Upgrading PC for Video Editing

[Davidk]

There was a post about what it is about an SSD that makes it desirable for editing... So, here it is
1. what is an SSD? Basically, lost and lost of RAM with an HDD interface, which means an easy plug n use replacement for an HDD
2. HDD devices are sequential and have a seek delay to obtain data: the time it takes to identify the location of the data sought, move the heads to that cylinder and wait for disk rotation to bring then heads to right sector, and read it. The drive will specify this in milliseconds - typically, about 5-6ms average. But if you do it often enough switching between OS function calls, paging swap-outs, application functionality and data searches, it adds up to large amounts of measurable time waiting for data seek.
3. if the data is all over an HDD drive, it takes a lot longer to get because for each occasion that the next sector to be read is not sequential, another seek delay occurs. It's why there are recommendations to leave a percentage of drive space free (say, around 15-20%) so this sort of thing is minimised, and to defrag your disk often so that sequential data is on sequential sectors. HDD has a life too - don't jar or drop it or do anything that will make the heads crash - meaning rub or wear on the disk surface, and the magnetic coating that is the memory does lose it's effectiveness over (lots of) time.
4. OTOH, an SSD is random access memory: no seek delays of any sort, even for non-sequential data. It has a life in cell changes, but that's measured in units of ten to the tenth power per cell: one cell per bit of memory. If you have an SSD, disabling defrag for that drive helps to maximise life by minimising this type of wear n tear.

Performance comparisons. This example is just mine: a desktop with 4 HDD in the tower, 1 for the C drive exclusively and the rest for programs and data, a total of 1.75 Tb capacity used 40%. A routine weekly whole of PC AV scan (using AVG internet security) with no other programs and activity (I just stopped using the PC and shut down the apps for the time the scan took - it was faster that way) used to take 1 hour 10minutes, and more than half of that was on the the C drive: a huge amount of seek delay. Replacing just the C drive with an SSD reduced the scan time to 32 minutes: a 50% reduction.
What is the life of an SSD used in a PC? years. I don't know of any occasion when a data failure has required an SSD replacement and file restore from backup.

Overall, an SSD wins. There was a time until recently when SSD was too expensive, compared to HDD, but now it is compatible or even cheaper and the HDD makers like Seagate and WD are converting to them for the general disk sizes - say up to 1Tb for price comparability. New thin light weight laptops are all based around SSD memory.