Keni
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Anyone using SSD as audio drive?
I seem to remember hearing not to do this when SSDs first came out and I'm wondering if that still holds true and possibly some info about why?
I was gifted a MacPro dual 6-Core machine with 4 SSDs... I'm currently too broke to build it into my new DAW, but I'm gathering info and planning what I need to buy to make it happen...
I'm guessing that I can use 3 of the SSDs for OS and storage and the likes and replace one with a SATA drive?
It's hard to experiment right now as the 4 drives have been installed as a RAID array so if I pull one, it wrecks the system and I don't have a new OSX copy that I can use to rebuild from scratch
Much thanks for any info and opinions...
Keni
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TomHelvey
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Re: Anyone using SSD as audio drive?
2014/07/18 20:40:13
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From what I gather, SSD's have a limited write capacity and eventually start failing if you write to them a lot. I use the one I have for all my sample libraries which get read a lot but are infrequently written. It's nice and quick for that purpose.
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DRanck
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Re: Anyone using SSD as audio drive?
2014/07/18 20:48:18
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Keni - I'm not using an SSD for audio, but I wonder if the concerns were in regard to limited read-write cycles on SSDs? I think that concern has mostly been put to rest, but there are differences between drives. I would use SSDs for audio and samples if my budget allowed. Here's an interesting test of 22TB of writes to a number of drives with no issues found: http://techreport.com/review/25320/the-ssd-endurance-experiment-22tb-update. 22TB is roughly equivalent to 10 years of read-writes at 5GB / day. Maybe someone can weigh in with direct experience or different info.
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lawajava
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Re: Anyone using SSD as audio drive?
2014/07/18 22:25:54
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I'm 100 percent on SSDs and 1000 percent satisfied.
If it does come up someday that the SSD I'm using for audio is having an issue, which I don't suspect will occur any more than a platter drive, I'll just get a replacement SSD at probably 25 percent of the current cost or less. The prices on SSDs are now getting increasingly attractive.
Blazing speed and music production experience now for me since I upgraded to SSDs.
Two internal 2TB SSDs laptop stuffed with Larry's deals and awesome tools. Studio One is the cat's meow as a DAW now that I've migrated off of Sonar. Using BandLab Cakewalk just to grab old files when migrating songs.
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lawajava
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Re: Anyone using SSD as audio drive?
2014/07/18 22:27:56
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Keni I should add that I back up on multiple drives at different intervals so I have low worries I'd lose much data if I ever did encounter an issue with the SSD that has my audio data.
Two internal 2TB SSDs laptop stuffed with Larry's deals and awesome tools. Studio One is the cat's meow as a DAW now that I've migrated off of Sonar. Using BandLab Cakewalk just to grab old files when migrating songs.
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microapp
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Re: Anyone using SSD as audio drive?
2014/07/18 23:23:40
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I have not gone for SSD in the studio yet but my office PC and laptop have Crucial M550 drives endurance rated at 72 TB. You can always view the health status to see if the SSD is getting tired rather than wait for a failure. You can see how many sectors have been swapped due to wear leveling.
I put the OS and programs on the SSDs and have data on HDDs. The SSDs make no noise which is a plus (tho most HDDs today are quiet).
I intend to build a new studio PC in late summer (way overdue) and it will surely have multiple SSDs for OS/pgms, samples AND audio.
One thing though, The SATA interface will be replaced soon by PCIe which is much faster.
If I can afford it, I am going with PCIe for internal SSDs.
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Anderton
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Re: Anyone using SSD as audio drive?
2014/07/18 23:32:08
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There are two main types of SSD technologies with a major difference being longevity. That said, the mean time between failures is such that you'll probably replace your computer long before your SSD fails...or have replaced your SSD with a 5000 TB dilithum crystal hyper-drive that cost you $12.99.
In general SSDs are better at reading than writing. If you need to record lots of tracks simultaneously, a 7200 RPM hard drive might be a safer choice. But in most cases, you'll likely find SSD satisfactory for recording audio.
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microapp
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Re: Anyone using SSD as audio drive?
2014/07/18 23:35:10
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Sonar Platinum, Cubase Pro 8.5, Reaper 5, Studio One 2Melodyne Studio 4, Finale 2012I7-5820K 4.5GHz, 32 GB DDR4-2800,3 monitors,Win 10 ProToshiba P75-A7100,l7-4900 2.4 Ghz/8MB Win 8.1 ProTascam FW-1884, Emu 0404USB, CMC-AI,Axiom 61Yamaha HS-50's, Sony SA-W2500, Sennheiser RS170's, ATH-M50Ibanez Jem7VWH, RG-1570Jackson DK2-S(Sustainiac),Les Paul CustomDigitech Valve-FX, GFX-1,TSR-24,RP-90
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Sanderxpander
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Re: Anyone using SSD as audio drive?
2014/07/19 05:39:49
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In other words, you probably won't run into trouble. Backups are always good. Personally if I was buying new I'd still get a regular HDD for audio because the price per GB is so much better and I really don't need the extra speed for audio recording. I do have an SSD for my OS and one for samples and content, which I heartily recommend. But for audio, I've multitracked 16 tracks on my current setup and that's as much as I'd ever do. Reading about 50 tracks hasn't given me problems either so there's really no need for SSD performance there.
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flameout
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Re: Anyone using SSD as audio drive?
2014/07/19 06:04:47
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Never go back to the Model T drives. SSD's make a world of difference.
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mettelus
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Re: Anyone using SSD as audio drive?
2014/07/20 06:10:44
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+1 to the SSD's being designed more for reading than writing. Mine is old enough that I have learned it hates to unzip massive files (such as SONAR's installation files). This makes it blue screen me (but again is a 2011 model). Also be aware that SSD's have a few "don'ts" with them as far as maintenance - a good list is here. I have not been following SSD development, and it is maturing quickly; but writing to sectors repeatedly (such as defragging often) degrades the memory cells in ones like mine. +1 also to the recommendation for magnetic backups. They will retain data till the cows come home without power, are dirt cheap these days, and are a more mature product.
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Jyri T.
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Re: Anyone using SSD as audio drive?
2014/07/20 07:44:17
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What ever type of hard discs you use, they all may have issues. Remember to have back-ups of your unrecoverable data at all times.
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