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By sonic7 - 8 Years Ago
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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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By toystorylab - 8 Years Ago
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Should be an improvement...
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By Kelleytoons - 8 Years Ago
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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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By sonic7 - 8 Years Ago
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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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By mark - 8 Years Ago
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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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By sonic7 - 8 Years Ago
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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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By Rogue Anime - 8 Years Ago
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sonic7 (4/29/2018)
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 ....
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~
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By sonic7 - 8 Years Ago
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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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By Kelleytoons - 8 Years Ago
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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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By sonic7 - 8 Years Ago
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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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By Rockoloco666 - 8 Years Ago
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Regardless of how well iclone runs on an ssd, if you run your os in an ssd it is a huge performance boost, my pc boots in less than 10 seconds. I cannot speak to iclone performance since it loads from the ssd but temp files are written to a mechanical drive but i must say this hybrid setup Works very well for me, very decent performance
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By Kelleytoons - 8 Years Ago
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It's more likely the GPU that's driving whatever fan noise you're hearing, particularly when rendering (but even just moving around iClone at times). That's one of the reasons I do not like running iClone on a laptop -- it's just too GPU intensive.
But an SSD will be quieter during those times you're not stressing the GPU, like loading in iClone initially (or using XChange, or CC, or your photo editor). So it will help a bit. I just don't want to oversell it. You will get some benefit and it's a worthwhile thing to do, but the folks who have a "come to Jesus" moment are mostly likely working with VERY old slow hard drives (and/or heavily fragmented systems -- part of the benefit of going to an SSD for your boot is you in essence have a clean install, and therefore a lot of things that were crap with your old system go away. Honestly, I would suspect folks who say "wow, this is SO much better" would find much the same thing if they just reinstalled their OS).
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By Jfrog - 8 Years Ago
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SSD are great but you need to have a computer that can handle sata 3 speed. I use to have a mac and my SSD was using sata 2 transfer speed so the gain in speed wasn't great, but buying a data 3 PCIe card made a big difference. A very fast HHD will top at 180 MB/s, a good SSD drive using a sata 3 or usb 3 connector can read and write near 500MB/s and in a raid mode, at 1000 MB/s. The samsung 960 pro M2 1 TB SSD drive I have, can write at 2000 MB/s and read at 3000 MB/s. One thing you should know is this speed is different if you read and write small files or larger files (which is more important for me), So when buying a drive check the read and write speed specs of the drive you want to buy to see if it meets your needs. The best way to know it is to check the benchmark for the drive you would like to buy. For example google "benchmark samsung 960 pro 1tb SSD" and you will find a whole bunch of benchmark for the drive. You can also compare two different drives etc..
I wouldn't work without SSDs. It's not night and day but it makes your system leaner and smoother to work with. You gain a few seconds here and there and at the end of the day it adds up. I use my SSD drive for my system drive and my work drive and backup everything on an internal 5TB HHD.
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By sonic7 - 8 Years Ago
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Hey Jfrog ! .... thanks so much for this information! ... Very helpful and useful.
This will certainly get me heading in the right direction .... much appreciated Jfrog ... :)
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By TonyDPrime - 8 Years Ago
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SSD is faster at loading and booting Windows, the same for applications. Also, if you copy files from one SSD to another, the speed is WAY faster than between 2 HDD.
The one area I have really noticed a drastic improvement is on the sound end, when using NI Kontakt sample player and loading a library that is large with lots of samples, SSDs fly. They load up GB sound libraries like in 10 seconds, whereas a HDD takes like 2 minutes. SSD is much better all over the place. You will not be disappointed.
Agree with KT - As far as a direct iClone advantage, not so much...But it makes all of the surrounding experiences much faster.
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By sonic7 - 8 Years Ago
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Hey Tony .... thanks for the confirmation - yep, improved start up time won't go astray .... - atm it takes forever! :)
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By animagic - 8 Years Ago
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Sonic: if your laptop can only handle one drive then you should at least get 500 GB or preferably 1 TB. Reason being that your drive will have all of your system files as as well as your content files plus anything that you will render, which can add up easily.
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By sonic7 - 8 Years Ago
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Thanks for that animagic - yes I was starting to think along similar lines to you - (to s-t-r-e-t-c-h to a 500 GB).
But 500 would have to be 'tops' for me atm. It's funny that 'Jfrog' happened to mention Samsung SSDs, because I was only talking to an IT friend yesterday, and he said his 'go to' choice for SSDs was 'Samsung'.... so I guess they must be OK ... :)
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By Kelleytoons - 8 Years Ago
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Right now (and things do change all the time) Samsung is pretty well the accepted king of SSD. Toshiba, Crucial, Sandisk and WD all make very good drives that compete favorably in all areas, but Samsung (again, this is at this specific moment in time) seems to have the best price/performance ratio as well as a very good track record.
(Yes, my 2TB drive is Samsung, but I looked at all of them very carefully and even sent back two drives before I ended up with it).
But these are all great hardware and the price really is amazing compared to even just a couple of years ago.
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By sonic7 - 8 Years Ago
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Hi Mike ....
So - another 'vote' for Samsung .... nice ... - sorry to hear you had issues with the first two you bought. I suppose even 'solid state' isn't without it's problems, and no doubt they're only good for 'x' number of 'flips' or 'flops'.... hopefully many though. It staggers me to contemplate the way this stuff is made. I was looking at the specs on my 'graphics card' the other day and the specs quoted something like '1.2 billion transistors'. Back in the '60s, (when I was at primary school), 'transistor radios' (then Japanese built), would 'boast' of containing 6 or 7 (discrete) 'transistors' aka the little metal barrels with 3 protruding legs. Now 'billions' of equivalent junctions occupy a space 'a whole lot smaller' than those 'radios' did ... incredible really :)
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By justaviking - 8 Years Ago
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On my phone... expect more typos than usual.
I am an SSD fan. Not first upgrade though, but if CPU and GPU are adequate, you will apprecite fast application launch times, and level load times if you game. I install OS and all apps onto SSD, multi-terabyte drive(s) for atorage. Able to survive well with 240GB, but would buy 500GB if shopping today.
Samsung is king, but someone just came out with very strong competitor . Look at "storage" area of Anandtech.com maybe 5 days ago.
SATA max of 6Gb/s which is great (and very low latency) but PCIe interface even much faster.
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By sonic7 - 8 Years Ago
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Thanks Dennis - this is a page snap of the link you referrred to .... but I'm not sure which 'item' you were talking about here ? ....
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By justaviking - 8 Years Ago
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@Sonic7 - Sorry to respond to slowly. I was "vacationing" (sort of) and was 99% offline for the past several days.
Here is the article and item I was thinking of:
https://www.anandtech.com/show/12543/the-western-digital-wd-black-3d-nand-ssd-review
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