Which is better for Maps/Texture data transfer/storage...SSD or standard 7200rpm HD?

[danb4026]

assuming i have a workstation and 4 render nodes, would there be any speed advantage having my textures and maps stored on a SSD rather than a standard drive?

 

I have my workstation and nodes all pointing to mapped network drives on my workstation right now.

[alansecker]

SSD drives are quick but only as quick as the controller on the motherboard or daughter board its connected to. So most SSD's now offer transfer speeds of 500MB/s bi-directional however most motherboards are still SATA-II standard which craps out at a maximum of 300MB/s (if your lucky).

 

Personally I love my SSD's and the machine feels snappy but for the use as a storage drive, its debatable whether or not you'll notice the difference considering the controller is passing infomation from the SSD to the network, which is usually the biggest let down in anyones renderfarm.

 

How big is you textures directory?

[AJLynn]

Not really. The weak link is the network speed, not the hard drive.

[danb4026]

Thanks for the responses. I installed a 256GB SSD and at the very least I am seeing quite a bit faster thumbnail previews. That is a little pleasing in and of itself.

[AJLynn]

Nm what I said - missed that the workstation is also the file server. Yeah, I'd expect that to improve speed at all the steps that involve loading the textures from the disk, particularly if several nodes request them over the network at the same time your workstation is trying to start a render. Once the textures have loaded, speed wouldn't change.