Old 08-26-2022, 12:58 AM   #1
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Default SSD or HDD drives for orchestral library?

Hi everyone,

I have a dilemma.
I have to change my configuration.
I will install Windows on an SSD drive of course.
But for my sound banks I hesitate...
SSD or HDD?
What are the pros/cons of each?
Thanks,
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Old 08-26-2022, 01:47 AM   #2
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SSD every time. With the development of those drives being fairly long term now, assuming you buy one of the better brands (Samsung, etc) reliability is not an issue & performance (obviously) is way better using SSD. I have slowly converted all my drives but one (long term backup)and it has kept my i7 4770 going for way longer than I had hoped.
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Old 08-26-2022, 02:31 AM   #3
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Originally Posted by ivansc View Post
SSD every time. With the development of those drives being fairly long term now, assuming you buy one of the better brands (Samsung, etc) reliability is not an issue & performance (obviously) is way better using SSD. I have slowly converted all my drives but one (long term backup)and it has kept my i7 4770 going for way longer than I had hoped.
thank you for your answer.
What are the models of your SSDs please?
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Old 08-26-2022, 06:26 AM   #4
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SSD always.

I use SanDisk 1Tb

All connected via powered USB hub made by VEMONT

I have Native Instruments komplete 13 and Omnisphere on the SSDs.

I save REAPER projects to these SSDs

Never a problem yet.
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Old 08-26-2022, 12:36 PM   #5
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SSD for sure. There is no reason not to.

Even the semi-mythical notion of "death by excessive writing" is a non-issue for audio libraries. Those spots on the drive are written to once and generally persist indefinitely.
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Old 08-27-2022, 03:19 AM   #6
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I have been using Samsungs since they first came out but recently started expanding to other makers. To be honest, most of the well-known drive manufacturers turn out good, reliable drives. For example, my most recent purchases were a couple of Crucial 1TB drives that I got cheaply on special.
Not quite as fast reading & writing as the Samsung pros but so little difference that you dont notice it unless you are dealing with a really big file.
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Old 08-29-2022, 07:36 AM   #7
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Quote:
Originally Posted by ivansc View Post
I have been using Samsungs since they first came out but recently started expanding to other makers. To be honest, most of the well-known drive manufacturers turn out good, reliable drives. For example, my most recent purchases were a couple of Crucial 1TB drives that I got cheaply on special.
Not quite as fast reading & writing as the Samsung pros but so little difference that you dont notice it unless you are dealing with a really big file.
Same here. I have a Samsung 960 Evo, a Samsung 980, and a Crucial P1 for NVMe based SSDs. Bit of an edge to the 980, but they're all great and very fast. For SATA SSDs I have a Samsung 840 Pro and a Baracuda 120. No issues with either of those. I normally avoid Seagate, but it's actually been a great SATA-based SSD for me.

Really once you start getting into that kind of drive, I'd almost say prioritize some other things over potentially a bit faster speed... reliability would be number 1 (although I've no issues with any), then perhaps size per $.
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Old 08-31-2022, 04:56 AM   #8
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I'm using a Sandisk and it's been fine. I replaced the hdd in my old Dell and it gave it a whole new lease on life. Much better than the old hdd.
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Old 08-31-2022, 08:17 AM   #9
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Quote:
Originally Posted by nait View Post
Really once you start getting into that kind of drive, I'd almost say prioritize some other things over potentially a bit faster speed... reliability would be number 1 (although I've no issues with any), then perhaps size per $.

I agree SSDs have firmwares that can make the difference between one that is rock solid on your rig or not. And as far as speed, for most of us the difference in the specs are trivial. In DAW use if an external SSD is fast enough for the most complex project one is doing, there's no reason to spend more to get the latest faster one. And for copying, if I can't get a cup of coffee like the old days when I'm dragging over a folder of hundreds of gigs because it only takes 25 seconds, there's no particular joy in it taking 21 seconds or even 15.

I've been using a variety of Samsungs, depending what era I bought them and what was on sale. Completely rock solid, so I doubt I'll bother with another manufacturer no matter what the sale price is, unless the DAW forums sing its praises for comparability.
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Old 09-01-2022, 02:19 AM   #10
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if you're loading large sample libs I'd recommend using NVMe drives.

I've just bought the full BBC symphony from spitfire and am upgrading to a 2TB NVMe drive for it.




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Old 09-01-2022, 06:44 AM   #11
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if you're loading large sample libs I'd recommend using NVMe drives.

I've just bought the full BBC symphony from spitfire and am upgrading to a 2TB NVMe drive for it.




M
Does the BBC use spitfire's own player?

I did a series of tests loading a large Kontakt orchestral library (spitfire chamber) from both an onboard nvme drive and sata ssd . Couldn't see any speed increase in using the nvme drive at all. Checked on the NI forum and several stated the bottle neck is in fact Kontakt. However, I guess this may change in the future.

Now, for copying and creating backups and the like, the nvme is significantly faster. :-)
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Old 09-01-2022, 07:06 AM   #12
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Originally Posted by mozart999uk View Post
Does the BBC use spitfire's own player?

I did a series of tests loading a large Kontakt orchestral library (spitfire chamber) from both an onboard nvme drive and sata ssd . Couldn't see any speed increase in using the nvme drive at all. Checked on the NI forum and several stated the bottle neck is in fact Kontakt. However, I guess this may change in the future.

Now, for copying and creating backups and the like, the nvme is significantly faster. :-)
it uses its own player NOT kontact that's why i like it , works great with reaticulate too


I@m doing all my orchestral work now using spitfire libs , they have replaced all my EW libs and a few others as well.

EW only give 1 license , spitfire give you quite a few so i can have the same system on the studio DAW and Laptop here.


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Old 09-01-2022, 01:07 PM   #13
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I've got all my sample libraries on one dedicated sample 1TB SSD drive and more samples on a nvme drive.

All my regular 7 SSD drives are Samsung SSD 980.

I would never go back to a regular hard drive.
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Old 09-02-2022, 01:01 AM   #14
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U want to move to solid state or m.2 because as you scroll through your sound banks your sounds will load up faster. As your collection of vsts and sound banks increase you will start to experience the wait times and it will become more and more annoying.
So in a nutshell the faster you get at producing music the faster you will need your sounds to load up.
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Old 09-04-2022, 07:23 AM   #15
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M.2 drives are only relevant for raw HD video recording and editing. A SATA SSD on SATA3 gives you 6GB/s. That's already enough I/O to handle over 2600 tracks of 24 bit 96k audio. M.2 PCI SSDs are 2x the cost of SATA for performance you'll never touch for audio.

SSD all the way though! HHD's were right on the edge of necessary performance for audio. A SATA SSD removes any bottleneck by a magnitude.

I still use large HDDs for archiving. SSD would make sense for a sample library to eliminate all the seeking if nothing else and make samples load instantly.
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Old 09-04-2022, 09:04 PM   #16
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I do not know if anybody has experienced this with SSD's
I have 4-5 Samsung ssd's in my computer now and when I went from the original
three HD's to the ssd's the temperature of my working computer dropped
down to around 35 degrees..No longer gets the room warm in the winter.

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Old 09-09-2022, 02:49 PM   #17
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SSD will give you roughly 5 times quicker delivery of data (using SATA-600), plus alot shorter access time then a mechanical disk.

I might suggest looking into M.2 or NVME interfaces or drives in stead of SATA. I've been using those for some time now, and they're faster than SATA, much faster even. You'll need interfacing for those though.

One bad part about SSD (flashbased storage) that I've experienced recently, is what is known as bit-rot. Meaning slight digital inconsistencies- or 'pollution' of data on the drives which can happen over time, which makes some individual files unreadable. Doesn't happen too often, but with time it might. Mechanical disks are infinitely less prone to that. SSD is perhaps not the best for longtime static storage, simply put.

I'm not informed about exactly what causes this, or if it is connected to bad quality drives or .. whatever does it. Seems to be a fairly diffuse subject at this time, from the little I've read about it.

But the speed difference alone, especially with the huge realtime voice counts you'll need for sampled orchestra libs, SSD should be pretty much a requirement.
I'm not up to date with good/bad brands and types though.
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Old 09-09-2022, 06:18 PM   #18
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if you can afford it, SSD. No contest.
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Old 09-22-2022, 10:01 PM   #19
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[QUOTE=christian64;2590392]Hi everyone,

I have a dilemma.

I use HDD for long term storage. Never had one fail, SSD fails I had so no i longer trust them.
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Old 09-23-2022, 07:24 AM   #20
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[QUOTE=Tubeguy;2598568]
Quote:
Originally Posted by christian64 View Post
Hi everyone,

I have a dilemma.

I use HDD for long term storage. Never had one fail, SSD fails I had so no i longer trust them.
https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2022...the-long-haul/

I haven't had an SSD fail, but I've only been using them for five years or so. I've had at least 10 HDDs fail in 30 years... but that number is heavily skewed by having a NAS with five Seagate drives in them, every single one of which failed over four years. All were replaced by WD NAS drives, none of which have failed.
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Old 09-24-2022, 08:54 AM   #21
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[QUOTE=Tubeguy;2598568]
Quote:
Originally Posted by christian64 View Post
Hi everyone,

I have a dilemma.

I use HDD for long term storage. Never had one fail, SSD fails I had so no i longer trust them.
Is this sarcasm?
(Like - I saw a car crash once... All cars just crash.)

There was a bit of weirdness with worry over SSDs initially. Weird as in it was based on apparently not realizing standard HDDs were consumables and had failure modes too. And usually higher than SSDs.

Hard drives are consumables. You keep backup volumes. When (not if) one fails, you swap it out and update the file set.
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Old 11-21-2022, 10:02 AM   #22
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Default External SSD for everything?

hello people,

I use an external SSD (T7 Shield Samsung).
According to the manufacturer, the transfer should be max 1050 MBit/sec.

I have Thunderbold 4 (USB C, bidirectional 40GBit/s) and USB 3.2 (20Gbit/s) available.
On the hard drive I store my Reaper projects and also all my Libarys and PlugIns.
I have formatted the hard drive with ExFat.
And I mainly work with Windows 10 (Intel i5 1245U).
(Sometimes also on different Macs and from time to time I need to access some files with my Android phone).

The resource monitor in Windows shows only me a disk read speed ridiculous of 1 -20 Mbit/sec.

The problem is that Reaper occasionally produces snaping and clicking noises. For example when I call the user interface of a thirdparty plugin.
But also when I just run a playback.

What do you think I should change?
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Old 11-21-2022, 10:27 AM   #23
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hello people,

The problem is that Reaper occasionally produces snaping and clicking noises. For example when I call the user interface of a thirdparty plugin.
But also when I just run a playback.

What do you think I should change?
I know that the USB ports on the front of my last three PCs have all been bad sources of RF - I play instruments with pickups (guitars, etc). Doesn't really matter with device - anything from an external SSD, a card reader, or a wireless keyboard fob - all produce crap interference.

So... I don't use the ones on the front. And I run a long cable from the rear to a hub to move everything as far away as possible.

Of course, if you're not using analog inputs, it won't matter.

Last edited by MiddleC; 11-21-2022 at 10:34 AM.
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Old 11-22-2022, 04:57 AM   #24
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SSD for sure. There is no reason not to.

Even the semi-mythical notion of "death by excessive writing" is a non-issue for audio libraries. Those spots on the drive are written to once and generally persist indefinitely.
^^^
Does that "excessive writing" apply to SSDs used for Windows/OSX?
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Old 11-22-2022, 08:52 AM   #25
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https://helpdeskgeek.com/reviews/eve...ssd-wear-tear/

Basically, if you are doing a lot of continuous writing, you might hit a point where you "wear out" your SSD... but it takes a lot of doing, especially with wear leveling technologies. Reading has no real effect on lifespan, only repeated writes.

Samsung's 950 Pro, for instance, is warrantied up to 400TB of writes.

https://www.chillblast.com/learn/why...s-in-ssds/amp/

That is a LOT of writing. And if you put your orchestral libraries and storage-hungry plugs on an SSD, those bits get written to exactly once.

For a reasonable example, my main system has an SSD holding the great bulk of my plugin libraries. It's also my C: drive, and this is my daily driver. It's about four years old, and sees daily and frequent use.

Total writes: 24TB.
Rating: 600TB.

At this rate I won't hit the manufacturer's spec until sometime after 2035.

Note: A standard hard drive holds my software development projects and my browser downloads. I also have 64GB of memory.
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Old 11-22-2022, 11:27 AM   #26
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SSD for read/write, HDD for long term permanent storage (because they can be recovered from physical damage or hardware failure).
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Old 11-22-2022, 05:59 PM   #27
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[QUOTE=Tubeguy;2598568]
Quote:
Originally Posted by christian64 View Post
Hi everyone,

I have a dilemma.

I use HDD for long term storage. Never had one fail, SSD fails I had so no i longer trust them.
I’ve also had SSDs fail, but they were a no-name brand (and I want to say Crucial?) and early on in the days of SSD. I’ve owned a bunch of Samsung SSDs and all of them are still going strong after almost 100 TB of writes. Samsung is the only brand I’d trust at this point. It’s also wise to get a large slow HDD and a case to hold them, and make backups every now and then
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Old 11-22-2022, 06:08 PM   #28
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Johnny Click View Post
hello people,

I use an external SSD (T7 Shield Samsung).
According to the manufacturer, the transfer should be max 1050 MBit/sec.

I have Thunderbold 4 (USB C, bidirectional 40GBit/s) and USB 3.2 (20Gbit/s) available.
On the hard drive I store my Reaper projects and also all my Libarys and PlugIns.
I have formatted the hard drive with ExFat.
And I mainly work with Windows 10 (Intel i5 1245U).
(Sometimes also on different Macs and from time to time I need to access some files with my Android phone).

The resource monitor in Windows shows only me a disk read speed ridiculous of 1 -20 Mbit/sec.

The problem is that Reaper occasionally produces snaping and clicking noises. For example when I call the user interface of a thirdparty plugin.
But also when I just run a playback.

What do you think I should change?
How full is your SSD? One unfortunate thing about SSDs is that if there’s not a lot of space left, they tend to slow way down
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Old 11-22-2022, 06:23 PM   #29
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Any of the major professional brands of both SSD and HDD are on point and will perform through the warranty period with proper use. Keep backups and follow the recommended life cycle and you're golden. You can be fast and loose and run drives till they die if your backups are on point and often get double the expected life cycle.

Blowing off that advice to leave at least 20GB or so free?
SSD:
The last little bit of free space gets written over and over constantly and blasted through the write cycle life.
HDD: There will be fragments of free space across the drive that make up the remaining free space. That means that tiny remaining space is not only getting blasted through its life cycle but the seeking across the drive for those fragments that make up the remaining space is putting those mechanics on blast too.
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Old 11-22-2022, 10:07 PM   #30
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SSD for read/write, HDD for long term permanent storage (because they can be recovered from physical damage or hardware failure).
I wouldn't simply use HDD for long term storage, if you mean put it on a drive, and put it on a shelf. Too many failure scenarios.

Okay, I know it's probably overkill... but my current on-prem backup unit in the basement is 8 drives, 2 of them stripes. And the really important stuff also goes into the cloud.

I've experienced individual drive failures in this unit, and never lost any data. I have a couple of matching spares sitting by just in case.
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Old 11-23-2022, 01:26 AM   #31
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I've had only 2 drives go bad on me in the nearly 30+ years I've been using computers and they were regular HDD drives, I would never go back to them.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Lynx_TWO View Post
I’ve owned a bunch of Samsung SSDs and all of them are still going strong after almost 100 TB of writes. Samsung is the only brand I’d trust at this point.
Yes, that's the general consensus, Samsung 980 evo I think, I've got 4 of them + 2 1TB MVNe drives, one is a Samsung. All together I've got 6TB of SSD drives.
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Old 11-23-2022, 12:41 PM   #32
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I've had only 2 drives go bad on me in the nearly 30+ years I've been using computers
I've had a dozen or more fail (all HDD), but I've gone through a LOT of them.

It's skewed though because my first real NAS I had 4 Seagate DM (I think?) drives and a spare, and every last one failed. all replaced by WD NAS drives, and none have failed since.

I've got a dozen "extras" on a shelf behind me, ranging from 500GB to 2TB. No longer needed since I really went all in on a huge NAS...
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Old 11-23-2022, 01:08 PM   #33
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SSD:
The last little bit of free space gets written over and over constantly and blasted through the write cycle life.
That should not happen if the SSD uses the correct wear leveling control.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wear_leveling
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Old 11-23-2022, 04:04 PM   #34
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It's skewed though because my first real NAS I had 4 Seagate DM (I think?) drives and a spare, and every last one failed.
A couple of years ago I had a 3T Seagate BarraCuda screw up on me, it was less the 1 year old so seagate sent me a new one that's still working. It's in my old computer that my wife has now.
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