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[supernova777]

http://community.vsl.co.at/forums/p/34775/216541.aspx
interesting read
the original poster of this thread quoting soundonsound article that was claiming
the age old practice of having seperate drive for recording audio is redundant now with SSDs
being that there is no physical drive head to inundate with tasks... and overload..

anyone have any thoughts to add?
would u agree? disagree?

it sure would be nice to not have to worry about seperate 'audio recording' drives

[Knezzen]

I agree with that, but you kill the SSD faster with all that writing and then removing (if you delete old projects for example), so at least I think that using rotating storage for audio is the way to go if you want stability.

On Mac OS 9.2.2, a 7200rpm drive with 8mb cache is more than enough for all your audio needs.
I use mine to record 64 tracks at once at 48khz and 24bit without any problem at all.

[supernova777]

sure but , the post was to do with the fact, can u safely avoid having to have 2 seperate drives by using 1 ssd for both boot drive + recording drive....

knez:
u really think writing data to an SSD will wear it out? faster then a real hard drive??

in my mind, the best setup would have been SSD for boot drive, and real drive for recording.
im guessing this is what u had intended to say! given that you have posted recently about your IDE DOM by kingspec.
but the topic of the post isnt about whats best.. its about , is what this guy said true or not..! heres the direct quote:

"The old-school advice about using a separate audio drive from the system drive is based on the fact that using a single drive for both audio and program data is inherently slow. The reason is that audio data is likely to be in a physically separate part of the drive from the program data, and so the heads will have constantly to move between the two areas on the disk platters as the program seeks instruction data and the audio is being written and replayed. Moving heads across the platters is a relatively slow thing to do.

Consequently, there was often a speed advantage if the bulky audio data could be written/read from a separate drive in contiguous blocks which is quick to do, while the OS drive is left free to read the program data (and access the virtual scratch memory if necessary) separately where it will also be in contiguous blocks and thus quick and easy to access. The scheme thereby avoids lots of massive head shuffling, and is therefore quicker.

However, in your case, SSD drives don't have heads or platters to move about. There is no mechanical shuffling, just virtual memory addresses which are vastly faster to access than the equivalent hard drive locations.

Therefore I would not anticipate any performance difference between using one drive for both audio and OS, or using two separate drives."

so hes saying 1 SSD can do the job. mind you hes talking about a real SSD.. not a kingspec DOM cheapy ebay thing for 20 bucks;) hes talking about a real genuine authentic heavy duty guaranteed max performing SSD...
which by 2014 are no longer new technology, they are pretty much a proven standard by this point.

[Knezzen]

knez:
u really think writing data to an SSD will wear it out? faster then a real hard drive??

No, but continous writing/deleting will. We wear out SSD's faster than rotating storage in the file servers at work that get alot of heavy read/write/delete usage. And I mean ALOT faster. And writing and then deleting is mostly what you do when you record audio.

so hes saying 1 SSD can do the job. mind you hes talking about a real SSD.. not a kingspec DOM cheapy ebay thing for 20 bucks;) hes talking about a real genuine authentic heavy duty guaranteed max performing SSD...
which by 2014 are no longer new technology, they are pretty much a proven standard by this point.

I know they can. We had an Samsung SSD in the iMac in the smaller studio. We killed it in about a year with our normal usage. The old 1tb rotating drive is still alive and kicking. It has a new SSD now, but we only use it for booting and apps, the projects gets stored on the 1TB drive housed in an external USB chassis.

But then again we record 60+audio tracks in every project, and make about 5 new projects like that every week. Per studio system. That's why at least I will stick to rotating drives for audio recording.

Im not saying that SSD's can't handle the amount of tracks recorded, our old one handled it amazingly.
I just know from my own reference that they can't stand the continues writing/deleting for very long.
At least not in our studio or in the servers at work

But, It's meant to be used, so eventually it will die just like the harddrive, the Mac and the sound card, and you'll have to replace it. I just can't justify buying a new SSD once a year when a rotating drive can last many years and work just as good (for at least my needs).

[DieHard]

I have used SSDs partitioned in both G4 MDDs and Mac Pros... and of course you can record Audio to the same drive as the OS; I have used partitioned SSD with no issues.  SSDs will not "burn out form over-writting and deleting" just don't defrag them.

Obviously there is no need to defrag since all data on the SSD is accessed at the same speed, there is no need to put files in linear adjacent blocks for faster access.

http://eshop.macsales.com/item/OWC/SSDPHWE2R480/

(See above Link). The SSDs I use for my three Mac Pros are 480 GB OWC Mercury Accelsior E2.  These are pretty cool, they do NOT use a drive bays and are fully bootable, speed is 780MB/s (real fucking fast) and I have them partitioned as 120GB OS, 120GB Samples, 240GB for current projects.  Each Mac Pro also has an Apple RAID controller and (2) 2.0 TB Seagate Desktop SSHD Solid State Hybrid Drives Mirrored (Model: SEAST2000DX001S) for Old Projects, Software Libraries, and Rarely used Samples.

I have already done 19 live recordings with 18 to 24 tracks and I doubt I will ever go back to standard drives for my current work. The SSDs are unreal. I suggest even partitioning small SSDs (120 GB or so) into 60GB and 60GB. and using them for current projects.  My SSDs on the G4s are 120GB and 240 GB OWC Mercury Legacy Pro SSD

http://eshop.macsales.com/item/OWC/SSDMLP240/

As long as you don't defrag these babies, they should last a long time.. Even the first SSDs I bought in 2011 still have had no issues whatsoever... only time will tell

[IIO]

SSDs will not "burn out form over-writting and deleting" just don't defrag them.

the "official" tests recently done by magazines would agree with you, it turned out that most SSDs can write 10 times liger than what is advertisend for them. and, of course, a bad block usually does not mean you can not use it any longer.

but on the other hand, there is his personal experience ... and i hear such stories the more the more SSDs are in use by small companies.

[supernova777]

No, but continous writing/deleting will. We wear out SSD's faster than rotating storage in the file servers at work that get alot of heavy read/write/delete usage. And I mean ALOT faster

hmm..interesting.. what brand name? (so i can avoid) lol;)

[supernova777]

but on the other hand, there is his personal experience ... and i hear such stories the more the more SSDs are in use by small companies.

"all ssds are not created equal"