Was wondering about the 'merits' (or otherwise) of changing from a Hard Disk Drive to a Solid State Drrive for running iClone 7.2 (+Xchange & CC) ....
Would anyone have an opinion on this ???

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Please be patient with me ..... I don't always 'get it' the first time 'round - not even the 2nd time! :(  - yikes! ... 

● MSI GT72VR Laptop, i7 7700HQ 4-Core 3.8 GHz 16GB RAM; Nvidia 1070, 8GB Vram ● iClone-7.93 ● 3DXChange Pipeline 7.81 ● CC-3 Pipeline 3.44 ● Live Face ● HeadShot ● Brekel Pro-Body ● Popcorn FX ● iRAY ● Kinect V2 ● DaVinci Resolve17 ● Mixcraft 8.1

Should be an improvement...


Toystorylab on Vimeo :     Crassitudes (my "Alter Ego") on Youtube: 

Some folks have said "it's life changing" (or words to that effect).  I have not found this -- I have found it's *better* but not overly dramatically better.

But I think it depends on your current hard drive and what SSD you are migrating to.  I have always had VERY fast HDs (I do a lot of video work) and even though my 2TB SSD is as fast as they come, it doesn't (say) make it 10x faster than just loading and working off a very fast video drive (which also has solid state buffering anyway).  For you it might be a whole different story.

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Alienware Aurora R16, Win 11, i9-149000KF, 3.20GHz CPU, 64GB RAM, RTX 4090 (24GB), Samsung 870 Pro 8TB, Gen3 MVNe M-2 SSD, 4TBx2, 39" Alienware Widescreen Monitor
Mike "ex-genius" Kelley

Well .... I'm absolutely 'gob smacked' ..... did you say 2TB SSD? Whoah .... where have I been?
(Maybe I'm comparing to my previous laptop which had 32GB SSD - thinking well - it's new(ish) technology).
It never ceases to amaze me - the sort of big toys some are privileged to play with :w00t:  (I think I've said it once before - .... " I can only 'dream' of such" ...) :rolleyes:  .... anyways .... back to 'reality' for me ..... - still, that's one amazing drive.
(btw - I'm thinking of 250 or maybe 500 GB) ... but 250 is a better 'fit' for my budget ...

OK.... so I take it that iClone needs to 'fetch' bits and pieces while it operates ... so I 'get it' that that's a whole lot quicker from a SSD.
But then there are things like retrieving (accessing) your project files? - or do they sort of just stay loaded in your RAM?
And I remember reading somewhere that if you 'run out' of V-Ram, then files are written to your HDD/SSD. ..(If I remember correctly).
So, 'overall' (given all that iClone has to do), it seems likely that SSD would impact fairly decently on performance?.....


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Please be patient with me ..... I don't always 'get it' the first time 'round - not even the 2nd time! :(  - yikes! ... 

● MSI GT72VR Laptop, i7 7700HQ 4-Core 3.8 GHz 16GB RAM; Nvidia 1070, 8GB Vram ● iClone-7.93 ● 3DXChange Pipeline 7.81 ● CC-3 Pipeline 3.44 ● Live Face ● HeadShot ● Brekel Pro-Body ● Popcorn FX ● iRAY ● Kinect V2 ● DaVinci Resolve17 ● Mixcraft 8.1

It made a world of difference performance-wise for my system. I'll never go back to spinning disks for C drives again!!!



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So toystorylab says "should be an improvement", Mike says "it's better", and Mark says a "world of difference performance wise" - so all positive ...
(current pricing for a 250GB SSD here in Australia is a little over $100 AUD) ..... and I remember quite vividly (when DVD production was in it's infancy), paying $328 AUD for each of the (10 or so) 120GB drives I bought in my old business......(that was as big as they came at the time) - boy have things changed ....

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Please be patient with me ..... I don't always 'get it' the first time 'round - not even the 2nd time! :(  - yikes! ... 

● MSI GT72VR Laptop, i7 7700HQ 4-Core 3.8 GHz 16GB RAM; Nvidia 1070, 8GB Vram ● iClone-7.93 ● 3DXChange Pipeline 7.81 ● CC-3 Pipeline 3.44 ● Live Face ● HeadShot ● Brekel Pro-Body ● Popcorn FX ● iRAY ● Kinect V2 ● DaVinci Resolve17 ● Mixcraft 8.1

Sonic - What you NEED is a 2TB or larger C drive as well as a 2TB or LARGER (MUCH larger preferred) SSD drive project files drive. (This is what I run now) Not only will you find your process MUCH faster, you would never lose your data due to any mechanical disk failure. You are currently limited to how fast that disk of yours can spin, and that's KILLING you! Get yourself 2 SSD's, they are much less expensive now, and anything else @ this point in history, is both a waste of money, as well as a backward step in your workflow processing. Go for it - you will be happy you did. ;)  ~V~

       Val RogueAnanda

Thanks Rogue ..... you're obviously sold on SSDs and what you're saying is very encouraging, but these days budget restrictions don't allow for such expenditure given this is really a creatve 'hobby' (albiet taken very seriously), plus, the SSD is only for a 'laptop' anyway. What you're suggesting makes a whole lot of sense for serious iClone users ...
The challenge for iClone users 'on a budget' can still be the same though .... - creating that 'work of art' - something that you can look at and say 'that doesn't look like it was done on iClone!'  :)

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Please be patient with me ..... I don't always 'get it' the first time 'round - not even the 2nd time! :(  - yikes! ... 

● MSI GT72VR Laptop, i7 7700HQ 4-Core 3.8 GHz 16GB RAM; Nvidia 1070, 8GB Vram ● iClone-7.93 ● 3DXChange Pipeline 7.81 ● CC-3 Pipeline 3.44 ● Live Face ● HeadShot ● Brekel Pro-Body ● Popcorn FX ● iRAY ● Kinect V2 ● DaVinci Resolve17 ● Mixcraft 8.1

Laptop -- that's an important thing to know (so perhaps you might have stated that originally).

Yes, by all means get an SSD, of whatever size you can afford.  It will NOT be "life-changing" I can promise you, but it will be nicer.  Nowadays it's almost impossible to buy any laptop that doesn't have an SSD as its boot drive (at least not any decent one) so that will help.  If you had a desktop and a fast video drive (with perhaps some memory buffering) then upgrading wouldn't be as much of an issue, but a laptop will also run longer (less battery drain) and quieter and cooler, so a whole lot of benefits to using SSD.

As Val notes, the more the merrier, but you don't have this option with a laptop.  But life will be better for you and the cost/performance ratio is worth the upgrade no matter how large you go.

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Alienware Aurora R16, Win 11, i9-149000KF, 3.20GHz CPU, 64GB RAM, RTX 4090 (24GB), Samsung 870 Pro 8TB, Gen3 MVNe M-2 SSD, 4TBx2, 39" Alienware Widescreen Monitor
Mike "ex-genius" Kelley

Mike .... - yeah I should've said 'laptop' at the outset - sorry 'bout that ... -- still very much appreciated what Val had to say on this - it's nice to hear it when people are sort of 'passionate' about something - so big thanks to Val for sure.
Good points you mentioned regarding lower power consumption, being quieter and *cooler*! Hadn't thought of those extra benefits ... well - I'd *hoped* the fan wouldn't keep bursting into 'hyperdrive' - like the noise of a jet engine!   :P -  but wondered whether the CPU was really causing that ... but in any case - the less 'moving parts' the better imho. (Just now downloaded 'Core Temp 1.11' (portable) - to have a bow peep at the cores ...)
Thanks Mike!  :)

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Please be patient with me ..... I don't always 'get it' the first time 'round - not even the 2nd time! :(  - yikes! ... 

● MSI GT72VR Laptop, i7 7700HQ 4-Core 3.8 GHz 16GB RAM; Nvidia 1070, 8GB Vram ● iClone-7.93 ● 3DXChange Pipeline 7.81 ● CC-3 Pipeline 3.44 ● Live Face ● HeadShot ● Brekel Pro-Body ● Popcorn FX ● iRAY ● Kinect V2 ● DaVinci Resolve17 ● Mixcraft 8.1