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Solid state drives and ZBrush

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#1

hi I’m considering getting a new laptop and cant decide weather to go with a solid state hard drive or a traditional one.

   I have herd that solid state drives can have slower read/write times on large files which makes me think they would be less  good for operating zbrush. Yet they are meant to have faster read speeds for small files which made me wonder if they might be better.

So I was just wondering which would be better, solid state or a normal hard drive.


   Any advise would be appreciated  

   thanks
#2

here’s an interesting review from 2007 that suggests for the most part SSDs and HDDs are equal in many respects. the interesting part of the article suggests that SSDs are 76% faster on hard drive intensive tasks–which is a big plus. this article was posted over 6 months ago, and electronics usually only get better. i’m going for an SSD in my next 17" macbook pro.

hope that helps

#3

thanks a lot for the link. quite useful

last question
SSD’s are said to have a limited rewrite cycle around 100,000 before they degrade to much to store data. has any one got any ideas how long that would last (in years?) with average computer/zbrush/cg use.

or if you have got one how long have you had it and does it still work well

thanks again

#4

well, these new toshiba SSDs, which are probably what exist in the new 17" unibody macbook pros have a claimed lifespan of 1,000,000 hours/114 years.

i think you’ll outgrow the technology before it burns up… lol

http://www.gizmodo.com.au/2007/12/toshiba_introduces_3_new_ssd_f.html

this article written over a year ago gives an estimate of 51 years

http://www.storagesearch.com/ssdmyths-endurance.html

#5

114 years :laughing: sweet

thanks alot for your help, im fairly sure im going solid state now.

#6

yeah, no hurry to worry

welcome :wink:

#7

Hello all,

I have been deciding for quite a while if I should get an SSD or not. After been explained by a really good programmer how windows manages virtual memory I decided to go for one. It was worth it, my machine can handle around 4 times more polys per project, the stability and undo speed also improved, significantly. Sub-tool wise can also feel quite a lot of of difference but I the overall responsiveness of the system is what made my life so much easier.

Since I have never read a post reporting the experience of ssd’s on ZBrush I decided to write this one.
I hope it’s helpful.

Best to all

#8

The only downside to ssds are the price per gig. For a doable price most people are going for around 200gb when getting ssds, which is not roomy at all specially when working with heavy models. These run for around 200, 2-3 times as much as regular hdds. I was on the fence as well because of it, but recently newegg had a sale on their intel ssds. I couldnt pass up a 480 gb Intel ssd for half its usual price making it a doable 200 bucks. I think they might still have it so if they go I’d go for it instead of the Evo which might also be on sale, and be about 20 bucks cheaper. Id go for Intel though, they hold their testing to higher than industry standard, and is a lot faster than the Evo if you’re using it as raid. I know you already decided so throwing in my extra two cents. Cheers!

#9

Intel (and other companies) has been known in the past to cater to specific testing programs’ code, so that it performs better on those tests, but doesn’t necessarily reflect how they’ll perform under your own apps and setup. That was in reference to their CPUs, so I can’t speak to their other products, but it wouldn’t surprise me if they did the same thing on SSD’s. Just be careful not to put a huge amount of weight onto the tests. One thing I noticed, when I was looking into the specs on various SSD’s and was about to buy one (can’t recall which brand, but it wasn’t Intel), I looked at the reviews and almost everyone said that model was much slower than specs suggested. I recommend putting more weight on the reviews by users than anyone else. When I see reviews dominating the user experience in a good or bad way, that’s got to say something.