I'll keep that in mind if I get an SSD

1. Do not fill to capacity.
2,. Do not defrag.

Thanks for the headsup



"Incompetence will always prevail so long as evil men stand by and do nothing."
-Martok2112

You're welcome.

FYI - Windows7 recognizes SSDs and will remove them from the list of disks if you try to schedule automatic routine defrags.  I'm not sure about Vista.  I assume Windows8 is equally smart.

Most of what I learned about SSDs came from my favorite hardware site:  AnandTech.com.

Click on the "SSD/HDD" link in the banner near the top of the page.

I am an AnandTech fan because they tend to be analyitical in their analysis, but also share their opinions (and you can differentiate between the two).  They also help explain "what this means to you" so you can better discern if the difference is only something you can measure in a benchmark or if it actually matters to you in real life.  Lastly, from time-to-time they have great articles about the technology itself, in addition to reviewing hardware.

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iClone 7... Character Creator... Substance Designer/Painter... Blender... Audacity...
Desktop (homebuilt) - Windows 10, Ryzen 9 3900x CPU, GTX 1080 GPU (8GB), 32GB RAM, Asus X570 Pro motherboard, 2TB SSD, terabytes of disk space, dual  monitors.
Laptop - Windows 10, MSI GS63VR STEALTH-252, 16GB RAM, GTX 1060 (6GB), 256GB SSD and 1TB HDD

I just installed 128GB SSD and have my system on it. I'm not quite sure how far to go with this, or what needs to be installed on the 128GB to really improve performance on my system. Maybe, you could share some ideas. You mention the temp folder on the SSD, which makes sense.

I have already noticed speed improvements.

You mentioned an additional SSD. Do you really need a second SSD? I mean 128GB is alot of storage.

I definitely want to improve the speed of iclone. When you say you have iclone on the drive do you have all the content files and application files or just the application installed on the drive.

I was hoping to only have to buy one SSD drive. Do you think it is is feasible to have both the system, temp files, and iclone on one 128GB SSD drive?

The reason I ask... I have 4 sata slots on mobo and they are all being used. Currently, I have SSD, 1 TB HDD, 2 TB HDD, and CD/DVD re-writer setup.

Yes, I also have a USB CD/DVD re-writer I could use in lieu of an internal drive. I use the re-writer quite abit working with videos.

Hi,

the SSD is surely faster than an HD (much faster, as there are no moving parts), so anything you write/read on/from to it, will take less time.
Now, the problem of SSD can be the reliability: Flash memory life-time is not endless!
If I had on SSD, I would surely use to the whole content library, project, rendered videos (plus a backup copy on some traditional HD).
Regarding the "temp" folder, a better solution could be to create a virtual HD partition based on the RAM and relocate the "temp" folder there.

Cheers

My PC:
OS: Windows 10 Pro English 64-bit / CPU: Intel i7-9700 3.6GHz / MB: ASUS ROG Strix Z390  RAM: 32GB DDR4 2.6GHz / HD: 2TB+3TB  /  SSD: 2x512GB Samsung 860 EVO + 1x2TB Samsung
VB: Palit GTX2080 TI GamingPro 11GB / AB: embedded in the MB and VB (audio from the MOTU M4 I/F) / DirectX: 12

IMHO, the Jury's still out re; any increase in speed with SSDs over HDs re; Render Times, which are more dependent upon CPU/GPU/System RAM Configurations. Recent NLE Programs, anyway, Benchmark tests demonstrate no increase.

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My understanding is render times are improved with more processor power. I don't think GPU or ram makes any difference from all I've read when you render out your videos. I added an additional 4 gig of ram awhile back to my system. I found no discernible change in rendering speeds of my videos. I used Sony Vegas Pro and it was still negligible.

Yet, when I load iclone projects and work with them. I am not rendering all the time. A lot of time is taken when the content items are loaded, and moved about in the project. One poster above mentioned going from 10 FPS to over 60 FPS, which is a nice increase.

I bought the SSD for 100$, which isn't that much... if I get improvements in performance.

A followup on the SSD thing.

The SSD is a nuisance for many reasons and the speed changes you are supposed to get are negligible.

One huge problem is so many software applications have their installer set for placing files on the system C: drive. Even the best of them are poking their DLLs and other programs onto the system drive or C: drive for most of us. Even iclone, loads onto the SSD when I direct it to use E:/drive. I am sure the bulk of iclone content is going to the E:/drive. I don't think this is efficient, because everytime I load anything into iclone I get these popups "data converting" etc. Someone, wiser than I may have the answer here. To my way of thinking I feel like the I'm constantly being punished for using this redundant feature. The use of two drive types when one shuld be sufficient.

The blurbs you read on the SSD are the improvements when you put OS onto the SSD. SO...yeah, that's what I did.

You cannot de-frag the SSD, which I have mixed thoughts about.

I have appx 4 TB of data and applications and a 128GB SSD. Needless to say the SSD drive has been running in the red "too much data" on the drive practically since I bought it. I spent a day awhile back looking into increasing the size of the SSD replacing the one I have. There were all kinds of issues associated with just increasing the size of the drive. It is like everything on the SSD, especially system data can create real problems for you. This may have changed in the past few months, but the upgrade software from the SSD mfgr was not very friendly.

Now, the bigger hummer. If you try to enlarge the SSD or do away with it you have a zillion more problems. I just tweak away at the SSD and remove anything I can to keep it working.
No doubt in my mind this might be cool technology, but the price per bit is way too high for really acquiring the size of drive you need.

I also get some strange little anomalies with the drive, because it is a memory stick for all practical purposes.

IMO, it isn't a waste of money. They should be paying us to use the SSD.

I hate the darn thing, but I'm stuck in a bad marriage until I build a new computer. So, I should bite my tongue when I feel like kicking and screaming at my computer.

Note: I think the SSD is really a fixture for game players. They want screaming speed and will do whatever it takes, including wasting alot of money.

+100 on SSD's. Put the OS on there and the main applications. If you don't buy a large SSD put the rendered or large files and storage on a HD. Just assign the proper paths for handling this. I build all the PC's around my place and use the Samsung 840 Pro series with 256GB capacity as they are less than $200 at Amazon currently and that is a deal. I also game and it helps there too but a good graphics card really helps. I always have a few 1TB Caviar Black drives as my storage devices in the pc. I have an external backup and network a lot of my work to other pc's on my net for safe keeping. I use 1TB drives as they hold enough and can be copied as an image to another 1 TB drive. If you buy a 2 or 3 TB drive and want to make an image you need another 2 or 3 TB drive. If you have lots of money this is fine.
theschemer

I'm sorry to hear about your frustrations (to put it mildly).

I'm not an SSD salesman, but I've put them in a few systems and believe them to be a must-have component.

Yes, an SSD is best as the C: drive.  You boot faster, logon faster, and launch applications faster.  Gamers benefit extra because game levels load much, much faster.

As mentioned by others, you will need to put large files on "spinning" (HDD) drives because you can buy 2TB for $100, which is at least 10x cheaper per GB.  So when you load large projects and stuff like that, you'll be limited by your HDD speed.  So your project might not open much faster with an SSD, but at least the iClone application should startup quickly.

There is no way an SSD should be worse than a HDD.  If so, something is horribly wrong.

Try "Crystal Disk Mark" and run a couple of tests.  Your SSD should be WAYYY faster than your HDD.  The images I linked to should give you some idea of what to expect.  Maybe you could post your results here.

WHAT COULD BE WRONG?  If you formatted the SSD wrong, it might not perform at peak performance, but it should still be a lot faster than an HDD.  The keyword is "disk alignment," and has to do with partition sizes and stuff like that.  (I did that once, becuase I formatted it using WindowsXP, and then moved it to a Windows7 build.)

I guess it's also possible you got a bad disk with some flawed firmware or something like that.

ABOUT DEFRAMENTING:  Correct, you do NOT want to defragment an SSD, and Windows7 (and up) is smart enough to recognize an SSD and not even give you the option.  That's because it is like random access memory, and there is no penalty to get data that is scattered.  On a traditional HDD, the read/write head has to physically move from place to place, and even though it's measured in milliseconds, the time wasted waiting for the head to move to the new location to get the next snipped of data adds up.  You'll hear your disk drive rattling and you'll experience slow performance.  When you defrag, it just puts the file in once large clump, so you eliminate the time spent moving from location to location.  On an SSD, there is no physical "seek time" involved, so defragmenting offers no value.

CLOSING COMMENT:  If you have an actual problem with your system, maybe we can help identify it so you can get it fixed.  If not, it might simply be that iClone is slow, and it would be even worse without the SSD. 

 

ADDED...

Run msinfo32 and look under Components > Storage > Disks.

Under the partition starting offset, this number should be divisible by 4096, and if not, then it is not properly aligned.

I used some too to realign my disk (rather than reformatting and starting over from scratch).  It successfully improved my peformance and was nondestructive.  I can find the utility I used if anyone needs it.  Of course, do a full backup first, just to be safe.

To be clear, my SSD performed well, just not as good as it should.  Sort of like this (conceptually):

• HDD performance = 50
• SSD initial performance = 85
• SSD improved performance = 98 (very near the advertised performance of 100)

My performance for sequential read/write is maybe 50% faster than on the HDD, and for random read/write it's massively faster, like 100 tiimes faster.  So when you boot, and Windows reads a bazillion small DLLs and stuff, you end up booting 4x (or more) faster with an SSD.

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iClone 7... Character Creator... Substance Designer/Painter... Blender... Audacity...
Desktop (homebuilt) - Windows 10, Ryzen 9 3900x CPU, GTX 1080 GPU (8GB), 32GB RAM, Asus X570 Pro motherboard, 2TB SSD, terabytes of disk space, dual  monitors.
Laptop - Windows 10, MSI GS63VR STEALTH-252, 16GB RAM, GTX 1060 (6GB), 256GB SSD and 1TB HDD

you guys are making me feel bad for complaining.

Before I build a new system I should probably research for some tools to mirror my current 128GB SSD to a much larger SSD.

Gamers have always had benchmarks, maybe there are some benchmark tests we can review with and without using SSD with iclone.

I did not see a difference with SSD, except the system booted much faster. That is great, but for the most part that is once a day at most.

When applications continue to poke files onto the system drive they can really load up a 128GB SSD very fast. When you run the installers they will usually prompt you for a place to install, and then the installer still loads a bunch code onto the SSD and the location you specified. I often wonder, if that is slowing the whole process. Afterall, it would seem the fastest access is limited by the slowest access devices on your computer when they are used together.

My 128GB SSD like I said is always in the red. In fact, it has been so in the red several times I could not remove anything, because the system was calling for more disk space to do the temporary files bit. Several times that has happened and I spent hours each time doing workarounds to remove enough stuff from the SSD.

I'll watch progress on SSD. I will have a clear understanding before I pay attention to some geek twit officiously inform me of my ignorance and push technology on me.