Music on SSD: worth it?

[NotSoSiniSter]

@NotSoSinister: if it's data recovery you're talking about, you can stick any HDD in any PC and recover whatever you need to. Booting may not always work, but I'm not really sure what practical use that may have.. Just use the second computer if you have one with you?

Lets say 15 minutes before your gig, you drop your laptop and your screen cracks, you can use a m/m firefire cable and plug your laptop into someone elses Mac and boot from your HDD.

I work at a computer shop, yes, you can sometimes boot from another HDD, but none of the drivers will match. You might crash before even getting into safe mode to uninstall your drivers. So its not something you can rely on.

[basspenetrator]

Lets say 15 minutes before your gig, you drop your laptop and your screen cracks, you can use a m/m firefire cable and plug your laptop into someone elses Mac and boot from your HDD.

just out of curiosity, how do i do that? probably a keyboard shortcut on the startup?!

[StephanV]

Probably hold the 'Apple' key while booting, that's the one you need when you want to boot from USB/CD too.

[Rukks]

Ahhhh, haven't looked at ssd's in a while but yeah I guess the firmware could just be updated from older models...Ill have to read up on it.

I didn't mean they would die but that they would have slower writes over time.

Im saying that as for dropping a ssd over an hdd the ssd will be more durable.

People have been saying that ssd prices will drop "dramatically" for the past few years...they really haven't because as someone else said its the only real bottleneck right now for any non-gaming/design/testing pcs.

Price and demand...which won't change soon because of the wide adoption of the new sata ports which run at 6gbps...which really allow the ssd to shine over the hdd. Many ssd's were limited before and now we are really seeing incredible speeds.

Also, the material cost is just ridiculous for ssd's...can't remember when i read it but wasn't over a year ago. For ssd's you aren't paying for technology your paying for the material.

[MiL0]

There's a shop down the road from me selling an Intel X25 gen1 SSD (160gb) for 150 quid. The specs are a bit old school for an SSD but that's quite a bit of storage.

Speed/capacity-wise, the best I could get is an OCZ Vertex 2E (120gb) for about the same price (160gb is loads more).

Or, should I go for 2 x 60gb Vertex 2E's and RAID0 them?

[StephanV]

I'd be cautious towards Vertex 2. They have about the highest return rate (because of sudden defects), especially the newer model (25nm memory cells, which are also slower than the older 34nm). As a DJ, reliability is probably your number one priority..
RAID gives you extra speed and/or reliability, but that means you're limiting your storage capacity to 120gb, instead of one SSD + HDD..

The Intel SSD's are the most reliable available, and the X25 has already proven itself. They're not the fastest available, but to be honest I'm not sure if you should care too much. The X25 is already plenty fast for regular usage imo. For just $150 bucks, it'd be a no-brainer for me.

[fullenglishpint]

For what it's worth, I've had no problems with my Vertex 2 240GB.

[StephanV]

Not everyone's having them of course, but the amount of complaints is disturbing. They also break down completely unexpected.

As for the X25: I was assuming you were talking about the Postville X-25, which apparently was a wrong assumption. I'm not too familiar with the 1st gen X-25..

Edit: did some more research on the X25. Apparently TRIM support has been added, which is good (well, OSX doesn't support TRIM for 3d party SSD's...), and the reliability is also good.
Read speads decent enough, but the writing speed is a rather poor 70-100MB/s.

Still, I believe this isn't a bad deal. It seems very likely that SSD's will seriously drop in price the next years. The high-end SSD's aren't really worth their money imo, so I'd just pick up this X25 and upgrade in a year or two if you find you want more speed.

[Audeo]

...OSX doesn't support TRIM for 3d party SSD's...

With a little hack it actually does. I love the speed.

[fullenglishpint]

OSX 10.7 (Lion), due in summer, will apparently add TRIM support across the board. Until then I'm just being careful with my read/write cycles, I don't like all the warnings that come with that hack!