solid state hard drive

Hi,

I have a four-year old Macpro, duo core intel 2.66 with 5 gigs ram. Everything is up to date, including logic. I have three internal drives (and an external for back up). I am thinking about replacing the start-up drive with a solid state drive, and replacing the music production drive with a solid state drive. The third drive is the dedicated sampler drive, which I wasn't going to replace. The SSDs are much quieter and much faster than standard drives, as we all know. Is this a good idea? If so, how many gigs should I have for the production drive? My projects are modest now, and my 320 drive is just fine for now. I apologize for the long post, btw. Lastly, I want to upgrade to abt 12 gigs ram. Any thoughts? Thanks, very much appreciated. SG.

Hi SG,

I don't have any direct experience with the SSDs, but by all accounts they have faster read/write times and are quieter as you mention. There are question marks over durability and how long they would last. But regardless of whether you use standard drives or the ssd variety I'd always recommend backing up your system and production drives to externals anyway.

Just to confirm, you've got a Quad core Mac Pro?

Increasing the ram to 12GB will surely help your system if you're running Logic in 64-bit. Even if you're not and you use a lot of hefty EXS24 instruments then your system will have use of some of that ram.

Hope this helps
Rounik

p.s. Your post wasn't long at all!! :)

Hi Rounik,

Thank you for the response. I have a four-year old Macpro, duo core intel 2.66. Therein lies another concern. And that is should I hold out and get a quad-core or upgrade what I have. I am not running a big projects right now, but it's entirely possible that I will need more from a computer than I presently have. Thanks, I am grateful for any suggestions.

SG

Hi SG,

Are you sure it's not a dual Core2Duo? This would be basically 4 cores...

It's a difficult one to suggest... Are your current projects stalling / causing your Mac to choke... are you running out of Ram / memory?

Thanks
R

Hi Rounik,

It's a dual core2duo. So, yes I guess it really is a quad core in a way. I haven't hit any processing walls yet, except when I used Trillian on a project. Then latency became a problem. But, that is a different issue. I think a significant RAM upgrade may be enough right now. Btw, do you think it preferable to use, say a Glyph external HD for music production (not back up, but where all the projects go and are worked on) or an internal drive? Right now I am using an internal drive (separate from the start up drive). Thanks very much,

SG

Hi SG

I think an internal drive may shade it in terms of speed. However, you may not notice a huge difference over a FireWire 800 ext. drive…

Ran upgrade will help. Do you run Logic in 64 bit mode?

R

I put an ssd in my Mac pro quad. Wow. Its faster than anything. Boots in 13 seconds. Programs run pretty much instantly. Game changer.

Thats amazing! Thanks for the report back.