Switching to SSD Drives

revnice1

Member
Hello All:

I'm about to switch to SSD drives. The desired setup has always been programs on C:\, sample sets on another drive.

Is that still the way to go? I'm used to that with a third drive as backup but I don't mind if that one is SATA.

Anyone got suggestions or advice?

Thanks - rev

Machine: Asus Z-390-E, i-9900K 4 gig htz, 32 RAM, Windows 7 SP1, Sonar 8.5.3
 
Not sure which advice...to switch to SSD...or how to use them in a multi-drive setup?

I don't really think the type of drive makes a difference in how you use them. I would still have one drive for OS and apps...and keep samples and projects on another drive, or two.
I also don't get into the mega-terabyte, all-on-one drive thing. Maybe for a sample library, if you really need terabytes of space...but I prefer to break things up more if possible...that way 1.)you have less to back-up per drive, and 2.) if you a drive dies, there's less to restore...than if it was one massive drive.

I'm still using all SATA...haven't really felt a need to make any changes to that yet.
 
Hi,

That's probably still the recommended way to go but that separation is much less important now with the speeds offered by SSDs.

A single SSD with programs, sessions, and sample libraries is most likely going to be fine but for huge sample libraries, getting into tens of gigabytes, I'd probably give them their own drive anyway.

SSDs can be Sata. I guess you mean you don't mind if the third drive is mechanical/spinner?
They way prices are now I'd go SSD all the way but that's your call.
Just be aware of the speed limitations of the various protocols when you're shopping.

Sata3 ports are going to give you max speeds of 550MB/s, ish.
PCI-e/m.2 is going to give up to around 1400MB/s tops in a PCIE2 slot, and I roughly double that in PCIE3 (all 2 lane).
I think you can double those again if the blade/card/slot are all four lane.

I do use three SSDs (system/sessions/samples) but that's mostly for organisation and simple backup purposes, like Miro described,
and it's just how my structure has bee set up since before SSDs were common.
 
Miroslav:

>Not sure which advice...to switch to SSD...or how to use them in a multi-drive setup?
Neither and both, I was really just breaking the ice here because it was my very first post.

>I also don't get into the mega-terabyte, all-on-one drive thing
Same here for the same reasons and I too was using all SATA spinning drives but my machine had been on 10 hrs a day for 7 years and I finally hit an unspecified hardware error I couldn't fix. So time for a new machine and I'm 7 years out of date! I probably wouldn't have considered changing to SSD otherwise. I am curious about what happens to your data when the SSD reaches it's limit of read/writes. I guess we're supposed to have backups of the backups now.

Steenamaroo:

>I guess you mean you don't mind if the third drive is mechanical/spinner?
Correct but I will probably take your advice and go all SSD in time. Right now I'm nervous about getting it all back to where I was before the machine went down. It's not necessarily true that it will all boot up as before so I'm using different cloning programs to make sure at least one of them works. Old machine was Asus P6T, i7-975 so I'm going to be in pig heaven on the new one. I do the same thing all the time, pop, rock, country, so my needs are unlikely to grow. There are better DAWs than Sonar but I've been on it so long it's hard to face the learning curve on a new one and I really like Sonar's Staff View because I read music. Most progs assume that we don't read so the Piano Roll View gets more attention and Staff View seems an afterthought.

I like the look of Presonus Studio 1 but I'm out of touch - what are you guys using?

Thanks to both of you for the reply, this looks like a good forum!

rev
 
I am curious about what happens to your data when the SSD reaches it's limit of read/writes. I guess we're supposed to have backups of the backups now.

Yeah...I think that's the safe thing to do no matter what drives you use. :)
 
Agreed. I remember having disks with a built in policy to move data away from bad blocks. It quietly did it's thing in the background but it didn't keep me informed. I suddenly got a message saying 'no more good space to put this data.' Then I got caught by a backup program set to mirror source and destination. It deleted the existing files before copying the new, then I got 'no more good space' but the existing files were gone! I could see that vulnerability before it happened and I posted a forum question, everyone said what are the chances of getting caught between the Delete and the Copy.
 
I like the look of Presonus Studio 1 but I'm out of touch - what are you guys using?

Studio 1 comes bundled with Presonus interfaces I believe, and enjoys a reasonable reputation. Most contemporary DAWS will do the job just fine, though each does things differently. Sometimes those differences are trivial, but sometimes they match (or don't match) how a person thinks about doing things, and that in turn determines how easy (or steep) the learning curve is.

I've been using Reaper for about nine years, and I am very comfortable with it. Prior to that I used Logic, with which I was not so comfortable.
 
Funny you should mention Reaper, I just downloaded it last night to take a look and found that 1) it was no longer free, and 2) it's come a long way since last I looked! Nice clean interface and options where you'd expect them.

>though each does things differently
Exactly! A client of mine actually bought me a Cubase license because they wanted me to do tutorials in Cubase. None of the Windows menu conventions had been observed. i.e. Tools > Options > Preferences is normally where you'd find Preferences, instead it was under the File menu or somewhere I would never think of looking, Metronome was under the Track menu and so on. On top of that, they invented their own terms for things that already had terms in common use. That meant you couldn't search the manual for 'Clip' because it had their own unique name. Very frustrating, I sometimes had to get on a forum just to find out where they'd hidden a common menu option.
 
Same here for the same reasons and I too was using all SATA spinning drives but my machine had been on 10 hrs a day for 7 years and I finally hit an unspecified hardware error I couldn't fix. So time for a new machine and I'm 7 years out of date! I probably wouldn't have considered changing to SSD otherwise. I am curious about what happens to your data when the SSD reaches it's limit of read/writes. I guess we're supposed to have backups of the backups now

I've got 12 year old SSDs here that think you don't need to worry about it.
I put them in a spare windows box I use for programming and stuff.
They're 60gb and damn slow, by modern SSD standards, and if they broke now I really wouldn't care.

If you're not always upgrading to the latest thing, and really want to get long life out of your new drives, it'd be smart to get a detailed disk health monitor.
I have one here that gives detailed but understandable breakdowns of various statistics and lets you know well in advance about early failure signs.

Of course that doesn't help if some drive spontaneously breaks for whatever reason but then nothing would with any kind of drive.
 
Been a fan of SSD drives since the 2.5MB one we hung on a PDP around 1980. Go for it!! :thumbs up:

Machine: Asus Z-390-E, i-9900K 4 gig htz, 32 RAM, Windows 7 SP1, Sonar 8.5.3

If this is your intended target system, then the following statement needs a caveat:

old SSDs here that think you don't need to worry about it.

Newer OS releases will have configuration defaults to take care of SSDs, Win7+SP1 should be checked to confirm that TRIM is properly set up and that defrag isn't running on SSD devices. There are a few other gotchas, a web search should find plenty of info about what to check.

You shouldn't have to fiddle with these if you're going to bump up to Win10 and live with the automagic updates crapshoots. A quick check at Asus also didn't show a lot of Win7 support for that board, I run Win7 on stuff people say is too new for it but it can take a lot of time to track down and get drivers working.

That MB also has two of the M.2 slots Steenamaroo mentioned, each available with PCIe 3.0 x4 lanes so you'll have two slots of striped-ape-fast storage available.
 
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SSD only way to go

Been a fan of SSD drives since the 2.5MB one we hung on a PDP around 1980. Go for it!! :thumbs up:



If this is your intended target system, then the following statement needs a caveat:



Newer OS releases will have configuration defaults to take care of SSDs, Win7+SP1 should be checked to confirm that TRIM is properly set up and that defrag isn't running on SSD devices. There are a few other gotchas, a web search should find plenty of info about what to check.

You shouldn't have to fiddle with these if you're going to bump up to Win10 and live with the automagic updates crapshoots. A quick check at Asus also didn't show a lot of Win7 support for that board, I run Win7 on stuff people say is too new for it but it can take a lot of time to track down and get drivers working.

That MB also has two of the M.2 slots Steenamaroo mentioned, each available with PCIe 3.0 x4 lanes so you'll have two slots of striped-ape-fast storage available.



SSD only way to go since you can get 1TB drives for $100 Get a 10 TB drive to archive to.
 
I ended up with:

C:\ 1TB SSD
D:\ DVD
E:\ Work (conventional SATA)
F:\ Data (conventional SATA)
G:\ Backup (conventional SATA)

It's all sitting comfortably on Windows 10 after chkdsk decided to do a lot of fixing.

>A quick check at Asus also didn't show a lot of Win 7 support for that board
It can be done but Asus call it 'not supported' because it's troublesome. The partition scheme has been changed on modern boards as well as the boot record and we have the UEFI BIOS now. I was horrified after first installing Win 10, I got errors all day long but I didn't realize the installation was corrupt. Everything is fine now.
 
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