SSD problems on laptops used for chasing

[Bill Hark]

I recently read a very nice article on choosing a laptop for chasing by Scott and he mentions some problems with laptops using SSD instead of a hard drive for storage. Unfortunately, some of the newer smaller laptops only have SSD as an option and I expect the SSD market share will increase over time. Anybody using a laptop for chasing with SSD instead of a hard drive have any experience good or bad?

Link to the article:
http://www.endlessweather.com/2010/11/28/chasing-tech-choosing-a-chase-laptop/

Bill Hark

 

[TJ Whitt]

I use a laptop that has a SSD in it. Never have had any issues with it. No over heating or corrput files. It's a 64GB SSD. I use it for booting the OS's and use an external HDD for anything else.

 

[Greg Stumpf]

I've been using an SSD laptop for several years now with no problems. Biggest pro - very quick boot up!

 

[Jerry Prsha]

I recently read a very nice article on choosing a laptop for chasing by Scott and he mentions some problems with laptops using SSD instead of a hard drive for storage. Unfortunately, some of the newer smaller laptops only have SSD as an option and I expect the SSD market share will increase over time. Anybody using a laptop for chasing with SSD instead of a hard drive have any experience good or bad?

Link to the article:
http://www.endlessweather.com/2010/11/28/chasing-tech-choosing-a-chase-laptop/

Bill Hark

While It's not a laptop, I switched to a SSD two years ago for my on-board computer. It's been installed continually for that time and I've not had a problem. It's just so much of a better choice when dealing with the temperature extremes and vibration while on the road.. The days of spinning media are numbered...

 

[Jason Foster]

Not sure if Scott mentioned this in his blog...so I'll just briefly touch on it here. A few things solid-state drives seem to limit is storage space. The answer is external hard-disk drivers (HDD), but I worry about the speed of the drives. I know for video editing and capturing, etc. eSata is the way to go...USB too slow (except I read somewhere that USB 3.0 is faster than eSata at 3mb/s vs. 1.5mb/s BUT I still need to read up on that). The same questions would go for the internal SSDs. Yes...these laptops are NOT for video editing, but that part of my research has me question

-what is the speed of the solid state drives
-is there an eSata (or USB 3.0) and is it capable of operating at the full speed of the HDD

 

[Andrew Herron]

I upgraded the hard drive in my Lenovo X100e notebook to a 32GB SSD and the only complaint I have is from using Linux, not the drive itself. It seems the lower power requirements for the SSD cause one of the inductor coils near the motherboard to vibrate at a slightly audible tone, somewhere in the 20kHz+ range. It's annoying, and upping the juice to my CPU solved the problem; more power drawn through the inductor.

I only bring this up because I don't have Windows on that computer anymore so I can't confirm nor deny what will happen for you.

The speed however is unbelievable and there's no more moving parts. I'd say jump on it now before the cost of the memory chips go up.

 

[Matt Tottle]

Not sure if Scott mentioned this in his blog...so I'll just briefly touch on it here. A few things solid-state drives seem to limit is storage space. The answer is external hard-disk drivers (HDD), but I worry about the speed of the drives. I know for video editing and capturing, etc. eSata is the way to go...USB too slow (except I read somewhere that USB 3.0 is faster than eSata at 3mb/s vs. 1.5mb/s BUT I still need to read up on that). The same questions would go for the internal SSDs. Yes...these laptops are NOT for video editing, but that part of my research has me question

-what is the speed of the solid state drives
-is there an eSata (or USB 3.0) and is it capable of operating at the full speed of the HDD

USB 1 is 12Mb/S, USB 2 is 480Mb/S, and USB 3 is 4.8Gb/S. (Notice the small b - small b is BITS, Big B is BYTES). USB 3 is not widely utilized yet on hardware, and there are very few devices that can utilize it.

eSATA is just an external connector for SATA, so there is no difference in speed between SATA and eSATA. The SATA interface speeds at this point are 1.5Gb/S, 3Gb/S, and 6Gb/S. SATA 6 is also still very new, and most of the existing equipment and all but the high end stuff on the shelves is going to be 1.5 or 3. Even at 6 Gb/S, we have not hit the full transfer bandwidth of the drives themselves. Given a choice, if you have an eSATA port on your computer, ALWAYS use it over a USB connection for an external hard drive. The kicker here though is eSATA in most computers is NOT hot-swappable. Meaning you can't just plug it in and Windows will detect it like you can with USB. eSATA needs to be connected with the power off, and then booted so the BIOS can detect it. It wasn't meant to be a 'hit and run' interface, it was designed for semi-permanent connection to storage in an external case.

Now all of this really means nothing as far as capturing over Firewire or USB, since they are at least 3x slower than the slowest SATA drive. But for editing you would see a difference on import/export. Here's the catch though. SSD is MUCH slower writing than it is reading. Read speeds will max out the SATA6 interface. Writing is like a slug on salt because of the numerous clock cycles required to burn one bit. You DO NOT want to use SSD in any kind of write-intensive application, such as editing, not only because of the speed (size is a non-issue because they are available up to 2TB), but also the flash chips used have a finite number of writes before they start failing and you start losing capacity.

 

[Skip Talbot]

Other than the read speed, the real advantage to an SSD is supposed to be the improved reliability/durability right? I've been cruising with the same HDD in my chase laptop for years now. HDD's are a fraction of the cost of a comparably sized SSD. I think I'd rather just back up my files and replace an HDD in the off chance it fails on me. Even after a replacment, its still cheaper than a SSD.

 

[Matt Tottle]

That's right Skip, especially if you use a straight/rigid mount (articulated mounts have a degree of shock absorption inherent in their design). If you hit one of those spine-jarring ruts that leaves your butt stinging, there's a good chance it will kill your hard drive. The hard drive head is thinner than a hair riding on a cushion of air a few microns above the platter which is whipping by at 5400 or 7200 RPM (about 75mph). A hard enough up/down jolt can cause the head to smash into platter, scraping the magnetic coating off the platter and destroying the head (called appropriately a "head crash"). In this type of crash, due to the physical damage to the platter, chances of data recovery, even by a professional DR company, is slim to none.

So the key is to make sure you have shock protection in the mount itself. Rigid/straight mounts are the worst because they are solidly bolted to the chassis, and any shock is transmitted directly into the laptop. In articulated mounts, each joint dissipates some of the force, so the hard drive stands a better chance the more joints your mount has. I would even go so far as to use a shock absorbing gel (think Dr Scholl's 'gellin') or memory foam pad between the laptop feet and the stand.

But definitely keep a running backup (at least once a week, and any time you add something), preferably a clone with incremental updates via a program like Norton Ghost. Then all you have to do is dump the image to a new hard drive and keep on going.

 

[Skip Talbot]

Well, I've certainly put that hard drive through huge up-down jolts!

Watch video >

Drove into a culvert that was several feet deep and the front end of the van slammed down on the opposite end of the culvert with the front tires hanging in air. The laptop didn't even hiccup, and yeah its on a Jotto desk with two articulating arms and rubber pads under the feet. The hard drive in the video camera also didn't get interrupted either, which I find surprising. There's some give to the acrylic sheet its mounted to so maybe that absorbed some of the impact.

 

[Mark Blue]

I just pulled the trigger on a Mushkin 120 GB SSD and the OEM version of Windows 7 Professional 64 bit from Newegg a few moments ago for my Toshiba laptop. I've been thinking about this move for several months now and I don't know why I waited until now to make the decision, but I'll be working on a clean install here in the next couple of weeks before our upcoming chasecations in May and June. I'll post back with success stories or lack thereof once I have it up and running. I'm going to just pull the old drive and keep it as a backup since it's working fine, so if the upgrade doesn't go well I'll have a fail-safe option in place for the heart of the chase season.

 

[Jason Foster]

USB 1 is 12Mb/S, USB 2 is 480Mb/S, and USB 3 is 4.8Gb/S. (Notice the small b - small b is BITS, Big B is BYTES). USB 3 is not widely utilized yet on hardware, and there are very few devices that can utilize it......

Thanks Matt, great response. I understood that perfectly. I do often miss the B vs. b too. Again, thanks.

 

[Bill Hark]

Thanks for everyone's thoughts. The options for a small laptop with firewire capability are decreasing. I did buy a refurbished Sony VAIO with a SSD. I'll let everyone know after chase season. As for hard drive problems, I have used the same laptop for chasing for 5 years and have not yet had a problem. It usually sits on the passenger seat though has known to slide off during a hard stop. I did have an external hard drive that tipped over and was ruined.

Bill Hark

 

[Mark Blue]

Thanks for everyone's thoughts. The options for a small laptop with firewire capability are decreasing. I did buy a refurbished Sony VAIO with a SSD. I'll let everyone know after chase season. As for hard drive problems, I have used the same laptop for chasing for 5 years and have not yet had a problem. It usually sits on the passenger seat though has known to slide off during a hard stop. I did have an external hard drive that tipped over and was ruined.

Bill Hark

Did you by chance buy a Sony Z series notebook Bill? I've been seriously eyeing one of those for over a year now. My hope is the SSD will provide me with a noticeable speed and/or responsiveness increase so I can go another year with my current setup.

 

[Matt Tottle]

I just pulled the trigger on a Mushkin 120 GB SSD and the OEM version of Windows 7 Professional 64 bit from Newegg a few moments ago for my Toshiba laptop. I've been thinking about this move for several months now and I don't know why I waited until now to make the decision, but I'll be working on a clean install here in the next couple of weeks before our upcoming chasecations in May and June. I'll post back with success stories or lack thereof once I have it up and running. I'm going to just pull the old drive and keep it as a backup since it's working fine, so if the upgrade doesn't go well I'll have a fail-safe option in place for the heart of the chase season.

I assume you already know you need a 64 bit processor, and at least 4GB of RAM to take full advantage of Win7 64bit.. But if you have older hardware, watch out. Between last season and this season I did pretty much a full upgrade of my laptop.. Swapped in a dual-core Turion 64 bit processor (originally a Sempron) and upgraded to 8GB RAM (originally 2). I installed Windows 7 Ultimate 64 bit, and all was well... Until I tethered my phone and plugged in the USB capture card. Both are old enough that 64 bit drivers were never written for them. I managed to find a homemade driver for the phone, so at least I still have data without having to upgrade my phone, but the capture card is a loss. It dates way back to the Windows 95 days. Win7 32 bit recognized it just fine and was able to download a driver directly for it. But no such luck with 64 bit, it just fails, and being as I may just be the only person actually still using a piece of hardware that old, nobody wrote a 64 bit driver for it. So I have to get a new one soon.