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El_Plates
El_Plates
Participating Frequently
January 25, 2017
Question

C: drive SSD in PCIe slot. ASUS P9 X79-pro

  • January 25, 2017
  • 2 replies
  • 2783 views

I use a PC I built a few years ago, with guidance from several of you here, and from one who has sadly passed away (I found out only yesterday about Harm's passing).

The PC served my post production needs well in that time, but now requires some maintenance, plus an upgrade to the C: drive.

Current specs at the bottom of this post.

Now the time has come I must replace the C: drive. It isn't large enough for all the programs I want to install,

including DaVinci Resole (which insists I keep current projects on that drive), the full Adobe CC Suite, and several others.

My Questions are--

1-- Would an SSD which plugs into a PCIe 3.0 slot work with my model of motherboard?

2-- IF it does work, could it act as the C: drive and have my OS run on it?

3-- If the above doesn't work, I'll just use an older style (but larger capacity) 2.5 inch SSD plugged into a SATA port.

      any recommendations?

4-- While I have the forum's attention. What kind of maintenance procedures should I perform on the other

      drives in my system (both mechanical drives and SSD's) ?

Current specs/components--

OS-- Windows 7 Pro, SP-1, 64bit.

Motherboard-- ASUS P9 X79 - PRO.

CPU-- Intel i7-3930K. Socket LGA 2011.

Graphics card-- GTX 670 -4GB. (which covers two slots).

C: Intel 120GB SSD (plugged into a 7pin SATA6G port).

😧 Kingston 120GB SSD (plugged into a 7pin SATA6G port).

A: 3TB Seagate 7,200rpm drive (for low bitrate footage such as audio and stills)

E: 2TB apparently server grade Seagate 7,200rpm drive. (for internal backups)

F: 2TB Seagate 7,200rpm drive. (final exports from Premiere)

R: RAID-0 consisting of 2x 2TB Seagate 7,200rpm drives, (plugged into 2x Marvelle 7pin SATA6G ports).

RIP Harm Millaard. You helped many people here, including me.

    This topic has been closed for replies.

    2 replies

    Bill Gehrke
    Bill Gehrke
    Inspiring
    January 26, 2017
    1. Yes it should work fine.  I have installed a M.2 PCIe x4 adapter in my old x58 motherboard with a Samsung 950 M.2 SSD an even thought the motherboard was only PCIe 2.0 it work at a reduced read/write rate.  Since your motherboard is PCIe 3.0 it should work beautifully or you even consider the newer and faster 960 SSD's.  There are at least four adapters out there that work I know work  Here are 2 adapters at work with three M.2 SSD's.

    2.  I cannot guarantee that it will work since I do not have that motherboard but you might have to update the BIOS and install the NVMe drivers.  I see no reason that it would not work. I have cloned my OS to these devices an it works great.  You might want to change your locations for your files on those many disk drives.  These devices are so fast that I actually have tested putting everything OS/Applications/All project files on only one device.  (I am sure Harm is turning over in his grave)  The one drive for all worked beautifully but to avoid confusion on my end, I am using two SSD.  One for OS/Applications as usual and the other for all current Project files. Hard disk drives are now relegated to archiving and backup only.

    3.  NA

    4. Never defragment a SSD.  Forget RAID for performance, it can be used for reliability.  Never put current active project files on hard disk drives again they are only suitable for archiving and backup  As a checkup on my SSD's after installation I run CrystalDiskMark.  Here is my 1TB 960 Pro doing its job.  The important value for video editing is the Sequential performance.

    You see a Sequential Write rate of 2170 MB/s from CrystalDiskMark and with the Premiere Pro BenchMark Disk I/O test we get near that with 1952 MB/second.

    I have been in electronics/computer systems since the early 1950's and this 3.5 GB/second read rate boggles my mind.

    El_Plates
    El_PlatesAuthor
    Participating Frequently
    January 26, 2017

    1. Yes it should work fine. I have installed a M.2 PCIe x4 adapter in my old x58 motherboard with a Samsung 950 M.2 SSD an even thought the motherboard was only PCIe 2.0 it work at a reduced read/write rate. Since your motherboard is PCIe 3.0 it should work beautifully or you even consider the newer and faster 960 SSD's. There are at least four adapters out there that work I know work Here are 2 adapters at work with three M.2 SSD's.

    Which adapters would you guess are most likely to work with a motherboard like mine?

    2. I cannot guarantee that it will work since I do not have that motherboard but you might have to update the BIOS and install the NVMe drivers. I see no reason that it would not work. I have cloned my OS to these devices an it works great.

    If NVMe drivers need to be installed, do they have to be installed before the OS, or after?

    You might want to change your locations for your files on those many disk drives. These devices are so fast that I actually have tested putting everything OS/Applications/All project files on only one device. (I am sure Harm is turning over in his grave) The one drive for all worked beautifully but to avoid confusion on my end, I am using two SSD. One for OS/Applications as usual and the other for all current Project files. Hard disk drives are now relegated to archiving and backup only.

    Yes; Harm might turn in his grave.  His skepticism in regards to SSD's being used for more than OS/Applications (if I recall correctly) was their durability when being written to frequently. My understanding was that an SSD could be written to a finite number of times, and that Harm believed that number was too low for some tasks, but might be high enough in the future when SSD technology improves.

    Has that improved significantly in current technology?

    Can we write to current SSD's significantly more times than we could to those available a few years ago?

    4. Never defragment a SSD.

    What kind of maintenance should be done for an SSD? (if at all). Just reformat ? I vaguely recall the great SSD debate here four years ago, and I think some suggested that we shouldn't reformat often either.

    Forget RAID for performance, it can be used for reliability. Never put current active project files on hard disk drives again they are only suitable for archiving and backup

    I only use the mechanical RAID 0 setup for frequently written large and high bitrate exports from After Effects and DaVinci Resolve.

    Maybe I could use those SATA6G pots for SSD drives instead now (if they're now good for writing to).

    Both the SATA ports it use are "Marvelle" ports. Whatever that means, I don't know if they can be used like regular SATA ports.

    Those Sequential Read/Write speeds you're getting are fantastic! Disk performance is the bottleneck with my system.

    Even the D: Kingston 120GB SSD I'm using for CinemaDNG footage from the Blackmagic pocket is not quite fast enough.

    RoninEdits​ What you said about raw and uncompressed footage is one of the other main reasons I'm considering installing PCIe SSD's. Even a SATA6G SSD struggles with reading said footage fast enough.

    Bill Gehrke
    Bill Gehrke
    Inspiring
    January 27, 2017
    1. The ASUS Hyper M.2 X4 Mini is a good card.
    2. Any time.
    3. Yes the lifetime depends on how many writes you have.  The warranty on the 960 Pro 1TB SSD is 5 years or 800 Terabytes of writes,  That is like writing 512 GB every day for 5 years!  Enterprise hard disk drives are typically 5 year warranty
    4. No maintenance except let TRIM do its thing.

    On that older motherboard you have to test those SATA ports because they were early attempts at SATA III implementation and some were better than others.  Here is a decent SATA III SSD on a good port.

    RoninEdits
    RoninEdits
    Inspiring
    January 26, 2017

    i think a pcie ssd might work with your motherboard as a secondary drive, but it might not be possible to boot from a pcie ssd. for current systems we mostly recommend a sata ssd for boot and the pcie ssd for cache+media. if you are planning on using it for just for os/apps/cache, i would recommend sticking with a sata ssd as it should perform just as well and it will help keep things simple. samsung 850 pro or evo are good choices for sata ssd.

    if you are planning on using the pcie ssd for raw/uncompressed optimized media or render cache for davinci resolve, you might see some benefit with a pcie ssd. i would still recommend using a sata ssd for the os/apps and using the pcie ssd as a cache only drive, or for cache+media with resolve and premiere. the samsung 960 pro or evo are good pcie m.2 ssd's, which will need a pcie m.2 x4 adapter to go into one of your free pcie slots. you should be able to change settings in premiere and resolve to use the pcie ssd for cache, and place media on it as well if you have enough free space. for resolve you should be able to make it use whichever drive you like for cache by changing the first entry in preferences>media storage, as well as the project settings>general options>cache and gallery stills locations. if you are using the disk database with resolve, you should be able to place that on another drive too.

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