What advantages are there to using ssd or M.2 for encoding

[loninappleton]

If an SSd is large enough for the program and content is there an advantage in speed to do the encoding from a SATA or M.2 boot disk?

How does such a device work with the dvd or bluray drive. Is an interim file made to work in the SSD environment?

Please reply if you have actually worked or are working in that environment.

My previous inquiries on this assumed an HD for storage, but now larger devices are available.

[burfadel]

The benefit of an SSD is speed. The amount of data read and written with encoding it's unlikely to provide at benefit at all.

[loninappleton]

Okay thanks for answering. I still like the idea of using one but if no appreciable advantage can be found for my primary task then I can experiment with a SATA device rather than the more expensive M.2

[Sparktank]

When I upgraded HDD to SSD, just the pre-work was beneficial. Indexing, mostly.
Demuxing from disc to SSD is no different than demuxing disc to HDD.

It bottlenecks at the encoding time with your CPU cabailities, that's about it.

Previews should be a little smoother on SSD for live updates in avspmod.
Creating lossless intermediates to HDD via USB 3.0 should be better, too. Though I've never worried about that.

Before upgrading to SSD, I tried having avisynth, x264 and other things operating off a ramdisk.
No real difference between a ramdisk and an SSD.

The only difference I noticed was when I upgraded to a newer desktop.

[QBhd]

The main benefit of an SSD for encoding is not actually during the encoding stage but the de-muxing/re-muxing stages. These actions are mainly limited by disk read/write speed and this is where an SSD shines.

QB

[Emulgator]

And lets not forget: After 70 times writing to the same block most SSD stops to shine.
So I did not dare to use up my 2nd Samsung 850 SSD by video.
My first SSD (Samsung 840) has its brakes already activated.
(Mydefrag worked there sometimes, although deactivated, unnoticed by me)
My first 32GB SSD flash USB stick is now below 400kB/s, almost unuseable.
Magnetic HDDs are fully up speedwise after just one save-out-and-back-cycle.

[loninappleton]

Sort of related:

I recall the program Rufus, some sort of Linux load, to install Win7 gave me fits and I think I eventually had to reformat the disk.

Has loading the OS such as Win7 ever become easier or with a different program to format the SSD or thumb drive and do the install?

I've seen that at least Samsung provided software for this purpose with their SSD but have seen no testimonials on it.

My usual clone tool is the old Norton Ghost which is reliable for HD's.

[Sparktank]

Copying/cloning/installing should be relatively faster.

I believe I used some freeware tools to copy my drive from an old laptop HDD to a new SSD and it didn't cause any problems.
It was quite fast to do.

My desktop just recently upgraded from Win7 x64 to Win10 x64 and that was incredibly fast.
Only issues is that some drivers and a lot of software reset to generic/default state and had to be re-installed/repaired to work properly.

It's not easier. It's just faster.
Easier would be paying a technician to do it for you and do all the diagnosing to find out if it worked correctly.

[loninappleton]

That helps to know. I've also used the migrating technique
of having the drive 'discovered' by the new setup.

I see in your config that you have all or a number of SSD's
on system. Is that correct?

[Sparktank]

Yes, my desktop has 2 SSD's and my laptop can only hold 1 SSD.
All of them are 240/255 sizes.

For copying disc to SSD, it's the same speed as before.
Remuxing/demuxing from the copied folder on the SSD to another SSD or to an external HDD via USB 3.0, it's fast from there.

Booting is faster, so driver updates and Windows updates are a breeze.
Indexing with anything, DGdecNV/FFSM2/LSmash, is a breeze.
Previewing in Avspmod is negligible.
But saving the script to a lossless intermediate to external HDD via USB 3.0 is also faster. That's just encoding to lossless, so you're only bottlenecked by your CPU capabilities, as you would any other compression.
Using two separate SSD's and the HDD externals via USB 3.0 help out a bit.
Especially in times where I still make DVD's with HCenc and use the lossless option.

I got all my SSD's on sale and just keep cylcing them around until everything was using SSD.
My laptop is mostly used for Netflix and browsing nowadays. Rarely I'll get it to do an encode. Simply because I'm too lazy to keep updating it.