Recording audio: HDD or SSD

[zephonic]

The audio drive in my Mac Pro is failing but before I replace it I want to know:

 

Conventional wisdom used to be that HDD's are better for write-intensive workflows (like recording audio), because multiple writes on an SSD's would reduce it's longevity and reliability. Is that still the case in 2018 or should I not worry about it?

Thanks.

 

[OB Dave]

I think longevity is much less of an issue, but write latency very much still is. Unlike HDDs, SSDs often have to do some housework before reusing a sector. Momentarily you'll have very high latency which can cause a write buffer overflow and a recording glitch or failure.

 

Much of this will depend on how many tracks you want to write at once. When trying to record shows off an X32, my MBP usually craps out after half an hour or so, even when printing "only" 22 tracks. I've never been able to resolve it.

[hardware]

The write scenarios no longer apply as in earlier SSDs.

But HDDs are much larger and cheaper.

I offload any recording projects to an External HDD for retrieval later.

 

FWIW The entire history and back ups for the Internet are saved to Tape.

Sony and Fuji are the only two who make it.

 

Id get the biggest slowest HDD you can find.

Recording audio doesnt need to be fast, just steady streamable speeds.

[zephonic]

Thanks for chiming in, fellas.

 

I actually already ordered an 860EVO for something else and Amazon limits them to one per customer, so that was not an option. Turns out they are out of stock just about everywhere, and since my drive was failing fast (7 bad sectors and counting) I had to act now. Went to Fry's and bought a WD Black 1TB to hold me over. The plan is to eventually buy a new Mac Pro when they come out, so I figure the WD spinner should be good enough until then.

 

I have reserved the 860EVO to replace my sample library drive, as the newer VI's like Keyscape and Omnisphere 2.5 have many multi-GB patches, and loading projects with those instruments takes a looong time, so for me it makes more sense to put that on the SSD.

 

 

I think longevity is much less of an issue, but write latency very much still is. Unlike HDDs, SSDs often have to do some housework before reusing a sector. Momentarily you'll have very high latency which can cause a write buffer overflow and a recording glitch or failure.

 

Much of this will depend on how many tracks you want to write at once. When trying to record shows off an X32, my MBP usually craps out after half an hour or so, even when printing "only" 22 tracks. I've never been able to resolve it.

 

Wow, that surprises me. What year is your MBP? I know film and video crews routinely record 8K feeds directly to SSD, so I wonder what rub is?