Quick Solid State Drive Question

S

Seafroggys

Well-known member
Little backstory before I get to my main issue: I've been needing to upgrade my recording computer. Especially for the past year, but I've been wanting to upgrade it since 2008. I built it in early 2007 on the cheap with the intention of upgrading it later, but aside from doubling the Ram, by the time I wanted to upgrade my CPU socket was obsolete and they didn't sell CPU's that fit anymore. So I just didn't bother.

But now with my current project I'm realizing that I really, really need an upgrade. It may be because my computer just needs an OS reinstall or a defrag or something, but it does appear a lot slower. Even UAD plugs are slowing down stuff.

Anyway, the lead in to my actual question. One of the things I was going to add in the upgrade was a Solid State Drive for my operating system, since I use that on my main computer and its totally badass. I have also read that its not a good idea to do recording onto a SSD, its still better to use older style magnetic drives (which have far larger storage capacities as well, useful for this line of work).

So I finally am running out of room on my hard drive. Its the original drive, think its a 320 gig. 7 years of recording work on here. I've been importing lots of wave files into my current project, and we're talking on average 1+ gig a song, and between my three partitions I only have about 5 gigs left and I still have several songs to import. I've been deleting some temporary stuff I no longer need (old mixdowns mostly) and moving some stuff on flash drives, but these are all temporary fixes while I finish work on my project.

So while it may be a few months before I upgrade, I desperately need a new hard drive now. So I can either just go with a 1-2 terrabyte drive and not worry about storage again, or I can implement my future upgrade plans and get an SSD now, not install a new OS but just use it temporarily for storing files. So finally after being long-winded, here's my question: since I'm not recording ONTO an SSD, just reading from it, is it okay to do that with audio in a DAW? It may seem logical to go with the big old-school drive now and get the SSD later, but because of my huge slow downs I'm having right now, maybe an SSD will improve performance a tiny bit?
 
Hey.
It's maybe not a direct answer to your question but if your setup is slower than it used to be I'd repair it before upgrading things.
OS reinstall might not be a bad idea, if that's the case.


In general, I would recommend an SSD for system drive and big storage for sessions/samples etc.
What are your computer specs?
 
Why aren't you using your "main computer" that's badass for recording?

On the computer you use for recording, how many drives do you have now? What are the specs and OS?
 
fuzzsniffvoyage said:
Just say "Fuck it" and get one of these:

Sweetwater Custom Computing Creation Station 450 | Sweetwater.com

I have one and it's great. Though I did up the RAM to 32GB and upgrade to Windows 7 Pro (Home wont recognize more than 16GB)

And this is 32mos financing.
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That is a lot of money for a computer. I am sure it is quite well at anything required for recording. Seems there is a simpler solution.

OP
On the surface, I think a good SSD drive would improve performance. If you are on Win7, I have never had to reinstall Win7, I really don't think that will solve anything. But your HD getting to its end of storage will have a direct impact on performance (think virtual RAM). Now this is just an opinion, but SSD as the main HD, scratch disk for your projects (current HD is there are no issues with it) and a good archive 1-2 TB HD.

Tiger has 240 GB PNY (not sure how good the are so research) for $84, and a 2 TB for about $90. Your system would look something like this if possible, OS on SSD, current HD for main project area, third HD for large storage.

When you upgrade, you would be able to take all that with you, grab an MB and CPU, RAM special and you are off to the races. That would be my suggestion.

Could you do it better, probably, but that is a pretty decent storage array.
 
Seafroggys said:
...Anyway, the lead in to my actual question. One of the things I was going to add in the upgrade was a Solid State Drive for my operating system, since I use that on my main computer and its totally badass. I have also read that its not a good idea to do recording onto a SSD, its still better to use older style magnetic drives (which have far larger storage capacities as well, useful for this line of work).

So I finally am running out of room on my hard drive. Its the original drive, think its a 320 gig. 7 years of recording work on here. I've been importing lots of wave files into my current project, and we're talking on average 1+ gig a song, and between my three partitions I only have about 5 gigs left and I still have several songs to import. I've been deleting some temporary stuff I no longer need (old mixdowns mostly) and moving some stuff on flash drives, but these are all temporary fixes while I finish work on my project.
...
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Umm sooo, does this mean no back up drive? If that is the case...

.. GET YOUR ASS IN GEAR! .. :rolleyes:
 
Oh, forgot to add, get a utility disk software like Acronis to move these images so you don't have to reinstall.
 
DM60 said:
Oh, forgot to add, get a utility disk software like Acronis to move these images so you don't have to reinstall.
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Best idea EVER. Except don't pay money for an imaging program.

https://www.runtime.org/driveimage-xml.htm
I love this little program so much, I bought a commercial license for work. (There is one caveat with restoring a Win7 image, but it's an easy workaround.

I agree with DM60 mostly. I would say: SSD for the o/s drive, a big 2TB for audio storage, then use your 320 gig drive as archival for your old projects instead of burning them to a flash drive or whatever you're doing. Pull it out and throw it in a fire-proof box.
 
I have an external drive and I've backed up all the important shit, don't worry.

I think some of you may have missed my question because of my overly long speal. Of course I want to use the SSD for an OS drive. But that's when I get around to doing a full upgrade. My question was, since I need to get a hard drive NOW, would it be fine that I just put an SSD in, and use that as storage space for .wav files? Then when I later do the full upgrade, wipe it and do an OS install?

For those that were wondering, these are the specs (of the top of my head):

3 ghz Pentium D (circa 2005-06 tech)
2 gigs DDR2-800 Ram
320 Gig Seagate Hard drive
Windows XP SP3
Nice ASUS mboard (can't remember the model #, but not like it matters because again I bought it in 2007)

Also, buying prefab is out of the question. I build my own comps. Thank you.

Why aren't you using your "main computer" that's badass for recording?
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Um, I never said that. I said that I put an SSD in here and it boots Windows 7 super fast. So the hard drive is badass.

Besides, I have two computers. My primary computer (for gaming and internet) and my recording computer. My primary computer is with me, my recording computer is at my studio at the parents' house. When I built the recording computer it was the better machine, but I upgraded this one a few years ago so I could start running modern games smoothly again. I haven't really had an urgent need to upgrade the recording rig until recently.
 
Chili said:
Best idea EVER. Except don't pay money for an imaging program.

https://www.runtime.org/driveimage-xml.htm
I love this little program so much, I bought a commercial license for work. (There is one caveat with restoring a Win7 image, but it's an easy workaround.

I agree with DM60 mostly. I would say: SSD for the o/s drive, a big 2TB for audio storage, then use your 320 gig drive as archival for your old projects instead of burning them to a flash drive or whatever you're doing. Pull it out and throw it in a fire-proof box.
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FYI - Acronis is not a back up utility, it is a HD utility. You simply boot up under it's OS via flashdrive, CD whatever, see the source drive, see the target drive, tell it how to partion the new drive (it doesn't have to be one to one) tell it to move contents Source to Target, done, swap to make new drive you C drive, boot up run like nothing has happened.

You could probably use it like a backup (since you can copy the whole image), but it is primarily for moving hard drive contents from one to another. Not sure what Chili mentioned does the same thing, but I do know this works well, even if you can't boot with the old hard drive. As long as you can see it and it spins. I have saved many a computer with it.
 
Seafroggys said:
Um, I never said that. I said that I put an SSD in here and it boots Windows 7 super fast. So the hard drive is badass.

.
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OH OK, I'm wondering why you wouldn't just switch computers. I have an SSD in my DAW computer for Win7, it does boot fast. Hard to say how much it actually makes a difference in the speed of the DAW performance, but I'm sure it didn't hurt.

I ran into the same type of problem and I had to change the motherboard to upgrade to a Quadcore CPU. It wasn't that bad and the system works great now, never crashes runs a huge project. Good Luck!
 
DM60 said:
FYI - Acronis is not a back up utility, it is a HD utility. You simply boot up under it's OS via flashdrive, CD whatever, see the source drive, see the target drive, tell it how to partion the new drive (it doesn't have to be one to one) tell it to move contents Source to Target, done, swap to make new drive you C drive, boot up run like nothing has happened.

You could probably use it like a backup (since you can copy the whole image), but it is primarily for moving hard drive contents from one to another. Not sure what Chili mentioned does the same thing, but I do know this works well, even if you can't boot with the old hard drive. As long as you can see it and it spins. I have saved many a computer with it.
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Ah, okay. I thought it was for imaging and backing up hard drives. I guess it's similar, but more for IT depts. who have to prepare multiple computers. The DriveImage program is strictly for imaging. It uses Windows Volume Locking or Shadow services so you can image the drive you're running on.

And for SeaFroggy's , sorry if I misunderstood. I say yes, buy a regular spinning hard drive now. The biggest you can get that will run on WinXP. Upgrade later. Be happy. :)
 
If!? I have understood the OP correctly, he wants to buy his final use SSD now, use it for music data storage and then wipe it and use it as a system drive later on?

I don't see a problem with that, except! I learned something about SSDs the other day that I did not know. If they fail the data is gone, just gone. Virtually zero chance of ever recovering it.

This is of course not the case with spinners short of smashing the platters the data, or a good portion of it, can be recovered, might cost you a limb and a kidney but it can be done.

So, as I see it don't store valuable data only on an SSD. In any case a 1TB SATA 7k2 ain't that expensive as a spare and SSDs are coming down in price all the time.

Dave.
 
Always mirror SSDs. They are not an if, but a when. They do fail. Something like Memeo Autosync (what I use) works very well. Any time a file is written to the ssd, it also mirrors to an external (in the background). There is a limit to how many reads/writes SSD's are capable of, but it's getting better. The new V-NAND models from Samsung offer a 10 year 150TB warranty. You'll pay a bit extra, but it may be worth it for something you want to keep for a while. (You also will have to wait a couple weeks to order one--they're due out the 21st)
 
BroKen_H said:
Always mirror SSDs. They are not an if, but a when.
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I've read a lot about this and I don't know how much of it is true, but I keep my long term back up on a spinning disc and use the SSD for day to day work.

With the cost of SSDs it works out well because most people can get away with between 100+256gb for a system drive.
I have the latter.
 
This is technically true but for home use almost doesn't matter. Solid state drives do have a kind of hard limit of reads/writes. In the server world this means we keep any SSD we have on a yearly rotation. In the home world you will use that computer, replace it, replace the next one, and in another 8 or so years that drive would die.

Back to the original question though, you can drop in an SSD in your existing PC but using it as a secondary drive really won't show you a ton of improvement. If it were me I would buy the SSD, use some cloning software (acronis is good, EASUS todo backup is good) and clone your existing drive to the SSD. Install it as your main and run for now. When you get ready to do the full upgrade. I would back up all my data, build the new PC. install the SSD as the main drive (wipe and do a fresh install though).

Ideally you want at least 2 drives though in the new build. The SSD as your "main" drive. You will install windows/DAW/programs to this drive. If you only have 1 SSD then you will also use this for all your current sessions. Then a second drive for all your data and archived sessions. If you have the option for a second SSD I would do OS/DAW/Plugins on the main SSD, all current/active sessions on the second SSD, and all your archived sessions and data on the 3rd drive (doesn't need to be SSD).

Steenamaroo said:
I've read a lot about this and I don't know how much of it is true, but I keep my long term back up on a spinning disc and use the SSD for day to day work.

With the cost of SSDs it works out well because most people can get away with between 100+256gb for a system drive.
I have the latter.
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What I've read about SSD's are they are prone to early mortality, but if it goes beyond the first year, it will run for 5 or more years which is about the same as a spinning hard drive.
 
Chili: I can't really argue that fact as my experiences are just my own. So far I would say I have purchased/installed about 40 - 50 SSD drives now between my own computers and my clients (I do IT consulting for law firms mostly). Out of those over a 3 - 5 year period I have only had 1 die that I can recall (but could be 2).
 
polarity said:
Chili: I can't really argue that fact as my experiences are just my own. So far I would say I have purchased/installed about 40 - 50 SSD drives now between my own computers and my clients (I do IT consulting for law firms mostly). Out of those over a 3 - 5 year period I have only had 1 die that I can recall (but could be 2).
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Nothing beats empirical data. So, about a 2% fail rate. I can believe that and proves early mortality may not be an ol' wives tale after all. :D

How does that compare with HDD failures you've experienced?
 
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