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I'm experimenting with a small Intel SSD boot drive. The installation of 64-bit Windows 7 went very quickly, and the installation of individual applications is incredibly faster than with a normal hard drive. Applications load much faster. BIAB runs fine. So far, knock on wood, no glitches or driver problems. And NO SOUND at all from the drive, even with the case open.


BIAB 2025 Win Audiophile. Software: Studio One 7 Pro, Swam horns, Acoustica-7, Notion 6, Song Master Pro, Win 11 Home. Hardware: Intel i9, 32 Gb; Presonus 192 & Faderport 8, Royer 121, Slate VSX, Adam Sub8 & Neumann 120 monitors.
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Matt,
Because of pricing issues and storage space issuse, SSD's aren't in my budget, or plans yet. When I can get an SSD drive comparable in space and pricing for a standard SATA drive, which when you think about it is a lot more complex than an SSD, I'll start buying them.

Gary


I'm blessed watching God do what He does best. I've had a few rough years, and I'm still not back to where I want to be, but I'm on the way and things are looking far better now than what they were!
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I agree. I had a credit that was expiring, so it was an opportunity to experiment. The future looks good!


BIAB 2025 Win Audiophile. Software: Studio One 7 Pro, Swam horns, Acoustica-7, Notion 6, Song Master Pro, Win 11 Home. Hardware: Intel i9, 32 Gb; Presonus 192 & Faderport 8, Royer 121, Slate VSX, Adam Sub8 & Neumann 120 monitors.
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I've had experience with SS drives for over a decade at the day job, we started using them in certain applications where vibration, dust, etc. was not the best thing for the mechanical disk drives.

They are indeed FAST at everything, as you note.

BTW -- the Failure Mode is another thing that is extremely fast. We haven't experienced a lot of it, but in those instances where the SS drive fails in the field, there is no warning, no funny noises at bootup or spinup (because there isn't any spinup), the things just fail at the speed of solid state devices. Nanoseconds. Poof. All gone. This is not a fault of the drives. Everyone should make backups in digital storage, regardless of the platform technology.

It is good to see them getting into the mass-production arena now, with prices starting to come in line such that the things may get a foothold in the consumer marketplace.

Still, I intend to wait for the prices to come down a bit more before going ahead and installing on one of my personal machines. But the plans for my next DAW include an i7 processor and may just include a SS drive or two...


--Mac

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Prices for a 500GB SSD are still above $1,400. I remember my first 1GB drive, at $1,000. That was back in the early 90's. I hope that it won't take that long to see pricing come down to a reasonable level.

I think we can expect to see 500GB SSDs at a 'reasonable' level inside of 5 years. But, that's my opinion, nothing else.

Gary


I'm blessed watching God do what He does best. I've had a few rough years, and I'm still not back to where I want to be, but I'm on the way and things are looking far better now than what they were!
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Quote:

I think we can expect to see 500GB SSDs at a 'reasonable' level inside of 5 years. But, that's my opinion, nothing else.




It may well be much sooner. There are a lot of consumer electronics out there these says that use HDD's and where the noise of a spinning HDD is undesireable - Video cameras, Digital Video Recorders, Digital Audio recorders and the like. Demand will create economies of scale that should reduce the prices fairly quickly.


--=-- My credo: If it's worth doing, it's worth overdoing - just ask my missus, she'll tell ya laugh --=--
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Well, no way would I put $1,000 or more into a hard drive. You can get by with a boot drive of 120GB just fine, maybe even as small as 60 GB if you install some apps on other drives in your system.

Anyway, after a day, I'm really liking the speed.


BIAB 2025 Win Audiophile. Software: Studio One 7 Pro, Swam horns, Acoustica-7, Notion 6, Song Master Pro, Win 11 Home. Hardware: Intel i9, 32 Gb; Presonus 192 & Faderport 8, Royer 121, Slate VSX, Adam Sub8 & Neumann 120 monitors.
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I had wondered off'n'on about a RAID of pretty high-capacity SD cards. RAID 10 maybe, to avoid data loss if an SD goes bad. Just plug in a replacement and keep on going. Raid 10 is both striped for speed and also mirrored for security, with auto-rebuilding if a drive goes bad.

Googled it today, and the idea has been discussed for years, generally discounted as not fast enough and too fragile with too-few write cycles before failure.

But then discovered the Panasonic P2 video storage card format (released 2004) which is a RAID of SD cards sturdily sealed up inside a PCMCIA format memory card. Betcha they are expensive though.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P2_(storage_media)


James Chandler Jr
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Yes, Matt.
About a year, now, with a little Asus "EEE PC 8g". 8 gigabyte flash memory storage, 1 gig of memory. With optional SD card storage for a bigger operating system, or just more data. Solid and reliable. Memory upgradeable to 2 gigs.


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Oren.
http://www.masteringmatters.com
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Things are still going quite well with the SSD.

Along with the SSD, I installed Windows 7 64-bit. This is my first foray into 64-bit.

I had been running BIAB from the external drive. I just installed it to the SSD boot drive (option 2, program only) and pointed the Real Tracks and Real Drums back to the external drive. The program loads faster than I've ever seen it.


BIAB 2025 Win Audiophile. Software: Studio One 7 Pro, Swam horns, Acoustica-7, Notion 6, Song Master Pro, Win 11 Home. Hardware: Intel i9, 32 Gb; Presonus 192 & Faderport 8, Royer 121, Slate VSX, Adam Sub8 & Neumann 120 monitors.
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