Anybody use Solid State Drive (SSD) with CS5?

cap10kirk

cap10kirk

Well-known member
I'm currently building my new computer. I was thinking about grabbing a couple of SSDs in a RAID 0 to use as my OS drive. Good or bad idea? Gamers seem to love these things. My plan is to use two 80GB SSDs as my OS drive. And two 1.5TB HDs in a RAID 0 for my media and project files. Any feedback would be appreciated. Thanks.

What I have so far...
i7 2600k
Asus P8P67 Deluxe
GTX 470 vid card
750 watt power supply
16GB Corsair Memory XMS3 Series DDR3-2000
1x WD 1.5 TB Hard drive
wireless keyboard/mouse combo.
I plan on grabbing a Blu-Ray burner and more fans and other stuff.
 
I have a SSD as my installation drive and use normal Seagates for the rest.

SSD reads REALLY fast! Write speed is a bit slow though.

Thus I run my programs from the SSD and keep all my scratch files and assets on the other drives.

PP CS5 opens in just under 2 seconds and I hardly ever render.
Friggin awesome!

Very similar setup to yours.
Blu Ray Burner is great for Project backups!

The only downside to the SSD's (for now) is the size, it fills up very quickly (mine is a 120 gig).
But HOT DAMN its fast!
:)

Nice discussion here:
http://www.dvinfo.net/forum/adobe-creative-suite/485054-running-cs5-application-off-ssd-drive.html
 
I do the same thing. If you can do it, do it. Much faster. I built my setup a few weeks back and am very happy with my SSD. CS5 Master Collection.
 
There a couple of bad ides in your plans. First, SSDs as a System drive won't help at all with your editing. In an ideal scenario, you won't put anything on your System drive but the OS and programs - no media, no projects, no assets of any kind. So while Windows and CS5 may start up a little faster, the editing experience itself will not be much affected. So...given the price of such drives, you're better off with a Samsung Spinpoint F4 as the System drive.

Secondly, RAID 0 is not a good idea for an editing rig. If one drive fails, you lose all data on both. And with two drives, you have twice the risk of one of them failing.

Use the two 1.5 TB drives separately, one for Projects/Scratch, and one for Media.

If you're working at all with solid state media (like P2, SDHC, etc.), which has no inherent backup like tape media, then seriously consider a RAID 3 config, for which you'll need at least three identical Media drives and an Areca controller card.
 
There is nothing wrong with a RAID 0, just make sure you have a back up. Been using RAID 0 for years now, ever since Pro 2.0 Never lost a disk yet.
 
Jim Simon said:
There a couple of bad ides in your plans. First, SSDs as a System drive won't help at all with your editing. In an ideal scenario, you won't put anything on your System drive but the OS and programs - no media, no projects, no assets of any kind. So while Windows and CS5 may start up a little faster, the editing experience itself will not be much affected. So...given the price of such drives, you're better off with a Samsung Spinpoint F4 as the System drive.

Secondly, RAID 0 is not a good idea for an editing rig. If one drive fails, you lose all data on both. And with two drives, you have twice the risk of one of them failing.

Use the two 1.5 TB drives separately, one for Projects/Scratch, and one for Media.

If you're working at all with solid state media (like P2, SDHC, etc.), which has no inherent backup like tape media, then seriously consider a RAID 3 config, for which you'll need at least three identical Media drives and an Areca controller card.
Click to expand...

Thanks for your response, Jim. I will investigate further.
 
Ann Bens said:
There is nothing wrong with a RAID 0, just make sure you have a back up. Been using RAID 0 for years now, ever since Pro 2.0 Never lost a disk yet.
Click to expand...

As you say, there is nothing wrong with Raid 0 . . . and as you said "make sure you have a backup."
Problem is most people, unless they've been doing professional work for a while (or have experienced a drive failure) don't have a backup, and many of those that do are not real good at keeping their backups current.
That being said there are better options for RAID . . .

I use RAID 5 and back everything up to LTO-3, EVERY TIME.

You've never lost a disk yet? Congratulations! Neither have I but that's simply useless information because plenty of people have and there is simply no way of knowing, before hand, when one is going to take a dump.
If somebody is doing backyard barbeques it probably doesn't matter that much but if he/she is doing something that is important to themselves or others it's kind of like playing Russian Roulette wouldn't you agree?

I'm not looking for an arguement here--to each his or her own, but I'm not entirely comfortable leaving the original poster with the idea that Raid 0 is just fine/no real need to worry, etc.

Best.
 
I'd agree with the above. 5 out of 6 people can play Russian Roulette and have a fine experience. That doesn't make it a safe game to play. Raid 0 is just not a good idea. Even more so for the System drive.

As for Areca cards being expensive, you can get 2 TB of RAID 3 storage for less than 256GB of SSD storage. And the RAID 3's performance will not degrade over time like an SSD.
 
Last edited:
I just completed my new CS5 system to handle AF100 footage and I did go with a combo of SSD and standard drives.

* SSD for the "C" programs drive

* PCIE mounted SSD for the "scratch" and day to day projects drive (really saves time on auto-saves) then at the end of the session and occasional saves to the non raid "storage" drive

* Raid 5 (array of four drives) for media, renders, playback etc. (these drives are designed for use in Raid)

* SATA regular drive for saves.... (along with outboard drives and networked server... just in case)

the specifics are outlined below... but this system is quick to boot... the SSDs make it not so much quick to boot but really quick to load programs and really really quick on intermediate saves to the PCIE SSD.


CASE LIAN LI| PC-V2120B RT

Motherboard EVGA 270-WS-W555-A2 5520 XEON

RAM 24 GHz - Two MEM 4Gx3|PATRIOT PS312G13ER3K-E RT

OS - WIN PRO 7 64-BT ENG 1PK DSP OEI DVD

Processor - 2 x CPU INTEL XEON E5620 2.4G RT

C Drive - SSD 120G|PATRIOT PI120GS25SSDR R

Scratch Drive – Revo 120GB PCIE SSD OCZ OCZSSDPX-1RVD0120

Media Drive – Raid 5 controller – Four WD RE3 750Gb drives

Storage Drive - 2TB WD2003FYYS 64M - OEM

Spare C Drive Backup Clone - 1T|WD 7K 64M SATAIII WD1002FAEX

Blue Ray Burner - SONY OPTIARC | BD-5300S-01

SOUND CARD – Sound Blaster X-fi Titanium

Firewire I-O card - ADDCARD STARTECH|PEX1394B3 1394 RT
 
Great discussion, fellas. In my research, I see that Microcenter has RAID enclosures. They have 5 bay and 8 bay enclosures at reasonable prices. The RAID system would connect to my computer using the eSATA port or USB 3.0. Do external RAID systems perform the same as an internal RAID?
 
There's not one defining answer to that. It would depend on the RAID controller and connection to the motherboard.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top