View Full Version : What SSDs are people using?


Lee Mullen
November 27th, 2012, 06:29 PM
Preferbly those above 256gb? Please state, need some ideas and sources thank you.

Taky Cheung
November 28th, 2012, 10:42 PM
I'm using Intel 128GB on one desktop. Then crucial 256GB on main desktop and Crucial 512GB for laptop.

Terry Martin
November 29th, 2012, 01:54 AM
The Samsung 830 series is the industry gold standard for performance and reliability. The new 840 Pro series may be the next one, but not yet proven.

James Huenergardt
December 7th, 2012, 08:38 AM
I'm using the 480GB SanDisk Extreme SDSSDX-480G-G25

So far it's working great. I ordered a second one for a backup on a green screen shoot I'm doing this weekend.

Taky Cheung
December 7th, 2012, 09:58 AM
Recently, my 512GB Crucial M4 SSD died for no reason. After a tech support call, it was because I have my PC harddrive spin down after 20 minutes. Thus the TRIM function won't kick in. I was advised to boot computer to BIOS and leave it on for 6 hours. That cause the built-in Active Garbage Collection kicks in. The SSD went back to life.

Shaun Roemich
December 7th, 2012, 11:54 AM
I had 6 of my 8 OCZ Vertex3 240GB drives fail. They are at OCZ for RMA replacement right now.

Shaun Roemich
February 15th, 2013, 10:03 PM
Update: OCZ were very fast in replacing my drives and the customer service was excellent.

Wish I knew why the drives failed in the first place though...

Noa Put
February 16th, 2013, 03:54 AM
It's good to have that kind of service but did you manage to retrieve any data that was on the discs? I would worry more about loosing footage or paying a lot of money to have the data recovered.
I must say that I read quite a lot about ssd's failing without any reason, just recently a bmc owner used a ssd twice, toke it out of the camera to move data to his pc and then let the disc sit on his desk for one night and the day after it died as well. Don't remember though which brand that was, not very reassuring.

Sareesh Sudhakaran
February 16th, 2013, 05:02 AM
I use OCZ, no problems. I've heard good things about Samsung, too, but they haven't found much penetration in my country yet.

Steve Game
February 16th, 2013, 06:48 AM
It's good to have that kind of service but did you manage to retrieve any data that was on the discs? I would worry more about loosing footage or paying a lot of money to have the data recovered.
I must say that I read quite a lot about ssd's failing without any reason, just recently a bmc owner used a ssd twice, toke it out of the camera to move data to his pc and then let the disc sit on his desk for one night and the day after it died as well. Don't remember though which brand that was, not very reassuring.

I assume that the lost content was not critical to his activities. That would apply equally to any storage medium: card, HDD etc.. I would at last give the hardware a few duties with non-critical content before accepting it into normal usage. The reliability of hardware improves rapidly in its early life.
SSDs can of course suffer from handling damage, less likely mechanical, more often (ESD electrostatic discharge). That's despite having designed-in tolerance to ESD.

Noa Put
February 16th, 2013, 08:27 AM
I assume that the lost content was not critical to his activities.

Critical or not, the most important function of a recording device, whether it is a cf card, ssd or harddrive, is to store your data safely, the reliability of that device is equally important then the camera itself. I don't see testing as an option, it just has to function. That no recording medium is 100% failsafe I can understand and that's why you always best dual record to 2 different media simultaneously but when I read about 6 out of 8 SSD's failing for one user combined with the other stories I read about malfunctioning SSD's certain brands certainly are not ready for primetime yet. Not sure if there are SSD manufacturers that have a history of proven reliability on certain ssd models?

I have a 4 year old Sony hvr-dr60 with a 60gb harddrive that has not given me a single issue yet (knock on wood). That's what I would expect from a external recorder.

Mark Watson
February 16th, 2013, 09:37 AM
I have a 600GB Intel 320 series SSD in my newer (2011) Sager laptop. Had some problems with the laptop; first the firewire port quit, then the SSD. I have a 3 year warranty, so called tech support. Ended up putting in a HDD to see if it would boot up. It did. Loaded Windows via the recovery disks and still had no firewire and now the wireless went out too. Just sent it back on RMA for new motherboard and SSD. I kept all my projects on external 1TB WD Passport USB 3.0 drives, so no serious data loss.

My older (2008) Sager had 3 320GB HDDs. That laptop took a fall on a hard floor and after a few more weeks of use, it just quit booting up normally. Booted to SAFE mode so I was able to get my data off, but that's it. I did some checking on the latest SSD situation and it's changing so fast. Ended up sticking with Intel, just ordered a 520 series 480GB version from B&H. I didn't like seeing that my Intel SSD was made in China, but couldn't find much complaints on the net about their reliability.

I've got to come up with a good backup scheme. Maybe clone my SSD to a compatible internal HDD so when I have another failure I can just swap out drives and keep on truckin'.

Steve Game
February 16th, 2013, 02:49 PM
Critical or not, the most important function of a recording device, whether it is a cf card, ssd or harddrive, is to store your data safely, the reliability of that device is equally important then the camera itself. I don't see testing as an option, it just has to function. That no recording medium is 100% failsafe I can understand and that's why you always best dual record to 2 different media simultaneously but when I read about 6 out of 8 SSD's failing for one user combined with the other stories I read about malfunctioning SSD's certain brands certainly are not ready for primetime yet. Not sure if there are SSD manufacturers that have a history of proven reliability on certain ssd models?

I have a 4 year old Sony hvr-dr60 with a 60gb harddrive that has not given me a single issue yet (knock on wood). That's what I would expect from a external recorder.

Noa, the point that I was making is that the reliability performance of ALL devices tends to follow a 'bathtub curve' where failure are more common in their early days, then fall to a low level for a sustained period finally rising near the end of the item's life. These failures are occurring across the whole population of shipped devices. Of course, nobody knows whether their devices are the one(s) likely to fail or whether that will be somebody else's problem. So as a precaution, I would be prepared to give the device as much background 'burn in' as I could before trusting them on critical work.
Like some of the other posters in this thread, I find that there is a lot of anecdotal evidence that OCZ drives are failing. OCZ have clearly recognised the importance of rapid product replacement so maybe this anecdotal evidence is representative of the product in general. Intel and Samsung devices though, seem to have fewer faults reported in the public domain. Those two makes do seem to be on offer at slightly higher prices that their competitors' equivalents. Maybe this is a result of additional production process costs aimed to give a more reliable delivered product.

Allan Barnwell
February 16th, 2013, 08:39 PM
What does everyone think of drives from OWC? Other World Computing?

OWC Solid State Drives For Mac Desktops & Laptops (http://eshop.macsales.com/shop/SSD/OWC/)

Mark Williams
February 16th, 2013, 10:34 PM
I am leaning towards the Samsung SSD 840 PROSeries.

Dennis Hingsberg
February 21st, 2013, 01:12 PM
OCZ 512GB - no issues.

Shaun Roemich
February 21st, 2013, 10:13 PM
It's good to have that kind of service but did you manage to retrieve any data that was on the discs?

I back my SSDs up IMMEDIATELY so there was no loss of media but my blood pressure goes up every time I think of lost media.

I often run TWO HyperDecks now on mission critical stuff...

Mark Morreau
February 26th, 2013, 03:00 PM
Y'all know that Blackmagic Design have a page on their website saying which SSDs they've tested and approved for use with the Hyperdeck Shuttle, don't you?

Blackmagic Design: FAQ's (http://www.blackmagicdesign.com/support/detail/faqs?sid=3960&pid=3968&os=win#)

Shaun Roemich
February 26th, 2013, 03:21 PM
And mine are listed.

You should try reading the BMD Forum to see all of the issues folks are having with dropped frames and other issues...

Kevin Duffey
April 30th, 2013, 10:10 AM
It's a darn shame that all SSDs don't work in the shuttle. You'll love this.. I bought a 256GB M4, and a 256GB Samsung 830. I put the M4 in my computer, installed Windows 8 Pro, all my editing software, etc... hours of work. Formatted the 830 for the Shuttle 2. Did not work. exFat, HFS+, etc.. it would NOT accept it. I've no idea why.. the 830 is faster than the m4. So I of course saw the M4 listed.. so I REDID my entire computer setup with the 830, formatted the M4.. freaking worked! Man, unreal that a newer/faster SSD did not work.

I almost bought the 840.. thank God I read that the 840 Pro is the updated 830, the 840 is not a good drive, only the Pro.

From what I've read the latest Intel and Sandisk Extremes are good as well. I just don't understand why EVERY SSD wouldnt work. It makes no sense.

Here's something some of you may not know. SSD drives that you pull out of your Shuttle and slide into a nice fast USB 3 dock.. fail very quickly. The reason? TRIM can't be issued over USB. Only SATA. So, your only option to keep on reusing them is to use a SATA interface. I have 2 USB 3 docks that I love for all my OEM drives and SSDs. However, after reading this, I did some research.

The trick is.. you need to use an ESATA dock plugged in to your ESATA port on your computer, if you have one. If you don't you can buy an add-in card fairly cheap. So, I kept on digging.. found a pretty slick e-sata dock, for 30 bucks, but it was only 3gbps. Shoot.. the USB 3 is theoretically 4.8Gbps. I know that SATA 3 is 6gbps, so I was looking around and the only dock I could find that did 6gbps (which requires that your e-sata port also handle 6gbps) was one by RocketStor. It was not cheap, $120. But here's the kicker. IT's hot swap, it has 2 bays each with their own 6gbps port, so if you have 2 e-sata ports, you can plug in 2 SATA 2/3 drives and they both show up. Luckily my Asus board has 2 6gbps e-sata ports so I was really in business. What's more impressive is with the right setup, you can actually do RAID 0/1 with this dock at full speed. So I did a test, and sure enough my SSD ran slightly faster in the dock than it did plugged in to my main SATA internally. Crazy right! So now, you can edit directly from the dock and if you want to spend $100+ on the add-in e-sata RAID card, you can do full RAID with SSDs in the dock, complete with hot-swap. Crazy!!

Mark Morreau
April 30th, 2013, 10:21 AM
Interesting stuff, Kevin, especially this about TRIM. I did not know that.

What's the exact model of this RocketStor device you have? Do you have a link to manufacturer's website?

Thanks

Mark

Kevin Duffey
April 30th, 2013, 12:30 PM
This is the one I bought. I don't have the links to the info I read about TRIM because that was in my browser history on my computer before I updated to the SSD boot and this device. :) But you can do a little googling on how the SSD's stopped working/got slow on Shuttle 2 after a few uses (or on the BM Cinema Camera) and why that happened.

Here is the one I bought. I just bought this a month ago, I wouldn't be surprised if other manufacturers will bring out 6gbps e-sata docks sooner or later.

Amazon.com: HighPoint Dual Dedicated 6Gb/s eSATA Storage Dock (RocketStor 5322): Computers & Accessories (http://www.amazon.com/HighPoint-Dedicated-Storage-RocketStor-5322/dp/B00ATLTF4M/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1367346233&sr=8-2&keywords=rocketstor)

Another thing, I don't know when, but I believe SATA 4 is going to be 12gbps or faster, and is due out soon. Not soon enough for me to wait though, I'd suspect at least another year or longer before we start seeing Sata 4 drives and motherboard support for it.

Kevin Duffey
April 30th, 2013, 12:33 PM
Incidentally, apparently over the SATA bus, when you delete files on SSD the TRIM (at least in Windows 8, not sure about 7) command is issued to the SSD by the OS. I am not sure about OSX and/or Linux. There are some SSD drives that have built in TRIM now. It's odd that SSD drives themselves would need it, seems since this is an issue that every OS would have had an update now to ensure that they issue it. What's more.. odd to me that USB 2/3 can't issue the command. I forget the reasoning why that is, but from the few posts I read about it, it's an issue not many people realize and often think their drive is dying/dead while it's merely that it's not been TRIM'ed and many site that after learning about it, are able to TRIM their drive and it works again. I think even formatting it again in a USB dock won't fix the issue, but not for sure on that.

John Gerard
January 21st, 2014, 02:34 PM
Hi, I have not been on this site for a long time. To chum in here I am also using the Sandusky 480GB version. I use it in the Hyperdrive UDMA2 unit. So far works great. I bought the SSD because of the Sandisk Name and this SSD was about half the price of any other SSD out there. It still cost me 3 to 4 time the amount of a standard HDD. I do find the SSD to be much quieter and no vibration do to no moving parts. The drive still gets hot, thought. I expected a lot less heat since this is my first experience with SSDs.

John Gerard

I'm using the 480GB SanDisk Extreme SDSSDX-480G-G25

So far it's working great. I ordered a second one for a backup on a green screen shoot I'm doing this weekend.