RABid Posted September 14, 2016 Share Posted September 14, 2016 If I set an SSD up as the "Sample" drive on my DAW, using it to hold loops, samples, and sound data from packages like Komplete Ultimate, will the fact that it is mostly reads and very little writes help to extend the life of the SSD? This post edited for speling. My Sweetwater Gear Exchange Page Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
timwat Posted September 14, 2016 Share Posted September 14, 2016 As far as I understand the topic, in theory yes reads will not eat into the rated P/E cycle ceiling. And there is a vast difference between SLC and MLC NAND (what's used in consumer level SSDs) - 100K P/E vs. 10K P/E...but chances are no consumer (non-enterprise) user is ever going to get close to 10K P/Es. That being said, it appears the more common culprit in SSD failures is poor controller design (e.g., OCZ has the worst record of failures in the industry), while I'm told Samsung has the best record (least number) of failures in their SSDs. .. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RABid Posted September 14, 2016 Author Share Posted September 14, 2016 Thanks Tim. I've never had an SSD fail in a Mac, but I've had two Samsung SSD's fail in Windows PC's. That has me a bit gun shy. My new DAW is coming with a 500 GB boot drive. I ordered a Samsung 850 Pro 2TB unit to use as the sample drive. Looking forward to seeing how NI Komplete and some piano libraries work off of that. This post edited for speling. My Sweetwater Gear Exchange Page Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
timwat Posted September 14, 2016 Share Posted September 14, 2016 Did your two Samsungs fail because you after you the ceiling on rated P/E cycles? .. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
The Real MC Posted September 14, 2016 Share Posted September 14, 2016 Thanks Tim. I've never had an SSD fail in a Mac, but I've had two Samsung SSD's fail in Windows PC's. That has me a bit gun shy. Make sure that Windows is NOT using the SSD for virtual memory. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RABid Posted September 14, 2016 Author Share Posted September 14, 2016 Thanks Tim. I've never had an SSD fail in a Mac, but I've had two Samsung SSD's fail in Windows PC's. That has me a bit gun shy. Make sure that Windows is NOT using the SSD for virtual memory. And THAT'S what gets me about so many computers coming with the SSD drive as the boot/only drive. This post edited for speling. My Sweetwater Gear Exchange Page Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cphollis Posted September 14, 2016 Share Posted September 14, 2016 The more expensive SSDs these days have write life on par with familiar spinning drives, so if you want to pay a little more, you can use them for just about anything. Want to make your band better? Check out "A Guide To Starting (Or Improving!) Your Own Local Band" Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Reezekeys Posted September 14, 2016 Share Posted September 14, 2016 There is a lot of information out there that addresses these concerns, but a lot of these articles deal with SSDs in the enterprise, not the types mere musicians might want to store our samples on. Still, the consensus seems to be that you have very little to worry about. Memory cells of SSDs wear when they're written to. To me, using a SSD for sample storage, where there is very little writing to the disk involved, is a pretty safe bet. This is what I do. Check this out from Tom's Hardware: http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/267303-32-what-write-limit-ssds (tl;dr - "As an example of endurance, Intel rates its 160GB X-25M G2 drives with a lifetime of 'at least' 5 years even if you write 20GByte per day to them. I've used one in my Windows 7 system for well over a year now and it's averaged about 5GBytes worth of writes per day - so on that basis I'd expect it to last around 20 years.") One thing I learned - the flash memory on a typical USB stick is not the same as what's in a SSD! I used a 128GB USB3 stick in my MacBook Pro to stream samples for almost a year and it was definitely fast enough but it failed on a gig one night, and crashed my host application (Plogue Bidule) too. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RABid Posted September 14, 2016 Author Share Posted September 14, 2016 Did your two Samsungs fail because you after you the ceiling on rated P/E cycles? No. They were each under 3 months old when they failed. This post edited for speling. My Sweetwater Gear Exchange Page Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
timwat Posted September 14, 2016 Share Posted September 14, 2016 The info I've read would suggest the root problem is poorly designed controllers. Not that it matters in one sense when your data is hosed. But as said earlier, it's probably not a premature "too much writing to disk" failure. .. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MoodyBluesKeys Posted September 15, 2016 Share Posted September 15, 2016 Spend the extra to get a higher quality SSD. Samsung's best line, or (I use) Crucial's MX200 (now MX300) series. The MX200 1TB drive is rated for a very large amount of writes. The MTBF is 1.5 Million hours. Endurance is 320TB, the equivalent of writing 175GB every day for five years. This is a LOT more than their cheaper BX100 series. The newer MX300 is available in 2TB size. There are a lot of junk SSDs available. Enterprise rated drives cost more up front, but have expected lifespan similar to rotating magnetic drives. When you check out the specifications for lifespan (which many companies do not publish), the extra $$ up front becomes a minor factor compared to the likelihood of long life. Howard Grand|Hamm SK1-73|Kurz PC2|PC2X|PC3|PC3X|PC361; QSC K10's HP DAW|Epi Les Paul & LP 5-str bass|iPad mini2 "Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen." Jim Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Markay Posted September 15, 2016 Share Posted September 15, 2016 Based on my experience I that of others I know a little about I have zero concerns about the longevity of SSD's. Enterprise I my day job we have been using SSD's in calculation intensive machines for over four years 24/7/365. This usage involves writing, reading and deleting temporary databases used by the calc engine endlessly. Zero failures to date. Amazon Web Services recently switched to SSD storage at all sites. Music The HDD failed within 12 months in my first MainStage laptop. Swapped in a Samsung Pro and no issues yet. My current machine has had a Samsung Pro SSD since day 1. No issues. AFAIK the Kronos has a Samsung Pro SSD. Yet to hear of any Kronos SSD failures. The last version of the Receptor had Samsung Pro SSD. Muse said they selected it because it was the best and only SSD to use based on their testing. Are SSD's failure proof? No, but they are closer to it than anything that came before. Plus you eliminate the risk of failure if the device in which they installed is dropped or knocked. But I still backup to cheap spinning platters in a mirrored RAID array. A misguided plumber attempting to entertain | MainStage 3 | Axiom 61 2nd Gen | Pianoteq | B5 | XK3c | EV ZLX 12P Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RABid Posted September 15, 2016 Author Share Posted September 15, 2016 Thanks for the info guys. One more question. Is there any problem mixing SSD's from different manufacturers? I know the Samsung Pro comes with controller software. Not sure if it will try to take over other SSD's. I'm asking because I found a good deal on Crucial MX300 2TB and may add one of those. Honestly, I'm considering not installing the controller software for the Samsung Pro. From what I have been reading the automatic update process of the controller software may have been what killed my drives. I set up 3 rack mount servers at work this year. In one I used 8x228GB enterprise SSD's for the RAID. We noticed a real difference in the speed of Great Plains reports though moving from a quad core to a 20 core server also had some effect. HP really pushes that all SSD's get replaced after 5 years. Hopefully I will be gone before that happens. I didn't go with SSD's in the other servers because I still need something with a lot of storage space and we could not afford the large capacity enterprise SSD's. This post edited for speling. My Sweetwater Gear Exchange Page Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RABid Posted September 15, 2016 Author Share Posted September 15, 2016 Found my own answer. Should be no issue mixing SSD brands. I've also read a few places that there was a period when the Magician software for the Samsung Pro's was killing some drives during firmware updates. I seem to remember telling the Magician popups to install the updates. That was a year an a half ago. I'm getting to old to remember things that far back. This post edited for speling. My Sweetwater Gear Exchange Page Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cphollis Posted September 15, 2016 Share Posted September 15, 2016 No problem mixing drives, other than having a slightly more complicated setup to deal with occasionally. Just like spinning rust. Want to make your band better? Check out "A Guide To Starting (Or Improving!) Your Own Local Band" Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bfields Posted September 15, 2016 Share Posted September 15, 2016 It definitely should be OK to mix drives from multiple manufacturers. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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