Advanced Audio Integrates Intel X-25M SSD

Advanced Audio Rentals, in ProTools HD and digital audio equipment rentals to the film and post-production community in Los Angeles and abroad, is using the new Intel X-25M solid state hard drive (SSD) in its MacPro computers running Avid ProTools HD. The new Intel X-25M SSD has virtually no read latency, which makes it a perfect boot drive for the company’s Mac-based ProTools HD systems.

Advanced Audio owner Paul Levy states the primary reason for moving over to the Intel SSD was to save time during cloning operations. "Our technical staff would spend hours defragmenting our master source drives prior to cloning a new boot drive per the client’s session specifications. Now, there is no defragmentation necessary, as the Intel SSD has its’ own on-board algorithm that is constantly moving data blocks in order to reduce write amplification."  

Levy says his company was able to reduce the time it took to defragment and clone a master drive from approximately 1 hour to only 13 minutes.

In addition, the MacPro boot time has been cut in half, and the biggest surprise of all: a performance increase in the Protools HD application. Disk I/O load has been reduced, as well as improved rendering and consolidation times.