Camera Labs

Hi folks,

I came across the article Why You Need TRIM For Your SSD today which might be of interest to anyone using an SSD (Solid State Drive) as opposed to a regular hard disk drive.

It has come at a good time for me as I plan to do a fresh install of Windows 7 in the coming weeks which, as the drive will be given a quick format at the same time, means it makes sense to upgrade my Samsung SSD firmware to support TRIM, a process which would wipe the drive anyway.

Bob.

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OM-D E-M5 + ED 12-50mm, H-PS14042E, H-F007014E, L-RS014150E, M.ZUIKO DIGITAL 45mm 1:1.8.
Gitzo GT1541T, Arca-Swiss Z1 DP ball-head.
Astrophotography: TEC 140 'scope, FLI ML16803 camera, ASA DDM60 Pro mount.

I have had some interesting on SSD hard drives, but I really don't know if the increase in performance is worth the price.

What do you think Bob, what's your experience if you compare your drive with a precious conventional one?

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Canon 5D Mark II
Canon 24-105mm f/4.0 L

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It's quicker but I'm not convinced it's so much quicker that the additional cost over a RAID 0 array is justified. I bought it just so I could see what the fuss was about.

Bob.

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OM-D E-M5 + ED 12-50mm, H-PS14042E, H-F007014E, L-RS014150E, M.ZUIKO DIGITAL 45mm 1:1.8.
Gitzo GT1541T, Arca-Swiss Z1 DP ball-head.
Astrophotography: TEC 140 'scope, FLI ML16803 camera, ASA DDM60 Pro mount.

I once talked about this topic with a guy form the Apple store, and he told me that the performance improvement was not worth the price. He said only people with really HDD intensive operations (like rendering HD video) would benefit from this technology.

Now, I do work rather frequently with video processing, but I do it using an external FireWire 800 hard drive, which should be pretty fast and takes the load off the main HDD of the computer, so I was suspicious about the advantages of SDD.

Now you confirm this to me so, no SDD for me (at least not now)

Thanks for your feedback!

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Canon 5D Mark II
Canon 24-105mm f/4.0 L

If anything, video editing (HD or not) is probably not an advantage case of using SSD. The main strength of SSD over rotating rust devices are much lower access times. Small random read performance is magnitudes faster. Video is accessed more sequentially plus you'll likely be wanting bigger capacities too.

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Canon DSLRs: 7D, 5D2, 1D, 600D, 450D full spectrum, 300D IR mod
Lenses: EF 35/2, 50/1.8, 85/1.8, 135/2+SF, 28-80 V, 70-300L, 100-400L, TS-E 24/3.5L, MP-E 65, EF-S 15-85 IS
3rd party: Zeiss 2/50 makro, Samyang 8mm fisheye, Sigma 150 macro, 120-300 f/2.8 OS, Celestron 1325/13
Tinies: Sony HX9V.

That not true, it's a fair bit faster editing video of an SSD, I've tried and it really makes a difference, although sadly the SSD wasn't mine to keep so...
That said, you're most likely going to want a hard drive to store the files on at the end of the day.
And besides, what do people in Apple stores really know about technology?
SSDs might be expensive, but the latest generation of drives really offer some serious performance advantages in more ways than fast access time.

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Canon 500D, 18-55mm IS, 55-200mm IS, Nissin Di622