Old 06-01-2019, 03:42 PM   #1
fred garvin
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Default SSDs for DAWs

So based on some very helpful advice I got in this thread:
https://forum.cockos.com/showthread.php?t=221352
I just bought a new laptop, arriving Wed. It has a 2 TB platter HDD. EVERYONE says I MUST get a SSD due to a HUGE perfomance increase. I believe them!

Any ideas on how to best do this?

My new lappy seems to support NVM, maybe even M2, I just saw some dude on YT install one in what seems to be my model (Dell 5770) in literally less than 5 minutes.

I only have one drive bay, plus the NVM/M2 slot. Should I keep the platter HDD at all? Lots of people seem to be full SSD. But last I heard SSDs had write cycle issues both as to sustained write performance and eventual failures, so you wanted to use SSD for the OS and critical installs, and have a platter HDD available for general mass storage and everyday I/O. Is this no longer the case?

What should I expect to pay? There seems to be a crazy wide range of units and pricing out there. I'd like to end up with no less than 1 TB total storage and spend no more than $200.

Thanks in advance!
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Old 06-01-2019, 03:57 PM   #2
Coachz
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Be clear on what performance increase means. I have plain old hard drives here that play 150 tracks with no problem and record 24 at the same time. I think the audio interface is most important for low latency. SSD will load quicker and render quicker though.
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Old 06-01-2019, 05:03 PM   #3
toleolu
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^^^ What CoachZ said.

You want to look at it from an overall system point of view, not just focusing on a single component.

You didn't specify in your post, but if this new laptop is coming from one of the big manufactures, it's probably going to come with a lot of pre-installed software on it. If that's the case, one of the first things you're going to need to do is remove all that bloat. A lot of that stuff runs in the background and takes up computing resources.

Optimize what you have first, then you can start looking around for upgrades. To CoachZ's point about the interface, if you already have a good interface, then great, but if not, chances are money spent on a good interface will give you a bigger bang for your buck than money spent on a hard drive.

Good Luck
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Old 06-01-2019, 05:19 PM   #4
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Also run latencymon to check for bottlenecks

https://www.resplendence.com/latencymon

12g ram from 6gb has been my best upgrade

Last edited by Coachz; 06-01-2019 at 05:41 PM.
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Old 06-01-2019, 05:44 PM   #5
fred garvin
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Thanks gents. My performance goals are modest and should be well handled as it's literally twice the machine my old one is in the major specs. I'm currently happy with my interface which sounds good, has very playable latency and has never had a failure or problem of any kind. I don't expect that to change but we'll see and reevaluate if needed. I do disable and remove bloatware as needed. Latencymon looks awesome, thanks!

Any thoughts on SSDs? Did you guys try them and weren't impressed? Consensus elsewhere seems to be that it's a huge improvement.
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Old 06-01-2019, 05:56 PM   #6
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Lots of people here love the ssds. If you have the funds to spend on one you won't be sorry as it's another positive performance Improvement
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