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daw or sample library on system disk?


Sam Mullins

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I inherited a "free" dell laptop that is 3 years old, but has a 2-4 times more powerful CPU than what I currently have (depending on what benchmark you use.) So I"m going to put in two SSD's (one system and one in a hard drive caddy) and install Win 10. I basically use Sonar and Komplete for the most part although I'm potentially looking at a more advanced piano VST like Ravenscroft. Should I:

 

a) put the sample libraries on the system disk and DAW tracks on the second disk.

 

or

 

b) put the DAW tracks on the system disks and the sample libraries on the second disk.

 

?

 

I've looked at a lot of web sites/forum discussions but most are talking about using three disks (which ain't gonna happen in this scenario).

 

 

Yamaha CK88, Arturia Keylab 61 MkII, Moog Sub 37, Yamaha U1 Upright, Casio CT-S500, Mac Logic/Mainstage, iPad Camelot, Spacestation V.3, QSC K10.2, JBL EON One Compact

www.stickmanor.com

There's a thin white line between fear and fury - Stickman

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Do you know if one of your storage devices is an Samsung XP941 M.2?

Dell was fast to adopt this in 2014.

If not, Plan B.

OS+Apps on one device.

Samples on a 2nd device.

 

NVMe M.2 devices from Samsung can actually handle both.

Its due to the higher random transactions + speed that makes that possible.

Eric Persing who developed Omnisphere was using a MBP with a single 1TB NVMe M.2 in a live venue that had the STEAM Folder (Omni Samples) and Kontakt Samples. His samples have to be loaded+streamed which benefits from fast M.2s.

 

I use an M.2 just for Dual Live Mode in Omnisphere.

Basically eliminates the yellow progress bar.

 

Then 2 x 1TB SSDs for OS+Apps, then samples only.

Whenever I Store DAW Projects I use the OS+Apps device.

Magnus C350 + FMR RNP + Realistic Unisphere Mic
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Thanks for the response; interesting info.

 

I haven't bought the system drive yet; I will cannabalize the Crucial MX200 from my old music laptop for the second disk. No M.2 connector for NVME, but I probably wouldn't be willing to pay the price difference vs. SATA for a somewhat old machine anyway. I'm trying to keep the expenditure to a minimum; a 2-3 hundred for a SATA SSD and a copy of Win 10. At some point, buying a new system makes more sense.

 

 

Yamaha CK88, Arturia Keylab 61 MkII, Moog Sub 37, Yamaha U1 Upright, Casio CT-S500, Mac Logic/Mainstage, iPad Camelot, Spacestation V.3, QSC K10.2, JBL EON One Compact

www.stickmanor.com

There's a thin white line between fear and fury - Stickman

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Samsung is a fav around here.

Just make sure to use their drivers and Magician software.

The software uses an excellent caching strategy meant to boost benchmarks.

My bench results were insane and obviously false, but they do streaming better than Pacific Salmon.

 

1_CE113_E3-279_F-482_C-8_E02-6_D13_B623_DA54.jpg

 

BA201_A3_B-_E48_D-4_E11-_A99_F-_D0_FBBCBBACD3.png

 

 

Magnus C350 + FMR RNP + Realistic Unisphere Mic
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Thanks again. Just ordered the Samsung 850 EVO ..per my earlier rationale didn't want to spend the extra $ for the PRO version. I'm not doing tons of audio tracks so it should be fine. My main concern was to just avoid disk contention for the sample streaming.

Yamaha CK88, Arturia Keylab 61 MkII, Moog Sub 37, Yamaha U1 Upright, Casio CT-S500, Mac Logic/Mainstage, iPad Camelot, Spacestation V.3, QSC K10.2, JBL EON One Compact

www.stickmanor.com

There's a thin white line between fear and fury - Stickman

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Any advantage to partitioning a single SSD & put samples, etc. on a separate partition? I know it was practice to "short stroke" spinning platter drives and of course SSDs don't need that - but do memory cells "wear out" a little faster if you're continuously streaming data off them (actually, just as I typed those words it occured to me that this might be an argument against partitioning an SSD!). Or does it simply not matter at all now? System, apps, samples on the same drive is fine with modern SSDs?
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Or does it simply not matter at all now? System, apps, samples on the same drive is fine with modern SSDs?

 

Yep.

No partitioning needed and no defragmentation needed w/ SSDs.

Yes, cells wear out by write processes, but the MTBF of SSDs is much higher than for any HDD.

Take care to buy large SSDs because they perform better than small (under 500Gb) ones.

Fill ´em w/ data up to 70% max., some leave it at about 50%.

SSDs need space for the trim feature and some other tasks to perform.

1TB size is good.

Bottleneck is SATA, so M.2 is much better.

 

With the HDDs it was all about speed and read/write heads.

System drives were ideally the fastest and small ones were enough.

Streaming samples already required at least 1 seperate drive.

Recording audio too.

Because of defragmentation, it was sometimes better partitioning large drives.

 

The large hi-end SSDs and M.2s like Samsung Pro are so fast it doesn´t matter what´s being stored and you can write up to 40Gb to ´em per day !

 

Just have all in separate folders for better overview,- system, apps, plugins, samples (which always load into RAM) and other data.

Another SSD or M.2 for streaming the large libraries might help,- I myself don´t have much experience w/ those.

 

In theory, it should be possible to use only one large M.2 for everything,- p.ex. Samsung 960 Pro NVMe M.2 4TB.

I imagine, the only bottleneck is the controller itself and count of devices sharing the PCIe bus.

 

I dunno if SSDs and M.2s can be used for multitracking too meanwhile.

Anyone ?

 

A.C.

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SSDs have overcome the early downsides which were costs, size and writing to and from.

For live a single large device is fine.

But once you start adding multi mic Orchestral Instruments, more devices is better.

 

I even built a VEPro Rack.

4 x PCs. All 1U.

One for DAW + softsynths, 3 x for streaming these giant Orchestral beasts.

 

I heard its what every film composer uses, so I am trying them out.

Way too many ways to screw up live.

But I use 16 bit versions of LASS and Hollywood Strings for live work.

Different SSDs help there.

 

But the massive multi Mic 96k projects bring a 4.6GHz i7 to its knees.....

Magnus C350 + FMR RNP + Realistic Unisphere Mic
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SSDs have overcome the early downsides which were costs, size and writing to and from.

For live a single large device is fine.

 

So, did you ever record multiple tracks to a SSD when doing DAW work now ?

I wonder why so many tell us they still use conventional HDDs for tracking.

 

When we can write about 40Gb per day to a Samsung Pro 940 or 960,- why not doing it ?

 

A.C.

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Right now actually but enterprise quality SAS SSDs are packed with firmware and features meant for writing rather than transfers.

 

Check out Les Tokars site @ SSDReview.

He has slowed down in depth reviews lately and is in pimp mode, but was really good at explaining storage devices using 3D NAND, MLC and differences between sample streaming vrs. Recording/writing.

 

But if I were recording more I would use WD HDDs and Acronis cloud.

Magnus C350 + FMR RNP + Realistic Unisphere Mic
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As far as M.2s go they are writing more than SSDs if the apps+OS and in my case an Omnisphere folder for STEAM. Ive got 165GBs on an M.2 right now due to Keyscape, Trillian and samples using granular Ive been creating.

But I prefer 2x PCI Based NVMe Devices.

4x speeds have interfered at times with S/C XITE-1 paltry bi directional bandwidth.

I told Holger, but since then PCI overflow messages have ceased.

Just FYI as I know you also have the deadly XITE-1 DSP Rack.

Best mixer I have for live work and Ive got X32R, Midas M32, Peavey FXII and a Toft 24.

We are rather lucky ya know....

Magnus C350 + FMR RNP + Realistic Unisphere Mic
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