Using the Boot SSD in the Retina Macbook Pro for Video Editing

An ongoing thread on this forum prompted me to research SSD’s reliability. It seems SSD are as unreliable as mechanical drives.

I’m a one man band just starting out. My setup is as following:
• Edit from my Boot 500gb SSD drive installed inside a Retina Macbook Pro: After discounting all my applications and music, I’m left with roughly 330gb for media. This is enough for one, maybe two small projects. (4-10 finished minutes). I can’t do more than that at a time. This drive is not partitioned. Editing works very well, at least for my small projects.
• WD Mybook 500gb External drive. I use this for time machine backups of the SSD boot drive.
• A Raid 1 external enclosure with two 1TB Samsung drives for effective 1TB storage. I use this for family photos and videos. This has a USB 2 interface so I can’t edit from it.
• A Raid 1 external enclosure with two 1TB WD blue drives for effective 1TB storage. USB 2 interface. Exactly as above, but I use this to archive my finished video projects.

Since I can’t afford a fast raid setup, and editing from the boot SSD works wonderfully for my short projects, I’ve resolved to simply leave my external WD Mybook drive connected all the time so it can make backups daily (whereas before I backed it up about every three weeks). I see there’s an iFixit entry on how to replace the SSD from a Retina MBP. I’m handy with this kind of thing, having repaired iPhones and iPads, this guide looks super easy by comparison. So if I’m backing up the SSD daily I should be able to order a replacement SSD and install it myself. I’ll probably have to be about 10 days without my computer but I can live through that.

Does this sound like a reasonable strategy given my situation? Still, I’d love to hear comments from all you experienced folks out there. What I like is that it seems to work and I don’t need to spend any money that I don’t have. (Shooting gear is crazy expensive).

Since you asked, my thoughts would be this:
I have been using two SSD's for over two years now without any problems. One is for the OS and the other is a temporary edit disc. When projects are completed, they get moved to an external archive drive.
Any drive is subject to failure so backing up data is critical, and I do it in two separate external drives.

Editing small projects from your boot drive can work, but as soon as it's practical to get a fast external drive for editing that would be better.

Keep in mind you should leave roughly 15% to 20% of free drive space on all your connected drives for their own drive management. So on a 500 GB drive, 75GB to 100GB should always be left free. You will notice performance degradation if you proceed to fill your drives up.

Using time machine is OK, but you should turn it off during editing and use it manually as often as you can. Freeing up those system resources will offer the better editing performance especially since your boot drive is also running the OS and delivering your media to the NLE.

In addition to Time Machine, it would be wise to use another backup program such as Carbon Copy Cloner or Super Duper. This could be used to backup just your projects and/or Libraries (if using FCPX 10.1) since time machine is handling the OS and your projects.

Depending on what you make video for (commercial use, hobby, etc.) your setup may be OK for now given that your intent is to eventually upgrade storage. If you run a business, it may not be practical to be down for ten days while you order and swap out the drive that runs everything on your computer.

Final suggestion...when you are ready to buy or upgrade storage, choose good brands. They will prove to be more reliable in the long term. OWC drives are the only ones we have in our studio, but there are other top brands as well. Cheap drives will cause headaches.

Hope this helps. All the best. - Dan.

It does help immensely. I appreciate the time you took to provide a thorough reply. I will look into higher end brands when the time comes. Many thanks for the advice and sharing your experience with SSD's.

Is your WD My Book a USB2 or 3 unit? New ones are usb3. If usb3 then I would use that as a media drive and move your time-machine BUs to another drive. USB3 will handle ssd I/O speeds and can be used as a media drive. Depending on what type of video codecs you use and multi-cams, effects, etc… this may be all you need. USB3 external drives are reasonable $$.
Most editors want to have separate drives for OS/programs and for media.
I have a rMBP that I edit with using a USB3 external 7200rpm 2.5" Seagate Backup Plus 1TB drive. For what I am doing it is fine.
Agree with Dan, all good advice, turn off Time Machine while editing, plug it in and turn it on after and let it back up before you shut down. I also recommend CCC or SuperDuper for a bootable back up. They also do incremental back ups as well, but unlike TM, you can boot from them. CCC has saved my bacon over the years.
SSDs reliability has really improved in the last couple of years, but you never know, so back-ups are very important.
Then again, if what you are doing works for you…
Hope this helps, Greg