Dual SSD/Platter Set up

My initial goal with this project is to increase the performance of AE by lower render and editing time. My first thought with this project was to replace the standard HDD in my MacBook Pro with a faster drive. Faster drive=faster project completion.
Upon further investigation running through the forums a lot of people are running multipule drive machines a spectating there read and write drives to spectate ones to maximize the performance. I know some of the people who have thunderbolt ports are doing raid0 to accomplish this sadly I do not have thunder bolt.
What I would like to do is pull out the super drive and replace with a second HDD to accomplish this same type of idea. The HDD drive in the optical bay would be a traditional 7200rpm drive in the range from 750gb to 1TB to store the majority of the large files I have. The main drive I would change to a smaller SSD drive for my OS and apps.
All that being said I want the best return on my investment.
Would I see significant improvement in my work flow? Or is it just a waste of time/money?
If I did do that how would I set the settings in AE to take advantage of the dual drive correctly?
Here are the specs of my MacBook
2.8ghz core 2 duo
8GB ram (max)
500gb 5400rpm drive
OS Snow Leopard
Thanks for the help in advance

Unless you make excessive use of footage sources that require such massive file I/O, the advantage will be zero. Likewise, any advantages with using an SSD or RAID for disk cache will only show up, if the project is so complex, that using cached data will be faster than calculating stuff dynamically. AE has always worked this way and it still does, even if CS6 takes a much more aggressive approach to some of those things. It all comes down to what you do in your projects and it's the same like when to use MP rendering and when not or al lthose endless threads on the best computer for AE. There are no simple answers here. In the end, you could indeed spend a lot of money for nothing.
Mylenium

Similar Messages

MBP 2011 Dual SSD

Hi guys,
I've just got a quick question, I'm thinking in the near future of upgrading my early 2011 15" MacBook Pro with dual SSDs. I'll definitely be getting a Samsung 512GB 840 Pro to replace my HDD but I was also thinking of getting a 960GB Crucial M500 to put in my optical drive bay. Has anyone had any experience with the Crucial SSD? And do you think this set-up is a good idea?
Cheers!

Your MBP may fall into this category:
http://www.apple.com/uk/support/macbookpro-videoissues/
Ciao.

Dual SSD

Thinking of puting dual SSD drives in my MacBook Pro (by removing the optical drive). I'm thinking there are two configuration options...
I could STRIPE it for a super fast single volume, OR, I could put the OS on one drive, and the swap file and virtual machine (Boot Camp?) on the other drive.
Oh also thinking of a single SSD with a 1Tb drive in the optical bay.
Thoughts?

Is there any reason you're not just going to get a 120GB SSD in the first place? [OWC has a 120GB SSD for under $300|http://eshop.macsales.com/shop/internalstorage/Mercury_Extreme_SSD_Sandforce/Solid_StatePro]. So unless you already bought the drives....
As to your actual question of whether OSX can boot from software RAID, I do not know specifically. I believe that it can, (correct me if I'm wrong) but I have never tried.
However, I would be quite concerned about booting from a RAID0 or simple spanned volume. You lose one disk, you lose all data. You'd want to be very certain about your backups. Yes, SSDs are more durable than platters, but Murphy doesn't care about such things. If it were me, I would NOT RAID the drive, but just use one for booting OSX, and the other for data. (But I'm probably more paranoid than most people. )
Me personally, I updated my 2008 MBP with a [Seagate 500GB hybrid drive|http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822148591]. I needed the capacity for virtual machines but SSDs over 200GB are not at a good price point yet. So the hybrid is what I settled on. I'm finding that the platters don't spin up that much, which implies that the MBP is reading a lot from the 4GB cache on the drive, just like it would if it were a true SSD. So it's almost like having a SSD for most things until I fire up a virtual machine. YMMV, of course.

In Iphoto sind alle bilder vorhanden (klein) sobald ich sie vergrößere kommt ein dreieck mit warnung aber kein bild. Ich habe alle nach eine ssd platte umbau restored. Was soll ich tun?

in Iphoto sind alle bilder vorhanden (klein) sobald ich sie vergrößere kommt ein dreieck mit warnung aber kein bild. Ich habe alle nach eine ssd platte umbau restored. Was soll ich tun?

Hallo zusammen
So, heute habe ich noch eine Erkenntnis dazugewonnen und kann nun meine Zweite Frage von gestern selbst beantworten.
Ja, der TRIM-Befehl von Windows kommt auf der SSD an.
Herausgefunden habe ich das mit einem kleinen Tool namens Trimcheck, was nicht überprüft ob Windows den TRIM-Befehl sendet, sondern direkt auf der SSD testet, ob TRIM funktioniert. Dazu werden ein paar Zufallsdaten auf die SSD geschrieben und Trimcheck merkt sich genau die Sektoren, wo es das tut. Diese Daten werden sofort wieder gelöscht.
Dann soll man etwa 20 Sekunden abwarten und das Programm erneut starten. Es schaut nun die vorher beschriebenen und wieder gelöschten Sektoren an und wenn TRIM funktioniert, dürfen da nur noch Nullen drin stehen, keine Reste der Zufallsdaten.
Ganz offensichtlich klappt das alles so wie es sein soll.
Meine andere Frage von gestern habe ich heute mit einem Arbeitskollegen diskutiert, der auch ab und zu mal an seinem Rechner herumbastelt. Der wußte auch keine Antwort zu geben, hat aber eine äußerst kluge Frage gestellt.
Ist es denn wirklich ein Risiko dem Betriebssystem das Leeren des Schreibcaches einer SSD zu verbieten? Hat eine SSD überhaupt einen Schreibcache?
Möglicherweise ist jetzt also schon alles in bester Ordnung, aber ein letzter Zweifel bleibt. Ich hätte gern noch eine Meinung von jemandem, der sich mit dieser Thematik wirklich auskennt.
Gruß
Michael

Trying to install Windows via Bootcamp (dual SSD, optibay)

I have an MBP 17" late 2011. I am running Lion 10.7.4. and I recently bought two Samsung 830 Series SSD drives to put into the MBP. I want to put one in the The second one I want to go into the optibay, so I bought a drive caddy. I am not able to install Bootcamp because I don't have an optical drive. I've tried a few software mods, such as adding 'mbasd=1' and here (www.codez4mac.com/forum/viewtopic.php?uid=225402&f=212&t=61921&start=0) to create a windows 7 USB install disk on Lion, and here (sudo pico /Library/Preferences/SystemConfiguration/com.apple.Boot.plist) to try and get the external superdrive to work and others I've seen on various communities, but nothing seems to work. I can't use the Parallels route because my version of Windows is an Upgrade version.
A few things you should know: (1) I was able to get the superdrive working on my MBP using the software mod above, and I was excited to finally get Wondows installed on the second SSD. However, when Bootcamp goes to install it, it hangs at a black screen with "_" blinking infinitely. I feel like I'm close to finding a solution, but so far no luck. I'm close to just packing up the SSDs and returning them, even though I really like the performance I see.
I am not a beginner, but I am not an advanced programmer, so if you have ideas or fixes, please send them my way.
Here is the set up I want to accomplish:
1) Set up Bootcamp partition on second SSD. Drive #1 will be Lion, drive #2 will be a file store with Bootcamp partition also.
2) If using Bootcamp I can use my upgrade version of Windows. I can do this the traditional way of installing the older version, then the upgrade of Wondows, or simply install the upgrade version clean, then immediately reinstall it as an upgrade and the activation is clean. Before I get any grief on that, there are two things: (a) I've installed Windows several times on other machines this way and it is best because it is a clean install and (b) this was recommended to me by a MS technician when I had to call in a while back.
3) If/Once Windows is installed on MBP's second SSD (optibay), I will be using an external USB superdrive or a USB DVD/CD drive I own.
In trying to work all of this out over the past several days, there are a few observations I have:
A) I am baffled that the USB Superdrive won't work on anything except Mini and Air (even though I got it to work). I don't want to hear the "reasons" Apple does this, becuase I should be able to boot from ANY USB drive, like any other computer. What happens if/when my MBP's superdrive gives it up and no longer works? Drop another $2500+ on another computer?
Sorry for the rant.
Frustrated.

Middle of night but fwiw as long as you don't have two drives both using GUID you can do this. But you can't during install have OS X on A and Windows on B. Get Windows installed you will have to wipe out the one with Lion or disconnect it or something. Then reconnect or restore w/ Carbon Copy Cloner.
Format the one with Lion to MBR
BCA is not needed when you are not splitting a drive between both Windows DVD can be used to format the entire SSD.
Are you familiar with Carbon Copy cloner?

Xrandr, dual monitor, openbox - setting the main monitor?

Hello fellow archers,
got some kind of nasty problem here:
I got a notebook (on the right side) and a old monitor (on the left side).
By using the handy xrandr tool I can set up dual monitors (almost) fine:
xrandr --output VGA-0 --mode 1400x1050 --left-of LVDS
That should do the trick, but unfortunatle conky and gmrun than appear on the left-monitor. But I would like to have my notebook screen as the main-screen.
So basically I would like to have what I get with
xrandr --output VGA-0 --mode 1400x1050 --right-of LVDS
just with the minor difference that I can swap screens when I move my mouse over the left-notebook-edge / right-monitor-edge instead of the other way round.
Hope you get what I mean and maybe someone even knows a solution.

err. there has to be a more elegant solution! openbox has excellent support for dualheading now.
the xrandr thingie togehter with kde works like this afaicr:
xrandr --output 1 --right-of 2
leads to :
[ screen 2 ] [screen 1 (main)]
maybe this works with openbox just as well
cheers Barde
EDIT: i'm an idiot ^^ there is an option in the openbox configuration file... it's called placement and it's under
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<openbox_config xmlns="http://openbox.org/3.4/rc">
</snip>
<placement>
<policy>Smart</policy>

<center>yes</center>

<monitor>Any</monitor>

</placement>
</snip>
</openbox_config>
Last edited by Heller_Barde (2008-10-24 06:58:52)

Burning an dual layer cannot set layer break manually

Burning an dual layer disk with layer break set to automatic seems to be causing to "stutter" somewhere in the middle of the project three or four times as if the layer break is not properly set. I did try this on two (new) burners and with several disks with the same result.
The picture stay still for about 2 or 3 seconds, 3 or four times and starts each time again losing some frames. Before and after that the project plays well.
I did try to make an manual layer break, setting the layer break to manual to look if this can override the problem. But when I do so, the burning process starts without asking where I should set the layer break.as it does when you set it to automatic.
It looks if the manual layer break is not functioning. I start Encore in the administrator mode.
Anyone suggestions what this can be?
Thanks for replying
Chrids

You're right, I didnot have any problems with 2.0, but this version don't work correctly..Some times an already transcoded project changes in an untranscoded project without doing something, and more unexpected things appears ones in a while.
And this in not the only backwards devellopement of the Adobe editing system.
I did work with PPRO 2.0, Encore 2.0 and Audition 2.0 not having any problem.
Changing to PPRO 5.5 and Audition 5.5 and building a new computer on Adobe specs and this forum suggestions, I ren in as much problems that I am thinking of completely remove this and go back to the old 2.0 versions.
It looks as if the develloppers of Adobe lost the professionality needed to devellop a more or less plug and play system. Pitty.
Thanks for replying
Chris

Best way to clone an existing drive, then clone back to a dual SSD Raid 0 setup?

Have a Mac Pro 5,1 (mid 2012) and want to install 2 SSD drives in a Raid 0.
Will attempt to use the Apple Disk Utility to set up the raid. any suggestions on this first part will be welcome!
But what is the best way to clone the existing SATA drive onto the Raid setup?
The 2 SSD are Samsung 84 Pro 256 GB units, installed on a Temp SSD Pro 6 Gb SATA PCIe card.
The OS is Mavericks 9.1.
Thanks !

Always no matter what, have a clone or three - clean, working image, last version before OS X 1.2.3 that you are about to install.
It is about INSTALLING OS X, not updating once you have it - though updates and security updates are known to be monkey wrenches too at times.
Never remove safety net, no matter how safe it seems.
Use a clone to run DU and repair the drive, the drive partition, it handles both (partition integrity was new to Lion), AND to invoke TRIM command when repairing (which won't happen in recovery partition mode of DU).
CCC does a smart update. You don't worry about applying updates to those, and in fact wait a few days before applying updates sometimes, or just make sure the clone is up to date so you can boot from and do a restore if needed. A system restore image is only as good as knowing it will work in an emergency should one arise.
Like to see people break ground on new projects and how to get more out of their systems. The 5,1 does not have the limitations or issues that even the 4,1 exhibited let alone even more for the Early '08 3,1s.
One good SSD alone should / would / make more improvement in performance for low investment than any I have seen. If you have the Tempo Pro card and 2 x 250GB 840's that is about $600 investment - throw in another system SSD and use the Tempo for scratch and/or Aperture and insure you have "more than enough" RAM and your workflow should be smooth. Even wtih that, which I call "best practices" the nMP 6.1 makes Aperture etc even smoother as everything is optimized better and the 1200MB/sec SSD and 4-channel 1866 DDR3 makes graphics smoother and respond instantly to your touch (sports car handling vs your sedan?)
After doing a lot of installs, upgrades, Migration Assistant; and then on a 2-4 week basis boot from another volume to run DU Repair.
OS X alone without the cache used and other things on the boot drive really only takes 40-160GB and makes it easy to create a DU sparse disk image for CCC to update and restore from and that can be kept anywhere. And have a small 200GB emergency maintenance boot volume that you can add to and create on any volume you have handy, shrink and add to that 2TB media drive or TimeMachine drive volume.
I would just set aside half an hour weekly or as needed to clone your system. Than clone again before you apply anything, system update or update to applications or new applications.
With all your personal data and media and projects not on the system you don't need a RAID0 array to hold as much data, no need for the added complexity or using two SSD devices, easier to maintain and restore. There is even a small added overhead to any RAID. With an 840 EVO 500GB just above $300 it makes a lot of sense to use those, and almost too big for a system drive. Fine if the system drive is not just OS and applications but media and stuff don't need to be there. Again, Aperture/Lightroom and other uses, yes and with t he new Mac Pro people are putting and using it for multiple purposes and uses that they would not have wtih the 2012 5,1 and earlier. But it is so fast it makes sense - and Thunderbolt 2 external storage has added more costs to storage.
Kind of got long winded, hope it proves helpful. And not confusing but may raise more questions and ideas.

Best practice for dual SSD RAID0 boot drive configuration

What is optimal stripe size for RAID0 OS/Boot Drives in OSX Software RAID?

You are talking about SSD too.
Usually the default or 16/32k would be fine for all those small frequent I/Os.
RAID though can affect SSD TRIM and it may depend on the SSDs. There are RAID optimized editions.
http://eshop.macsales.com/shop/internalstorage/Mercury_Extreme_SSDSandforce
http://macperformanceguide.com/SSD-RealWorld-SevereDuty.html

HP ENVY 15: Slow 4K read speed for Dual SSD's in RAID 0 - Needs to be addressed!

Crystalmark scores 2nd gen Envy 15:
Read/Write
SEQ 352 / 215
512K 270 / 195
4K 14.2 / 110
http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=427278&page=754
read write
418.2 / 213.9 seq
251.3 / 181.1 random 512k
9.8 / 53.17 random 4k
http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=427278&page=750
4k Read Speed MUCH SLOWER than without Raid 0 (~20-25 mb/s)

Not exactly sure, I pulled those benchmarks off of notebookreview. All I know from reading the forum is that HP Envy 15's in RAID 0 seem to be severely underperforming 4k read speeds relative to the same SSD's not in RAID 0. The 4k random read is the MOST IMPORTANT benchmark for real world performance.
Other posts in the old HP forum have cited that disabled C1E could possibly fix the 4k read issue, however the Envy 15 seems to have no way to access this option in the BIOS.

Raid 0 for dual SSD's in optical drv together with RAID 5 in internal bays

Hi,
I would like to add two 100GB SSD's in the second optical drive space in RAID 0 for boot.
This can be done with a special bracket and cables to the SATA connections on the motherboard. So far so good.
Now I have 4 drive bays I could fill with 4x2TB black caviars for data and I was wondering if I can have those ran via the a RAID 5...
Anybody have advice as to wether this is possible and if the Apple RAID card is the preferred option?
Thanks!!
Thomas

Hi Thomas,
welcome on board
I think first of all your SSDs should support RAID. Secondly, what I learned reading the forum entries that Apple RAID card is far not the best possible option.
Why you would not like to use soft raid?
Message was edited by: Munas

Libreoffice/ chrome in dual X screen set up

is it possible to have two chrome browers / libreoffice open each on each X screen? on my set up the second will always open on the screen the first one was opened.

I am also considering this option but here's what I discussed w apple.. I currently have 27 inch imac and 13 airbook. I do a lot of work at home but needed to be portable on the road and need files in sync. There didn't seem to be a software solution to keep all of my files in sync so what I have decided to do is keep all of my relevant work files (so only one version and wont' get confused w version control) on my laptop. When at home I drive everythign off of my iMac and use the laptop as an external hard drive via Thunderbolt connection. I am planning to add the 27 inch Thunderbolt display soon. Either way I drive everything off of the iMac.
By keeping the work files on my laptop when I need to travel everything is there the minute I take my laptop with me. I have also loaded all programs onto both computers. Therefore I can work on those files from either computer.
Does this work for anyone? Does this sound like a reasonable solution or am I underutilizing the computers. All thoughts are welcome.

ENVY Dv7 dual SSD's win8 sees only drive 0, drive 1 not seen.

I have an ENVY DV7-7243cl laptop, I replaced the original 1TB HDD with my seagate 750 GB solid state hybrid drive, installed windows, no problems there, however yesterday I installed a second SSD (crucial 512GB). The BIOS sees both drives, but windows only sees the 750GB boot drive, if I put the new SSD on external USB windows sees the drive and allows me to initialize it. I'm not sure why two SSD's won't work together. Is there something missing a driver perhaps etc... I have the latest BIOS version F24
Hp ENVY DV7-7143cl
16GB ram
windows 8 Home
Seagate Momentus XT 750GB SSD hybrid and Crucial 512GB SSD.

Hello ggetchell,
Take a look at the HD & SSD Care and Maintenance Measures manual. On page 7 it talks about advanced formatting for Windows installations...maybe something there may help?? This document may help as well. Please let me know.
Good luck!
↙-----------How do I give Kudos?| How do I mark a post as Solved? ----------------↓

Dual SSD + HD Setup

Hey all,
I've removed the optical drive from my early 2011 MacBook Pro, and replaced with a 750GB HDD. (Will use an external drive from now on when needed; I have an apple external optical drive and made the necessary modifications to my os so the earlier machine will recognize and allow me to use it.) I've also installed a 256GB SSD in the hard drive slot and installed the OS on the SSD. The SSD is in the old HDD slot because the SATA bus is faster in that spot vs the old optical drive. (twice as fast as I recall.)
The HDD, which used to be the only drive on the system, still has OSX and many programs installed.
I'd like to move a couple of important programs (Logic Pro, primarily, and maybe a few others.) It's simple enough to re install those and uninstall them from the old HDD.
However, should I (can I?) remove the OSX from the old HDD? It's a 750GB and only 150GB left, so I think Id' like to give it a little breathing room and start getting rid of some fluff.
Also, I assume I want to tell my machine to look for certain things on the HDD vs the SSD (iTunes media content, of course, and other space hogs.) How does one do that?
thanks!
Geoff

I understand that your home directory is on a secondary drive but I give you an alternative to that which solves this issue without the unlock utility ssn637 mentioned.
My configuration is that home directories are on the SSD but I created a directory structure for the user homes on the HDD as well. The user folders (or you can even do it on file level) that I considered not to store on the SSD were moved to the HDD and a symlinks were created at the original place on the SSD pointing to the new location on the HDD. (See man ln) This way you can fine-tune what user stuff to leave on the SSD system drive (and gain performance benefit) and what to move to the slower but larger HDD --- and in the same time the encrypted HDD is not needed for being able to login. (I haven't investigated to what extent this may depend on what you actually move to the HDD. I haven't moved those small hidden files in $HOME and left most of my $HOME/Library and $HOME/Applications folder on the SSD and it works. I moved mainly music, movies, documents, virtual machine images and stuff like that to the HDD.)

Dual SSD rMBP..when?

I like the concept of the rMPB, but I've been spoiled by the ability to replace a MBP optical drive with another SSD. Thought I can get a decent 768SSD, I would prefer and pay for 2 of them in the same unit. As parts become increasingly smaller, I'm hoping it will make room for this option in the 2nd Generation rMPB

Never will happen, it will always be one storage drive in Mac laptops and most all laptops anywhere.
It's because one it what most people require.
It will get larger in capacity as technology improves, but it still will be one device because two greatly increases the cost to produce and doubles the failure rate.

Dual SSD/Platter Set up

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