using ssd drives

[TiUser]

Hi folks,
maybe it's not the right place here but I got used to this forum that I stick here...

Are you using SSD with Cantabile and how are you using it? What are your experiences?

I did some research and have mixed feelings about SSD technology - mostly concerning reliability.

In general SSD are approximately 10 times as fast as conventional HD's.

What I do not understand is the hype that people replace their system disk with an SSD. While read is almost unlimited, writing data wears an SSD out. Referring to datasheets usual consumer SSD's flash cells can be rewritten just about 1000 times (yes, that low) and just wear levelling and other management practises avoid an SSD from failing within some weeks... Even the best enterprise specs I could find just specify 10.000 rewrite cycles and these models are extraordinary expensive.

My personal conclusion is hence SSD's seem to be ideal for ROM like application where data needs just to be read as fast as possible. But for a system drive???

To add my personal experience with mechanical HD's - yes they are much slower than SSD, but when a drive stands the first two weeks it runs forever, when you make sure not to expose it to shock and give it sufficient cooling. I never ever had a HD failing in the long run.

Your thoughts?

[spirit]

Funnily enough I had an SSD system drive fail yesterday ! It really had me stumped at first: browsers all just froze, couldn't ctrl-alt-del (would just get a security warning), a couple of times it wouldn't boot properly. For a short time everything would be normal again, then again the freezes.

Luckily I'd taken a full drive backup just a day before and had a spare drive in the cupboard so was back to full operation pretty fast....

The drive had been thrashed pretty hard for about 18 months with a laptop on 24/7 so not all that bad or unexpected.

[TiUser]

Thanks heaven you had a backup...

Your experience somewhat confirms my sceptical view.

BTW, is there a way to protect an SSD from being written? I think for putting sampes on it, then lock it and stream from there could be worth considering...

But to wear such a thing out in 1-2 years - always keeping in mind to do daily backus... well that's not my thing.

[aMUSEd]

Thanks heaven you had a backup...

Your experience somewhat confirms my sceptical view.

BTW, is there a way to protect an SSD from being written? I think for putting sampes on it, then lock it and stream from there could be worth considering...

Could you put your samples on it then make the folder read only?

[TiUser]

Is that a question or an answer?

I am not about protecting samples in a folder but protecting the SSD from any write access - maybe a HW switch on the SSD itself would be something I'd like.

[AnalogGuy1]

My experience with SSD's is quite the opposite. My laptop is a Sony Vaio Z with 512GB in a Raid 0 array (meaning there is no data redundancy - quite the opposite in a Raid 0 vs. higher-order Raids). I've used it nonstop for 24 months, running extremely high data streaming programs (high-mesh count Solidworks CAM running nonlinear FEA analyses), and in some pretty harsh conditions (the best-sounding is was last summer in a jeep running away from elephants in Botswana, but probably the worst was in a New York City cab's trunk during a fender-bender). Some bad moisture exposure too, playing a gig in Virginia that was hit so hard by a freak summer hailstorm that many of the vendors' tents were damaged.

No problems at all.

I'm not saying SSD's can't fail, but in my experience they have been perfectly reliable in conditions (vibration and temperature) that would seriously stress conventional moving platter drives. I actually bought a system with SSDs not for speed, but specifically for reliability.

As far as wearing out after two years, that would happen if the drive controllers for the past three years didn't implement write-leveling (spreading around the sectors that are being written to, so no high-wear areas exist). Again, I'm not saying it hasn't happened to anyone, but its rare for my analyses not to generate 50GB+ data, I run them frequently, and I've had no problems.

If you're worried about reliability, then that is a reason to get a SSD, not the converse.

[TiUser]

Thanks for your experience report.

I agree to shock resisance and superior mechanical stress behavior. On the road this is for sure an important point.

For a usual PC at home this isn't as important. I persoannly put my PC always on the table - not on the floor - to avoid accidental feet kicks. This way I never had issues with conventional HD's in the long run.

IMHO SSD's are perfect for fast reading operations without any lifetime restrictions. But regardless if there is wear levelling or not it's a fact that write operations wear SSD's out. If this is relevant or not is one of the points I am not sure about. But I've read reports that smoe SSD's wear out after one year of use as system disk. For me personally this does not adjust the cost, even if a SSD operates much faster than a HD.

However I have found quality differences too, some SSD's claim 10 times higher write cycles than others.

Another strange thing I've read is that SSD get slower over time - maybe because the wear level management eats more and more processing cycles?

Actually I consider another option to put samples on, upgrading with an USB 3 card and getting an ultra fast USB 3 memory stick. Maybe this solution isn't any better but adding/removing a USB stick is much simpler than mounting an SSD which is usually internal.

[ZenPunkHippy]

IMHO your fear of SSD is misplaced. Early models suffered from lots of problems, but in recent years these issues have been addressed.

Another strange thing I've read is that SSD get slower over time - maybe because the wear level management eats more and more processing cycles?

TRIM (garbage collection of free cells) address this problem several years ago.

Basically, new SSDs from Intel or Samsung kick ass. Except for raw cost, if you choose a mechanical HDD for the system drive you are doing yourself out of a huge performance gain.

Basically a system with SSD runs like you want a computer to run: fast, silent, efficient.

Peace,
Andy.

[TiUser]

Hi.

I am always very careful with more modern technology - I am not really the "wow" type of guy before I have weighted in all facts.

I've heard of TRIM. I've also read that Windows Vista does not support it... I'm still running Vista and so using an SSD would also mean to upgrade to Win7... means additional cost and time.

Another thing is that one has to make sure that Win defragmentation and indexing is assuerd to be switched off...

Beond that I've investigated SSD brands - Samsung is indeed one of the top choices. However even Samsung offers standard and pro versions and bet which has the more logevitable flash cells...

There are subtle things...

Beond these tiny things I agree to your statement:
"...a system with SSD runs like you want a computer to run: fast, silent, efficient. "

[ZenPunkHippy]

Fair enough, I don't know much about which versions of Windows support TRIM.

There are other solutions. You will notice that some disks are rated at 240 GB of storage. This is because the disks have 16 GB over provisioning set aside for built in TRIM like functions (making 256 total size) i.e. the disks do their own garbage collection.

2 years in, no problems to report so far - all systems are still very snappy. Hopefully it stays that way

Peace,
Andy.

[AnalogGuy1]

Right, Vista does not support TRIM, Win7 does.

The point remains that write limitations for SSDs don't impact practical lifespan. If you typically write 1MB every *second*, every minute of every day, and have one of the worst drives with just a 10,000 write limit that holds 128GB you're looking at 128G/1M*10k = 1.28G seconds = over 40 years. That doesn't mean your SSD will last that long; it will die when its hardware controller dies, which is no more reliable than a spinning platter's controller. Overall, eliminating platter failure just increases reliability of SSDs by some degree. I agree with you that that degree is probably pretty small when in a well-cared for studio, although I haven't seen any studies.

I know at least Samsung has incorporated TRIM-like collection in hardware on its controller, so if you want to use an SSD, even under an older OS like Vista, you can without worries and you will see an improvement. (Although in same breath, I have not seen any studies that show Win7 is slower than Vista and several that say the opposite, so if you're going after that kind of cash with an SSD you may want to upgrade OS's and get the most out of it with full TRIM support).

Oh to stay on forum topic: I LOVE Cantabile!

[solidtrax]

With normal use, most good/modern ssd's will have probably only used 10% of it's write cycles when you decided to move on to something bigger/faster. I think I read somewhere that you could write 50GB of data to a 128GB Crucial M4 every day and it would take 10 years for the drive to reach its maximum write cycyles.

[TiUser]

Thanks so far for all opinions and experiences. Allow me to comment on some points.

"...the worst drives with just a 10,000 write limit..."
I've found about 1.000 write cycles (yes no typo here) for worse ssd's and 10.000 for the very best (enterprise/server farm models) so far.

"most good/modern ssd's will have probably only used 10% of it's write cycles when you decided to move on to something bigger/faster"
I do not change hardware every two years or so. I also seldom upgrade an old machine, most of the time the effort/cost isn't worth. Maybe an ssd is the only thing that will boost performance of any pc as the HD is traditionally a severe bottleneck.

"...I don't know much about which versions of Windows support TRIM. ..."
As far as I've read Win 7 and Win 8 recognize ssd's and treat them accordingly. With Vista you need to make sure for yourself and as far as I know there is no TRIM support.

"...your fear of SSD is misplaced..."
I am not really afraid of ssd's... I just want to know what to expect. I don't like guesswork and prefer to decide on more solid facts. Write cycles seem to be the only point with ssd's to take special care of. OS like Win reads/writes all the time system stuff from/to disk and it's hard for me to rate this in numbers. Ssd's might be perfect for holding data that is seldomly written/updated... but in most cases using an ssd for a system disk is tempting. I've read several reports of modersn ssd's failing after about a year and my guess is here that this is caused by unoptimized use - or in other words you need to know how to use an ssd best to get back what you pay for.

Finally the idea to use an usb 3 memory stick is for sure not better regarding the write cycle thing, just it is data only use and written onto very rarely.

Probably another thing I ask myself is why sample makers do not sell their huge libs on usb sticks rather than punishing us with rigid copyright stuff that usually makes it difficult to transfer sample sets from one to another machine easily and quickly...

[ZenPunkHippy]

Haven't read your full post yet, but ...

"...the worst drives with just a 10,000 write limit..."[/color]
I've found about 1.000 write cycles (yes no typo here) for worse ssd's and 10.000 for the very best (enterprise/server farm models) so far.

Read this article from Anandtech about SSD endurance:

http://www.anandtech.com/show/6459/sams ... f-tlc-nand

Peace,
Andy

[TiUser]

Read this article from Anandtech about SSD endurance:
http://www.anandtech.com/show/6459/sams ... f-tlc-nand

Thanks and welcome, getting into that right now.

Well SLC looks promising but the SSD840 test simply confirms what I've seen so far:

Estimated Total Amount of P/E Cycles 1,064

That's about 1000 cycles and on the low end. Total data that can be written also depends on the size of the ssd and the tested 250GB version is one of the larger capacity drives.

The lifespan discussed in a related article heavily depends on guessed daily IO...