SSD's rock so hard
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Just upgraded from a 1TB 7200rpm platter to a 1TB SSD. HOLY F'IN MOTHER.
So fast! Finally, I can work at the speed of thought.
Why did I wait so long??
So fast! Finally, I can work at the speed of thought.
Why did I wait so long??
Replies
...that being said, if it's not a detriment to my finances, next PC I build may totally have an SSD for the OS and a bit of backup if nothing else, because the more I do the more I start to feel anxious about everything on my PC relying on spinning bits.
I've already got a 256gb SSD but I might get another one and raid them. I'll have to update the rest of my pc first though
two? pff
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few years old, they only run at ~220mbps, but 24 together for 2gbps
What i would like to have is something like this: http://www.guru3d.com/news-story/samsung-3-2-terabyte-nvme-ssd-based-on-3d-v-nand.html
I use for data storage pretty fast HDDs with more than 180mb/s | 150mb/s (read/writing) and i can say is pretty acceptable (more in raid 0). And well, i have dreams like that kind of pcie ssds with V-nand... but i'm not gonna sell my two kidneys and an eye! i prefer to wait like i did when i purchased my ssds.
I waited so long, and the unique pros i find:
- faster windows boot
- faster app loads (max still loads slow with a raid 0 of two samsungs ssds lol)
- nothing more...
cons:
- Poor endurance/life. I can't write all the TBs i would like to do (video editing).
- For better endurance/life span, i needed to tweak windows, TOTALLY. For example, the USER folder must be located in another HDD. And apps such as Steam or Origin with their huge cache must be installed in another disk... like their libraries.
BTW, i have bought 4 ssds already. One is DEAD, due to heavy use in 3D sculpting and video editing. On the contrary, talking about HDDs, zero disks dead. I still have prehistoric hdds with 40GBs or less (working perfectly on my old machines).
edit: If you want to work with huge amounts of data, 3d Sculpting and Video editing, do yourself a favour... don't buy one of those cheap ssds and buy a server/enterprise sdd. You will hate to lose all the work or part of the work... and do constant syncs/backups in a reliable and affordable 6TB disks.
And remember, launching your apps and the SO 5 seconds faster will not mean to have the work done faster... (it's obvious but some people are really idiot). A ssd is still a stupid whim/caprice imho.
I had a gen1 SSD when it was 32gb XD. Died after 2 years, can still read but all the write sectors are done. Got a Samsung SSD now and its perfect and takes something like 7 years and writing about 2gb a day to get the SSD to the point of no return.
The model i lost, is a samsung 840 pro 256GB (i paid more than 300), a model shipped on october 2012. I had the luck to have the model with its warranty and i got a replacement. So i can say their endurance/lifespan is a SHIT. And if someone says i'm an idiot... i don't care, because it's the opposite
So... "endurance/lifespan thing is a dead argument"... that's only valid for the kind of ssd i linked (you can almost write 3,2TB daily for 5 years, that's real endurance), give or take. For a domestic SSD, the endurance/lifespan is very poor, and its a truth as big as TEMPLE. In that matter you are totally wrong and you only show that you are not objetive, but subjetive cuz "you love ssds".
For some reason i recommend to buy server/enterprise ssds. And i talk with experience.
I don't wish anyone to suffer the loss of data/work due to a unexpected lifespan of an SSD. I invite you to use your SSD as a normal HDD, using it for large archives, huge psds, huge zbrush files, huge mudbox files, huge folders full of video images rendered for compositing, etc. When your ssd dies, show the courage and talk again to me. Period.
My profile folder is mapped to it's own 1TB HDD. Long term storage goes to an external HDD. Very important things go to my personal webspace.
Sometimes hardware dies. It's not a general fault of SSDs because you lost one. It happens.
I've had plenty of platter drives die over the years but I'm not about to start warning people to stay away from them.
The only downside of making the switch at home was not being able to make the switch at work. My work machine was upgraded about 6mo ago and sadly they didn't use SDD and now it's near the bottom of the list to be upgraded/replaced. Its been really hard to convince our IT guy that SSD is worth it, that the bottle neck is the old platter drives and its the single most important upgrade that effects EVERYTHING.
"Yeah SSD is technically faster, sure. But we get a lot more storage and the fastest platter drives do the job fine". No. They don't. What's the point of having more storage than we need if it's slow? Plus prices are coming down and storage is going up on SSD so get over it, grr...
There are days when I'm working with large complex scenes doing animation, and cloth sims and I work from home on those days. Magically I get more done and have an easier time doing it.
EDIT: Blaizer, I've had 4 platter drives fail on me over the years and I haven't had a SSD drive die on me yet. They weren't cheap junk drives, they just wear out. They have a lot of physical parts that have to move around, they get out of alignment, slow down and physically start to wear out over time. All of those physical parts limit how fast a platter drive can react. That isn't the case with SSD. You are basically storing permanent data in RAM.
Jet vs prop plane.
ModelT vs Tesla Roadster.
Email vs Snail-Mail.
iPod vs Jukebox, seriously... this.
My samsung only lasted 6 months!
Mark, for complex scenes, i don't rely on the SSD, but on the Quadro. I don't care if the scene takes to load 10 seconds less, because when i'm working in max, catia or solidworks, i only care about viewport perfomance.
I literally killed my samsung ssd, just to see its endurance/lifespan. Ok, files loads faster... (3,5 times faster), but at the end, my opinion is the same as your IT guy. Almost a year ago, i bought a seagate 4TB 5900 rpm, and i was surprised to see almost the same perfomance as its 3TB brother (much older and very fast for a HDD). And the best, is that this 5900 rpm model is silent... and very cool.
Anyways, i respect your point of view but i don't share it.
If we had on market pcie SSDs of 3,2TB like that samsung, priced at 150, then i would change point of view/opinion in less than 1ms
BTW, i have more than 780GB of games installed in a exclusive HDD in my gaming rig. Games are around 25-50GB right now, and i don't keep them forever... my steam library is huge and in a few weeks i will be playing shadows of mordor and AC Unity. I can afford a raid 0 with 4 ssds of 256GB, but for me it's pointless for gaming, and more considering the money. A change of GPU is wiser because load times are not a problem for me, i'm no that picky, fussy, touchy.
My 840 Normal however still does very well (bought at the same time), and the evos I bought after do their job excellently. Just because one died does that not make SSDs bad.
I even profited from it dying, all important stuff is in cloud anyways all the time, and I could choose a new, so I spend 100 more and got a 512 Evo
for my Laptop which is great since the evos are as good as the old Pros in terms of specs.
Also any artist should be backing up everything constantly, hard drives fail too often.
If i were going to buy a new SSD i would wait for a price drop of the pcie-models like the model i linked.
Anyways, the 850 pro is a good recommendation for a new computer.
It was my understanding that early SSD's failed because it was a physical process to read/write data, not a purely electronic one. Manipulating a small piece of metal, and that it could potentially break.
Running a 256GB for OS/apps/current projects
another 128GB for a few games
At work we have like raid5 on old magnetic discs, it's soooo slow, feels like I'm covering in molasses
Haha, exactly what I thought when I read that too.
Facts? What use are facts? Everyone knows real research is done by seeing how many people complain about a given product on internet forums.
I've had numerous issues with the dozens of HHDs that I've owned in the last 15 years, and no issues with the 3 SSDs drives I've owned, but more importantly, I know that small sample size makes my personal experience absolutely irrelevant.
In any case, relying on any singular drive for anything important is a bad idea. Backup is the only reliable solution, every drive, no matter how good has a chance to fail at some point. Set up a local NAS, and back it up with a remote storage solution if you have data you can't risk losing, don't bank it on whichever model of harddrive has the best reviews at newegg or the best rep on forums.
My data is still all on regular HDDs though. I don't do enough data crunching work. I compile stuff here and there, do some sculpting, but that doesn't require constant HDD access. Most games aren't on SSD either. I just don't play enough to justify buying a SSD just for that. Backup HDD isn't SSD either.
At work it's different. I wish all these engines I got from our clients were on SSDs. But IT only give the SSDs to the people who work all day long with the engines. As a lead I'm just not really doing that. Also, having a fiber network, or at least backbone, at work would rock!
Modern SSD's can last years and years with super aggressive read/write now. It was only the first gen or two that were really plagued by problems. SSD's are as reliable as HDD's these days.
thinking of picking up one or two more of those 840's for work/temp files and the laptop since they are quite affordable right now.
just wondering about backup strategy - what are you guys using? i'd think an incremental backup to another disk at the end of the work day should suffice for peace of mind but i'd really prefer a version control system running locally, just not sure which ones out there are best for large files like ztools and PSD's since i have mostly used inhouse tools for that at the studios i've been.
I have 3 HDDs - OS, data, backup. On data I run a revision control system - I currently have SVN. It's fast enough for local use. I used P4 before though. Then I'm backing up the SVN database daily to the backup disk. I use Microsoft's own Robocopy command line tool. Should be included in all recent Windows versions. Backup isn't incremental though. But that's what SVN is for.
Also max loads sooooo much faster.
Not to mention they can take a lot more jostling and such without breaking down ... no moving parts, hooray!
Works fine though
Might just be acoustics/rattling against case. I had that but with old mechanical drives. Solved with some tape :P
An ideal backup solution means 3 copies of the files with at least one of those copies on a remote server. Its not really backup if your backup is sitting next to your computer and you have a fire, flood, someone breaks in to your house and steals it etc.
I have a NAS (network attached storage), a relatively inexpensive Synology disktation (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822108123) with 4 slots, I installed 2 3TB drives in raid 1 with room for another 2 files more as my data needs expand. You can set up software so your files are automatically copied from your computer (actually any number of computers) to your NAS. Then, you can sync your NAS to services like Google Drive, Dropbox, or others. This is what I'm currently doing and what I would recommend.
You can build your own NAS but honestly the $350 for my Synology was well worth not dealing with the hassle of building my own and trying to find software that I like. The Synology is super reliably and has great software and setting it up was simply a matter of installing the drives and turning it on.
Also, be sure to get a UPS battery backup for your NAS (and your workstation too) one of the biggest causes of data/drive corruption is power failure. My NAS talks to my UPS and is shut down safely if the power goes out.
IME - the more computers you have set up, the more time spent keeping them up to date and all.
dropbox seems a contractual no-go for this project. not that i'd like to transfer large files over the net anyway, upload speed is quite restricted unfortunately.
Kwramm: i am told svn is especially bad for large binary files, not so much a problem of transfer speeds but the time it takes to handle the repository. are you using it for zbrush files et al? mine go over 500 megs a pop all the time.
wow, quite the thread derail already. sorry.
You can buy external HDDs that come with software to automatically sync your work, and there is software to do this via a NAS as well. One of the reasons I went with a NAS is transfer speed is not an issue for me, and it also serves as a local file server for mp3s for a variety of devices in my house.
Just one thing to note though, baking up to DVD/Bluray is not really a good idea. DVDs (and I assume blurays) degrade over time, so relying on that as any sort of long term backup is very risky.
It's always running in the background, and refreshes the backup every 5 mins or so. You can fine-tune that if you want. They also have a versioning system built in.
One of the cool things about it is you can use your own giant encryption key, so no one, not even CrashPlan people, can open your backups.
Handles both offsite and local backups. Easy-peasy. Also no storage limits. It's pretty slick for my needs.
I paid $150 for the first year, supports 2-10 computers (we have 5 here). Pay less if you commit longer, etc.
A NAS is also a good idea.