Looking to get 2 128GB SSDs for doing some video editing on - so will have to be able to put up with quite a bit of I/O What would everyone suggest be a good set to get?
eBuyer.com Scan.co.uk Its hard not to be tempted by the OCZ Force 3 or the Corsair 120Gb SSDs at around £120.
Consumer SSDs are *really* not the best devices for heavy video editing on unless you're looking at a far more frequent replacement than the 3 year limited warranty on them... ...once the nand rating count has been used up, there is no warranty at all. So, for a warranty to be more likely to be of use, either you need to spend money on 'proper' (ie eMLC or SLC) SSDs or, as video editing is largely highly sequential in terms of r/ws, a decent HDD setup - with dedicated drives for source & destination... ...either as single drives for each or, whilst obviously increasing the chance of data loss if a drive failed, in 2 pairs of R0. Now, this (along with doing quite huge amounts of audio batch conversion) is the reason why i own my 15K7s (though i use my SSDs for scratch folders) - being significantly faster than normal HDDs & not having the longevity disadvantage of consumer SSDs... ...however, whilst not as fast, you 'could' do it on a more limited budget by short stroking (under partitioning) something like 1TB F4s & keeping them free of any other data than the project you're working on. Anyway, up to you on what you buy, but that's my informed opinion.
i don't really mind having to replace them every couple of years - just being able to write at 300MB/s to a drive will make my life a lot easier. there's just way too may diff ones to pick from
Well, depending on the amount of data you're looking at here, you're likely to be looking at a more frequent replacement than that... ...& with something like 4x 15K7s (in 2 pairs of R0), you'd be looking at an average sequential data speed of ~300MB/s across each array (natually higher if you short stroked) - with a likely longevity in excess of 5 years (as that's their warranty period). But, it's your call... Anyway, assuming consumer SSDs are the way you wish to go, first off i'd suggest you limit your options to the 3Xnm ones as, with them using non-binned stuff, you're then looking at nand rated for 5,000 cycles rather than 3,000. This basically cuts the list down to things like the intel 510, the Corsair Performance Pro & the V3 max iops. Now, the 510 & Pro both use the Marvell controller - the 510 being more expensive & having the reputation of intel, but the Pro being faster (esp for writes) - whilst the max iops is (obviously) a SF & is likely to be somewhere in between the two in terms of cost. So, again whilst not what i'd do overall, i'd personally limit it to the Pro & the max iops. As to which way to jump... ...well, secondly, i'd try sticking a typical sample a/v source stream(s) & destination stream(s) into WinRAR (or WinZip or whatever) with max settings & see how generally compressible what you're actually dealing with is. [NB this isn't going to exactly reflect the SF's compression, but it will be a very good indicator.] Now, if either are reasonably compressible then, forgetting any speed advantage, there would clearly be a longevity advantage in going for the max iops for that drive... ...whereas, if either's not, you're then better going for the Pro for that drive... Anyway, that's how i'd make my decision.
I have to agree with PocketDemon here. A hardware raid setup with a few F4's or Caviar Blacks would probably accomplish similar results with less wear and tear since access times won't really play much of a factor here.
Well, i know that the M4 only uses 25nm Micron nand, rated for 3,000 cycles... [NB how the devil are you proposing to get 300MB/s writes from a 128GB drive that can only manage ~180MB/s??? Well the 2 i've suggested will both get >300MB/s writes - assuming, of course, the data's reasonably compressible for the max iops (or equivalent)... ...hence suggesting you try compressing typical a/v files to see.] ...& OWC effectively doesn't exist in the UK (hence not mentioning them) but, as far as i can tell, the top end Mercury Extreme Pro uses the same Micron nand... ...well, i didn't suggest the normal V3 or the Corsair GT for the same reason - you need as many cycles guarantied as possible. [NB in truth i know that you 'can' randomly be lucky with at least the normal V3 & GT & get 'premium' intel 2Xnm sync nand rated for 5,000 cycles... ...basically what happens when the manufacturers don't make nand is that you sometimes get more than you paid for d.t. availability (though with the premium SSDs you always get the quality you pay for), but it'd not be worth buying one on the off-chance of that... ...you're far more likely to also get intel, micron, spactek or whatever 3,000 cycle stuff.] [Edit] As a half-correction, having gone through pages & pages of their useless website (i have done other things since originally posting), OWC claim that they are now using 3Xnm sync nand in their Mercury Extreme Pro 6G... ...though this is - (a) possibly slightly confusing for the buyer as there are 3,000 cycle 25nm Micron ones with the identical part no & (b) is something of a bemusing claim as the nand part no in the 32nm versions is apparently TH58TAG7D2FBA89 - which is Toshiba toggle nand (as used in the max iops & performance pro) which is not the same as sync nand... ...so unless they're onto a 3rd completely different version of the thing with the same model no... [NB So much for their suggestion that they are always straight up & honest about exactly what nand's in their SSDs... ...re the foolishness of their SpecTek="off spec" claim... Oh, & quite unusually, by misquoting SF specs (the use of "up to" really doesn't cut it), their website very wrongly suggests that their 120GB & 240GB models have identical performance which is, naturally, utter rubbish. No wonder they don't exist over here - instead appearing to be something of a novelty US brand.] Anyway, this means buying one of these 'should' give you toggle nand with a cycle rating of 5,000... ...but there's always the chance that you'll end up with a 25nm one... Well, it's not where i'd put my money.
So I guess the V3 MaxIOPS is what I should be looking at for decent throughput and semi decent longevity. If they last a year i'll be happy with that as by then SSDs will be a lot cheaper Thanks for the decent info though, it's really quite scary how little I know about the SSD side of things (also - they're going to be in a raid0 hence the high throughput)
No worries - there's just some dull tech stuff involved which is why there's not a 'one size fits all' solution to things. As i've said before, it's not that something like the M4s are inherently bad drives, but they have their limitations... ...so, whilst i've recommended the M4s for certain things & the drives i have here, it doesn't mean that they're the best choice for the money for every one. Ah... You'd not specified the R0 bit... Well, 300MB/s(+) sequential writes was what you 'could' be getting from a single one of either of the drives i suggested; depending on how compressible the a/v streams are. So, in R0, whether things are reasonably compressible or not, you'd be way over 300MB/s for purely sequential stuff with either... Next off, within the choice, i wasn't saying that it *had* to be the max iops - simply any consumer SF that uses nand rated for 5,000 cycles... Off the top of my head, that 'should' include at least the Patriot Wildfire & Mushkin Chronos Deluxe - but i'd double check with the manufacturer before buying... &, beyond that, i guess it's whether you think that any brand is likely to give you better service than another if you had any issues. [NB with OWC, i was just 'amused' that they'd previously claimed that OCZ used different nand & weren't upfront as to what was in what (unlike them), but now they've done the self same thing... ...again, all of the SSD manufacturers who don't make their own nand sensibly need to buy from different companies (excepting their premium products) otherwise they could be held to ransom by one or other of the big nand manufacturers. if you can categorically find out from them what nand they're using &, along with it being good enough, you're happy with them as a company then go for it.] Then, with the Pro, that's simply the only Marvell controller based one that i know of that'll give you what you want (okay, you 'could' R0 a pair of 510s, but it wouldn't be the best value for money) - but if you could find another one with nand rated for 5,000 cycles & with the write speeds you want then... in R0, assuming you're only using them for video editing then, because the data's highly sequential (& so a lack of trim isn't of huge import providing you SE regularly), you'd need to make the choice based on the compressibility - well, either way would be much faster than the target 300MB/s but there'd only be an advantage to paying more for a SF if, on average, it was all reasonably compressible (so you got the longevity advantage). Next, what i'm wondering is whether it would be better to set them up as 2 separate drives (so am going to think aloud)... Well, assuming that's all you're going to be using them for, i'm not entirely convinced that there will be anything that you're likely to be doing that would be drive bound @ >=300MB/s - instead being (predominantly) CPU limited. So the only inherent advantage i can see for R0 is that you'd be wearing the drives at the same rate... ...though, as the actual nand longevity will vary between nand in each SSD, let alone between the two, is this an advantage? Well as there's likely to be more data written to the destination drive (along with re-edits then there's likely to be a bit of post edit transcoding) then quite possibly. Treating them as 2 separate drives then what do we have... Well, it'd be easier to SE each of them individually after a heavy workload & before starting another... if one failed, you've not lost the data on both... ...you've got trim - although this isn't of any particular importance with large files... ...you could buy different drives to save money (if either the typical source or destination formats aren't compressible & you actually needed to maintain a 300MB/s sequential write speed on them). Mmmmm... Not sure here - & the only way to see whether there's a r.l. speed advantage from going from (at the slowest for 99.9% incompressible sequential writes) ~240MB/s for a single 120GB max iops (or equivalent) to (for reasonably compressible sequential writes) ~800MB/s(+) on a pair of them, that would swing it to a R0 setup, would be to test it. All i can particularly (re)say is that, with my kit (using my SAS enterprise HDDs), it certainly doesn't appear to be the drives that are holding anything back... ...the cpu tending to be the things that max out when i'm doing something 'clever'... ...so, again, i am not convinced that R0 will directly improve speeds. Kind of interlinked with the last bit, the only other thing is if you were also proposing to put the OS & apps on whatever you bought... in that situation, i would heavily suggest setting them up as 2 separate drives as you then lose the ability (or rather it's much more of a hassle) to SE after you've finished a project. Well, with the amount of data that you could be writing (esp if you're looking at 2K+ video), you'd need a hell of a lot of time for GC to do it's thing with wear levelling & whatnot... ...that's not that you can't have a reasonable amount of data being written to an OS drive, but that you can take them beyond the point that they can cope with. Anyway, think that that's all i can add... ...& i hope some of it's helped.
wow lots of info not gonna have the OS or apps on either of these, they sit on a WD VR drive mainly because I cba to reinstall my OS again. Think i'll get a couple of the maxiops drives from all that you've said, they seem to be a decent disk, have good benchmarks, and are from a reliable manufacturer thanks for all the advice!