”

Not huge amount of choice about that – you don’t get much media on 120Gb.

Bernie

[Andrew Richards]

[Walter Soyka] “I won’t argue that SSDs have all the forward momentum, but I think that today, most of us would benefit from a hybrid approach of SSDs for boot (or any high IOPS work) and HDDs for media.”

Completely agree, and I roll that way today. I was just soothsaying.

Best,
Andy

[Walter Soyka]

[Andrew Richards] “Completely agree, and I roll that way today. I was just soothsaying.”

Understood. I don’t disagree with the sooth you say.

Walter Soyka
Principal & Designer at Keen Live
Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
RenderBreak Blog – What I’m thinking when my workstation’s thinking
Creative Cow Forum Host: Live & Stage Events

[Lemur Hayop]

Mostly I read that boot times are faster with SSD. Does SSD do more than boot faster? Will it speed up video rendering? Booting up fast isn’t a big deal to me. Maybe it’s real important to other people.

[Andrew Richards]

[Lemur Hayop] “Does SSD do more than boot faster?”

It removes all the lag from your interactions. Apps launch much faster, in many cases instantly. Documents open instantly. QuickView previews appear much more quickly. Finder browsing is lag-free. Spotlight searches return results immediately. Most of the beachballs you get are the OS waiting for storage to catch up to operations. You’ll see much fewer beachballs when you boot from an SSD.

[Lemur Hayop] “Will it speed up video rendering?”

It doesn’t make computational stuff happen much faster (rendering, transcoding, etc), but all those little lags add up, and once you’ve spent time on an SSD-booted system and go back to an HDD-booted system you really notice the lag.

Best,
Andy

[Don Walker]

[Andrew Richards] “It removes all the lag from your interactions. Apps launch much faster, in many cases instantly. Documents open instantly. QuickView previews appear much more quickly. Finder browsing is lag-free. Spotlight searches return results immediately. Most of the beachballs you get are the OS waiting for storage to catch up to operations. You’ll see much fewer beachballs when you boot from an SSD.”

Would all that be true if a 2008 MacPro had a SSD as a boot drive?

don walker
texarkana, texas

John 3:16

[Jason Jenkins]

[Don Walker] “Would all that be true if a 2008 MacPro had a SSD as a boot drive?”

I put one in my 2006 Mac Pro and it definitely made everything snappier. It really feels like an upgrade when you put one in an older machine. My OWC SSD died on me after about 10 months of use. I’ve never had a mechanical hard drive die on me. They replaced it under warranty, but make sure you back up!

Jason Jenkins
Flowmotion Media
Video production… with style!

Check out my Mormon.org profile.

[Andrew Richards]

[Don Walker] “Would all that be true if a 2008 MacPro had a SSD as a boot drive?”

Yep! And if you aren’t using your 2nd optical bay, you can put the SSD boot drive in there with this kit and have all four main bays for media HDDs.

Also, since the Mac Pro’s SATA bus is the older SATA 3G, you can get your SSD for less $/GB than the newer SATA 6G models. Look at the Intel 320 or the OWC Electra 3G. I’ve had good luck with an OCZ Agility 2 in my wife’s old MacBook as well, but I’ve also read horror stories about OCZs failing prematurely.

Best,
Andy