Whats a good ssd to use with CS6? at DVinfo.net

Steve Wolla · November 5th, 2012, 07:22 PM

I have a pretty powerful system but want to upgrade my system drive (Drive C) to either a 10,000 rpm, or an SSD. I am not at all familiar with SSD's, and was wondering what people thought about getting one to better run CS6. Not having much luck using my 2tb 7200 rpm sata drive. I have been looking at the Samsung 840 series. Or, is something like the WD VelociRaptor a better bet?

My computer's controller is a Sata II, so I could not take advantage of all he speed improvements of a Sata III drive. But it would still be a big move up, wouldn't it?
Thanks in advance,
SW

Vincent Oliver · November 6th, 2012, 01:06 AM

I am using a Corsair 120gb SSD drive and it flies, I only use the the drive for the operating system and video application files, make sure you define a second drive for cache and file storage. I still use HD drives for the day to day computer work (Word, database, etc). but will add another SSD drive for this very soon.

Noa Put · November 6th, 2012, 01:08 AM

Don't have premiere cs6 but my guess is that a fast bootdrive will only speed up start-up time of Premiere, you could get more speed gains by making a raid drive where your video data is located on.

Steve Wolla · November 6th, 2012, 01:33 AM

Im using a G-Raid 4tb Raid 0 for that, seems to work well enough. Problem I am having is a lag in performance playing from the timeline. But if a SSD Drive C won't help that, then maybe I am barking up the wrong tree.

Trevor Dennis · November 6th, 2012, 02:02 AM

Steve, I'd be inclined to check out Tom's Hardware for their latest SSD multi review. Not all SSDs are created equal, and there's a lot of difference between the good and bad. This test is only a month old, and compares a range of price points.

Best SSDs For The Money: October 2012 : Best SSDs For The Money: October 2012

There is another article here from just a week ago
Intel SSD 335 240 GB Review: Driving Down Prices With 20 nm NAND : Intel SSD 335 240 GB: Refreshing SSD 330 With 20 nm NAND

[EDIT] Just read a bit more, and thinking you might like to go have a look at the Adobe Prem Pro Hardware forum
http://forums.adobe.com/community/pr...hardware_forum

If Harm is around, he might point you to some specific threads or FAQs regarding best practice drive set up

Noa Put · November 6th, 2012, 02:50 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Steve Wolla

But if a SSD Drive C won't help that, then maybe I am barking up the wrong tree.

The reading part is from the disks where your videofiles are located on so any bottleneck could be there but that's just a part of what could cause problems, I at least never heared the C-drives speed makes any difference in playback but the CPU/GPU and harddrive speeds does. Since your videofiles are on a raid the problem must be elsewhere, what exactly do you mean with "lag", does the footage stutter when played back and what type of footage are we talking about?

Noa Put · November 6th, 2012, 02:59 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Vincent Oliver

I am using a Corsair 120gb SSD drive and it flies

What flies? Can you render faster or can you scroll your compressed footage on the timeline without any stutter? I think SSD's for a bootdrive are overrated, everyone thinks it makes such a big difference but it doesn't. You get the impression that your system is so much faster but all it does is make your system feel more responsive when installing or starting up programs but it has a very small impact on the overall performance of your editing system. .

Vincent Oliver · November 6th, 2012, 03:57 AM

The boot up flies, other actions are a lot faster too. Maybe it is just my imagination. I will run a test later today as I still have CS6 loaded onto a hard drive on my system.

Just for further info. I do not have any anti-virus software on my video editing drives, this can slow your system down to a crawl.

Harm Millaard · November 6th, 2012, 04:09 AM

I'll try to be as clear as possible, so there is no misunderstanding.

SSD's are very useful for a boot drive. They make loading a program much more snappy. However, once you are editing, their benefit is negligent. Your editing performance is determined by the rest of your disk setup.

If you want an SSD for OS & programs, these are the brands and models I would look at:

Corsair Performance Pro, Plextor M5 Pro and Samsung 840. These are all Marvell controller based SSD's, that show a much smaller performance degradation in the 'stable state' than Sandforce based SSD's, like the Crucial M4 or the Intel 520/335.

Keep in mind that SSD's have a limited number of writes and once these are used up, the drive is dead, so it is important to not use SSD's for cache files or temporary storage. This may mean you have to change your Windows environment variables and possibly even your user profile to point to another disk, in order to avoid repeated writing to the SSD.

In my own case, I tried to keep things simple, only 4 volumes in my system, see below. The advantage is that this limited number of volumes makes it easy to administer and everything video related, media, projects, media cache, preview files and exports go to one single volume. Admitted, this is a rather extensive volume, 3 x (7 disk raid3) striped to raid30 plus 3 global hot-spares, giving me effectively 18 TB space, using 1 TB disks, but it also gives me all the sustained transfer rates I may need.

This setup is fast, see Reflections - Page 3

Steve, in your specific situation, the performance bottleneck you are experiencing is due to the fact that the G-Raid is connected over eSATA or even slower and that causes major performance hits. Try the sustained transfer rates with HD Tune Pro and compare them to my transfer rates. I would not be surprised to see yours in the range of 200-250 MB/s, less than 10% of my system.

Vincent Oliver · November 6th, 2012, 04:15 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Harm Millaard

Keep in mind that SSD's have a limited number of writes and once these are used up, the drive is dead, so it is important to not use SSD's for cache files or temporary storage. This may mean you have to change your Windows environment variables and possibly even your user profile to point to another disk, in order to avoid repeated writing to the SSD.

This is news to me, where did you get this information from?

Harm Millaard · November 6th, 2012, 04:29 AM

It is a limitation of the NAND technology, well documented all over the internet.

To quote an article: The reason behind this is simple; 34nm MLC NAND is good for 5,000 write cycles, while 25nm MLC NAND lasts for only 3,000 write cycles. To account for this drop in individual cell lifespan, manufacturers increase the amount of reserve capacity that replaces worn sections as the drive degrades. In layman's terms, an unformatted 120GB SSD with 25nm NAND is now 115GB (107GB available in Windows) compared to 120GB (111GB available in Windows) with 34nm NAND. Practically though, this change in write cycles should have little effect on SSD longevity for most users, with warranties and expected life spans staying the same. Most consumers won't write enough data to notice the difference over the course of an SSD's life. Some customers may feel cheated by this though, although the main concern is the loss of usable space, or more accurately, the marketing of the space available on a drive.

See http://www.storagereview.com/ssds_sh...u_need_to_know

Noa Put · November 6th, 2012, 04:33 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Harm Millaard

I tried to keep things simple, only 4 volumes

I thought, Harm using only 4 Volumes? untill I saw the raid set up :D

Quote:

Originally Posted by Harm Millaard

I would not be surprised to see yours in the range of 200-250 MB/s, less than 10% of my system.

But that's still twice as fast as a single build in harddrive, no? Not sure what type of footage Steve is using, which why I asked him, but with most footage today and those harddrive speeds it sounds strange to me that this would cause a lag on the timeline? I mean I use a mixture of HD footage (compressed and uncompressed) with a 32bit NLE and a seperate single 2 TB drive with my videofiles and never experienced any lag.

Harm Millaard · November 6th, 2012, 04:39 AM

Noa, see this answer, http://www.dvinfo.net/forum/adobe-cr...ml#post1762349

Noa Put · November 6th, 2012, 04:44 AM

Thx for the answer, might explain why I don't experience any problems because my editing system has only software related to editing on it and I used these tips to disable what's not needed: Win7 64bit Performance Improvement Tips for EDIUS users (probably will work for other NLE's as well.)

Harm Millaard · November 6th, 2012, 07:12 AM

Of course everything is relative, but I just tested a 25 GB, 2 hour export of an AVI file, using SD DV as source material and exporting to the same format. It took around 14-15 seconds for that 2 hour timeline, so that translates to a transfer rate of around 1700-1800 MB/s. Maybe that explains why I never see lags. However for Steve this may translate, assuming he has the same degree of tuning done as I have, to an export time of at least 150 seconds, but that is not taking into account the overhead of the OS.

November 5th, 2012, 07:22 PM	#1
Steve Wolla Major Player Join Date: Nov 2005 Posts: 477	Whats a good ssd to use with CS6? I have a pretty powerful system but want to upgrade my system drive (Drive C) to either a 10,000 rpm, or an SSD. I am not at all familiar with SSD's, and was wondering what people thought about getting one to better run CS6. Not having much luck using my 2tb 7200 rpm sata drive. I have been looking at the Samsung 840 series. Or, is something like the WD VelociRaptor a better bet? My computer's controller is a Sata II, so I could not take advantage of all he speed improvements of a Sata III drive. But it would still be a big move up, wouldn't it? Thanks in advance, SW

November 6th, 2012, 01:06 AM	#2
Vincent Oliver Trustee Join Date: Sep 2004 Location: Chislehurst, London Posts: 1,724	Re: Whats a good ssd to use with CS6? I am using a Corsair 120gb SSD drive and it flies, I only use the the drive for the operating system and video application files, make sure you define a second drive for cache and file storage. I still use HD drives for the day to day computer work (Word, database, etc). but will add another SSD drive for this very soon. __________________ Eyes are a deaf man’s ears. Ears are a blind man’s eyes

November 6th, 2012, 01:08 AM	#3
Noa Put Inner Circle Join Date: Jun 2007 Location: Belgium Posts: 9,509	Re: Whats a good ssd to use with CS6? Don't have premiere cs6 but my guess is that a fast bootdrive will only speed up start-up time of Premiere, you could get more speed gains by making a raid drive where your video data is located on.

November 6th, 2012, 01:33 AM	#4
Steve Wolla Major Player Join Date: Nov 2005 Posts: 477	Re: Whats a good ssd to use with CS6? Im using a G-Raid 4tb Raid 0 for that, seems to work well enough. Problem I am having is a lag in performance playing from the timeline. But if a SSD Drive C won't help that, then maybe I am barking up the wrong tree.

November 6th, 2012, 02:02 AM	#5
Trevor Dennis Major Player Join Date: Dec 2010 Location: New Zealand, Rapaura (near Blenheim) Posts: 434	Re: Whats a good ssd to use with CS6? Steve, I'd be inclined to check out Tom's Hardware for their latest SSD multi review. Not all SSDs are created equal, and there's a lot of difference between the good and bad. This test is only a month old, and compares a range of price points. Best SSDs For The Money: October 2012 : Best SSDs For The Money: October 2012 There is another article here from just a week ago Intel SSD 335 240 GB Review: Driving Down Prices With 20 nm NAND : Intel SSD 335 240 GB: Refreshing SSD 330 With 20 nm NAND [EDIT] Just read a bit more, and thinking you might like to go have a look at the Adobe Prem Pro Hardware forum http://forums.adobe.com/community/pr...hardware_forum If Harm is around, he might point you to some specific threads or FAQs regarding best practice drive set up __________________ Stills at: www.flickr.com/photos/trevor-dennis/

November 6th, 2012, 03:57 AM	#8
Vincent Oliver Trustee Join Date: Sep 2004 Location: Chislehurst, London Posts: 1,724	Re: Whats a good ssd to use with CS6? The boot up flies, other actions are a lot faster too. Maybe it is just my imagination. I will run a test later today as I still have CS6 loaded onto a hard drive on my system. Just for further info. I do not have any anti-virus software on my video editing drives, this can slow your system down to a crawl. __________________ Eyes are a deaf man’s ears. Ears are a blind man’s eyes

November 6th, 2012, 04:09 AM	#9
Harm Millaard Trustee Join Date: Aug 2006 Location: Rotterdam, Netherlands Posts: 1,832	Re: Whats a good ssd to use with CS6? I'll try to be as clear as possible, so there is no misunderstanding. SSD's are very useful for a boot drive. They make loading a program much more snappy. However, once you are editing, their benefit is negligent. Your editing performance is determined by the rest of your disk setup. If you want an SSD for OS & programs, these are the brands and models I would look at: Corsair Performance Pro, Plextor M5 Pro and Samsung 840. These are all Marvell controller based SSD's, that show a much smaller performance degradation in the 'stable state' than Sandforce based SSD's, like the Crucial M4 or the Intel 520/335. Keep in mind that SSD's have a limited number of writes and once these are used up, the drive is dead, so it is important to not use SSD's for cache files or temporary storage. This may mean you have to change your Windows environment variables and possibly even your user profile to point to another disk, in order to avoid repeated writing to the SSD. In my own case, I tried to keep things simple, only 4 volumes in my system, see below. The advantage is that this limited number of volumes makes it easy to administer and everything video related, media, projects, media cache, preview files and exports go to one single volume. Admitted, this is a rather extensive volume, 3 x (7 disk raid3) striped to raid30 plus 3 global hot-spares, giving me effectively 18 TB space, using 1 TB disks, but it also gives me all the sustained transfer rates I may need. This setup is fast, see Reflections - Page 3 Steve, in your specific situation, the performance bottleneck you are experiencing is due to the fact that the G-Raid is connected over eSATA or even slower and that causes major performance hits. Try the sustained transfer rates with HD Tune Pro and compare them to my transfer rates. I would not be surprised to see yours in the range of 200-250 MB/s, less than 10% of my system. Attached Thumbnails

November 6th, 2012, 04:29 AM	#11
Harm Millaard Trustee Join Date: Aug 2006 Location: Rotterdam, Netherlands Posts: 1,832	Re: Whats a good ssd to use with CS6? It is a limitation of the NAND technology, well documented all over the internet. To quote an article: The reason behind this is simple; 34nm MLC NAND is good for 5,000 write cycles, while 25nm MLC NAND lasts for only 3,000 write cycles. To account for this drop in individual cell lifespan, manufacturers increase the amount of reserve capacity that replaces worn sections as the drive degrades. In layman's terms, an unformatted 120GB SSD with 25nm NAND is now 115GB (107GB available in Windows) compared to 120GB (111GB available in Windows) with 34nm NAND. Practically though, this change in write cycles should have little effect on SSD longevity for most users, with warranties and expected life spans staying the same. Most consumers won't write enough data to notice the difference over the course of an SSD's life. Some customers may feel cheated by this though, although the main concern is the loss of usable space, or more accurately, the marketing of the space available on a drive. See http://www.storagereview.com/ssds_sh...u_need_to_know

November 6th, 2012, 04:39 AM	#13
Harm Millaard Trustee Join Date: Aug 2006 Location: Rotterdam, Netherlands Posts: 1,832	Re: Whats a good ssd to use with CS6? Noa, see this answer, http://www.dvinfo.net/forum/adobe-cr...ml#post1762349

November 6th, 2012, 04:44 AM	#14
Noa Put Inner Circle Join Date: Jun 2007 Location: Belgium Posts: 9,509	Re: Whats a good ssd to use with CS6? Thx for the answer, might explain why I don't experience any problems because my editing system has only software related to editing on it and I used these tips to disable what's not needed: Win7 64bit Performance Improvement Tips for EDIUS users (probably will work for other NLE's as well.)

November 6th, 2012, 07:12 AM	#15
Harm Millaard Trustee Join Date: Aug 2006 Location: Rotterdam, Netherlands Posts: 1,832	Re: Whats a good ssd to use with CS6? Of course everything is relative, but I just tested a 25 GB, 2 hour export of an AVI file, using SD DV as source material and exporting to the same format. It took around 14-15 seconds for that 2 hour timeline, so that translates to a transfer rate of around 1700-1800 MB/s. Maybe that explains why I never see lags. However for Steve this may translate, assuming he has the same degree of tuning done as I have, to an export time of at least 150 seconds, but that is not taking into account the overhead of the OS.