Now that SSD drives are out and getting cheaper and more common, VSL should definitely check them out and should definitely look into adding an option to lower the preload buffer.  With other sample playback plugins, SSD has allowed users to go from a buffer setting somewhere in the middle to the lowest available (and I suspect future versions of the plugs may allow setting it even lower).

When the buffer can be reduced, it can save a ton of memory and load times are very very much faster.  I'm hoping to get one very soon for various libraries.

@mike connelly said:

Now that SSD drives are out and getting cheaper and more common, VSL should definitely check them out and should definitely look into adding an option to lower the preload buffer.  With other sample playback plugins, SSD has allowed users to go from a buffer setting somewhere in the middle to the lowest available (and I suspect future versions of the plugs may allow setting it even lower).

When the buffer can be reduced, it can save a ton of memory and load times are very very much faster.  I'm hoping to get one very soon for various libraries.

I just had a chat with Corsair about there SSD :

My Question :

3) If I buy 3 SSD x F64 and make a Raid 0 using my RocketRaid 2322 card what speed can I expect ?

They say :

WOWWWWWWWW !

We could load our templates in a VERY few minutes

Hello Karel

Did you look to see if it was possible to load each VE of a VE pro server in parallel ?

Best

Cyril

@myktyl said:

Woah... raid 0ing 3 SSDs like that will give you enough speed to launch your computer into orbit and hit the next galaxy over before your templates load.

have you been taking forbidden stuff ????? 

LOL

I'm also interested in the new iMac Quad i7 2.93 (as it supports both Turboboost and Multi-Threading), but I read in fora that Apple's offering SSDs that do not support 'TRIM', i.e. over time they are expected to get sluggish, up to inoperable for professional use. Anyone have any thoughts on this?

Even though TRIM isn't supposed to be supported, I haven't read about any mac users seeing decreasing performance.  It's possible something like that is already implemented, or it could be an issue but people aren't noticing much yet.

TRIM is an issue with repeated writing but not reading so it may affect your OS speed but shouldn't make a difference for sample playback.  Just to be safe, one option is to partition the drive (or go for the option of HD plus SSD) - once the samples are on that partition, you won't be doing much if any writing to it.

Mike do you know whether a SSD should not be filled up more than 80% of its capacity (like a normal drive) because it will slow its performance and stability, or is that not a consideration due to SSD architecture? It's unfortunate that the SSDs offered by Apple merely hold 256Gb.

Hello Mike

Did you already had a look to the SSD available ?

Depending of the block size and if it is read sequentially or randomly one could be very good or very bad

Also some are very slow in writing but fast in reading and vice et versa

I remember reading about 4k blocks ?????

So what are the optimum parameter needed for VSL, 

I plan to have 3 x ssd of 64 GB in Raid 0 to put VSL and one ssd of 128 GB with 2 partitions, one for VM and the other one for the project I am working on

Best

Cyril