Hi all
Has anyone experience of using the new SSD drives -- this should really speed up image processing and workflows -- the drives are expensive but are they reliable and as FAST as the spec seems to imply.

In theory these should improve Photoshop processing (especially the 64 bit mode) by a factor of 3 or even 5 - maybe in batch mode even more.

Capacity is smaller but the workflow could be done on the machine with these drives and the final image offloaded to "conventional drives" either on to another machine, a NAS drive or elsewhere on a network while the next image is being processed.

For large batch runs I have a feeling these might be ideal.

Anyone tried these yet.

cheers

-K

Have you seen this?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=96dWOEa4Djs

JJ

I watched the clip and have to say:
DAMM!DAMM!...
It's spooky darn fast indeed, but my credit card's limit would also be vaporized pretty darn fast too!
Thanks JohnJ for the link, it's quite funny too.

Sam

I liked the clip
My credit card also won't take it at the moment.

Ah well there's always the 6 numbers ...

Cheers
-K

That's hilarious stuff....made me drool, though.

The biggest bottleneck in our comps are the storage devices. You can set up two identical SSD drive in RAID for OS and another set for scratch disc-32GB and 64GB drives are very affordable these days. However, as far as I know, the SSD today are still a little slow on writing, perhaps a set of Velociraptor makes more sense for storing the files you need to write. SSD will be the future for sure. The even faster ones are the RAM drive, it will be blazing if you have it in RAID configuration, of course the price tag would be

There are some remaining issues with SSD. There was a long thread on FM about this several weeks ago.

And if you want REALLY fast get the PCI-e SSD from OCZ.
800Mb/sec read and 750Mb/sec write.


The 1Tb version is only $5k


The SuperTalent 2TB PCI Express SSD reads at about 1Gb/s.. writes at 1.2Gb/s Don't even ask the price.

nathanlake wrote:
And if you want REALLY fast get the PCI-e SSD from OCZ.
800Mb/sec read and 750Mb/sec write.


The 1Tb version is only $5k


The SuperTalent 2TB PCI Express SSD reads at about 1Gb/s.. writes at 1.2Gb/s Don't even ask the price.




This stuff will come down in price as technology improves - probably quicker than you think. Manufacturing involves less components, the devices use less power than HDD's and generate less heat

Don't ask how much I paid for a DVD player when they first came out. Last week a supermarket was GIVING away decent players which probably had a much better spec than the original player I first bought.

cheers
-K

What I'm hearing at the moment is to hold off on ssds. The issue seems to be block fragmentation - after a couple of months fragmentation reaches the point that the ssds are slower than conventional drives and the only way to defragment is a complete wipe and re-install.

Its an issue that they will certainly resolve, I would just wait till I know that the resolution is not a new drive!!!!

Gerry

Not to mention the writes are finite.

I just ordered the Intel X25-M Postville 80GB. The fragmentation issue is not a problem. Especially when they get the TRIM function ready. So don’t worry, the SSD will give you a great boost, ... if you have the money. Don’t believe us, just read some specialized websites.

http://www.ssdworld.net/tips.htm

... and yes the drives are finite, but so are HDs. Difference is that SSD's will warn you when they are not usable anymore and you can save your data.

http://www.anandtech.com/storage/showdoc.aspx?i=3631&p=1
http://www.pcper.com/article.php?aid=766
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/ssd-x25-m-vertex,2399.html

http://www.pcper.com/article.php?aid=805&type=expert (TRIM)
http://www.legitreviews.com/article/1112/1/ (TRIM)

Hi hendrik
Intel did have a TRIM driver available but has just recently pulled it from their site -- probably needs an update.

When the price gets a bit more reasonable I certainly would like to convert to SSD's.

Cheers
-K

For some uses, I think the prices are reasonable. Get a 32 or 64GB SSD and put your Windows page file and your PS scratch file on it. That should provide some great benefits.

The OCZ brand of SSDs are getting great technical reviews and are less than $200 for the 32 and 64 Gb size.

OCZ
http://www.ocztechnology.com/products/solid_state_drives/ocz_vertex_turbo_series_sata_ii_2_5-ssd


NewEgg
http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.aspx?Submit=ENE&N=2010150636%2050001550&name=OCZ%20Technology&nm_mc=KNC-GoogleAdwords&cm_mmc=KNC-GoogleAdwords-_-NA-_-NA-_-NA

AmIgone wrote:
Not to mention the writes are finite.

This is the most significant stumbling block IMO

Just installed the Intel X25-160Gb SSD into a new build i7-920 machine (I was a lucky one and the firmware update for TRIM worked).

Photoshop CS4, complete with 6-7 plugins, starts in under 3 seconds .. just wonderful.

As for the limited life writes - Intel state 5 years. Intel will guarantee that you can write 100GB of data to one of its MLC SSDs every day, for the next five years, and your data will remain intact.Even if you halve that, it is likely you will replace the primary drive in that time. Furthermore, the technology of SSD means it does error checking on write; if the write fails, it marks it bad and moves on. The failure is thus a soft one and should not be the dramatic failure often associated with hard drives.

Some great stuff here on SSDs and their lifecycle :
http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/intel/showdoc.aspx?i=3403&p=4&cp=10

With the rapid development in SSD technology plus new SATA 6Gb interfaces coming, I can personally see me replacing this SSD with a fresh one in a couple of years max.

With the arrival of Win 7 (assuming you are not Mac based), and the new drives supporting TRIM, it is a great time to start using them. 160Gb is more than ample storage for the OS and disk heavy apps like PS or Lightroom. Chuck the rest on a fast 1TB secondary drive and your system will fly.

bluebird wrote:
Just installed the Intel X25-160Gb SSD into a new build i7-920 machine (I was a lucky one and the firmware update for TRIM worked).

Photoshop CS4, complete with 6-7 plugins, starts in under 3 seconds .. just wonderful.

As for the limited life writes - Intel state 5 years. Intel will guarantee that you can write 100GB of data to one of its MLC SSDs every day, for the next five years, and your data will remain intact.Even if you halve that, it is likely you will replace the primary drive in that time. Furthermore, the technology of SSD means it does error checking on write; if the write fails, it marks it bad and moves on. The failure is thus a soft one and should not be the dramatic failure often associated with hard drives.

Some great stuff here on SSDs and their lifecycle :
http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/intel/showdoc.aspx?i=3403&p=4&cp=10

With the rapid development in SSD technology plus new SATA 6Gb interfaces coming, I can personally see me replacing this SSD with a fresh one in a couple of years max.

With the arrival of Win 7 (assuming you are not Mac based), and the new drives supporting TRIM, it is a great time to start using them. 160Gb is more than ample storage for the OS and disk heavy apps like PS or Lightroom. Chuck the rest on a fast 1TB secondary drive and your system will fly.




Personally, I can't justity $600 - $800 to drop my PS load times from 6 seconds to 3.


I use two Caviar Black SATA drives in my machine. One system drive and the other for faster access to recent images plus my scratch drive.

With a 64-bit OS, 8Gb of RAM, an AMD Phenom II X4 955 CPU, PS opens in just under 6 seconds according to my recent measurements. The Caviar drives cost less than $100, have a 5 year warranty (no touch technology) and have sustained write speeds about equal to the SSD (85 MB/s). The read speeds are quite a bit slower (250 MB/s for the SSD, 80 MB/s for the Caviar).

The fact is, they both use the same SATA interface. If you want an SSD that will dramatically impact performance, you have to go to the PCI-e versions that have read and write speeds up to 1500 MB/s. The 128 Gb versions are running about $2k. The 1 TB version run $5k plus...if you can find them.

I've got two Intel X25-M 80GB Gen 1 drives in my overclocked system.

The good news: -Everything- is fast, fast, fast. Bridge thumbnail generation is much faster.
The ok news: Running actions in PS CS4 is only -slightly- faster. ACR RAW conversions are about the same amount of time.

For photographers, SSD's make the PC's 'detail' responses faster. Things like opening programs, button clicks, window drawing. (Internet browsing shows off this aspect.)

Put all your swap files (OS and PS) on the SSD. Put the program files on the SSD. Take the time to learn how to tweak your system to get the most out of the SSD's for that last iota of performance.

Bottom line: it's worth the cost if you value your time, or expect quick response from your toys. It's like going from a 1Ds to a 1D IV.