Solid State Drives for DAW

Personally, I would just add the SSD as a 3rd drive to your system. You can then use it to store current projects/audio and then archive finished projects on the drive you're now using for audio. OR you could use it for streaming samples from any software synths that stream from disk. That's what I like to do, but not everyone needs that.
 
And yes, it's possible that the drive could be used for both OS and projects, although with very large projects it may not work well.
 
Scott

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I have an SSD  for my OS and X3 is using the default C:\ drive for audio. No issues other than using the storage on takes. My DAW does boot 40% faster and it sounds better...   ;)

robert_e_bone
IF your current primary drive contents will fit on the SSD, then I would clone your C: to the new SSD drive, then boot from it, then wipe out the prior contents of the old C:, then use that empty drive to house your Cakewalk projects, since that is easier to move than all of your sample libraries and such.  (one simple Preferences change in Sonar to point to the new location for projects).
 
 
That is how I would approach it.  It is really all a matter of personal choice.  Your Windows performance and general program loading will be quite a bit quicker if you make the new SSD your primary drive, in my opinion.
 
Bob Bone
 

+1....always put the OS and Sonar on the SSD.  Boot times and DAW load times will be 
                                                        MEGAFAST.

Samsung EVO 1TO for data and INTEL 320 for os  here ;)

Well, that seemed to answer things.  Use the SSD drive for everything!
 
Each to their own, but I think the most common use for SSD drives is the OS and programs.  SSD is expensive and usually smaller.  Unless you have a packed os drive, this would probably be the best use of it.  And you shouldn't have to worry about your OS hard drive crashing.
 
@

Using ssd drives for sample drives is complete overkill IMHO as a 7200rpm or 1000rpm drive provides more than adequate bandwidth
for sample streaming and the biggest difference you'll feel will be in your wallet.
You will notice a vast improvement in boot up times, program loading times and quietness if you use an ssd drive as your os drive.
 
Having said that ssd drives all through will make your whole system that much quieter.
What so many people don't realise when buying ssd drives is that when the drives fail recovery is not so easy as with disk drives and often expensive so I personally would not want to keep my important data on them for that reason along with the cost.
 
http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/data-recovered-failed-ssd/
 
 
Steve
 
 

twaddle
Using ssd drives for sample drives is complete overkill IMHO as a 7200rpm or 1000rpm drive provides more than adequate bandwidth
for sample streaming and the biggest difference you'll feel will be in your wallet.
You will notice a vast improvement in boot up times, program loading times and quietness if you use an ssd drive as your os drive.
 
Having said that ssd drives all through will make your whole system that much quieter.
What so many people don't realise when buying ssd drives is that when the drives fail recovery is not so easy as with disk drives and often expensive so I personally would not want to keep my important data on them for that reason along with the cost.
 
http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/data-recovered-failed-ssd/
 
 
Steve
 
 

From my understanding, SSD drives will offer the most improvement in recording/mixing when used with your large sample libraries, like Hollywood Strings, Brass, LASS etc.  Having it for your OS will offer faster load times, but no increase performance in recording/mixing.  Of course, if you don't have large CPU intensive sample libraries, then a normal drive would suffice.

My 1TB hard disk seems to manage streaming sample libraries fine and I wouldn't want to spend around £900 to replace it with an SSD.
 
I've recently changed my SONAR drive to a 250GB SSD and now enjoy boot up times of 10 seconds, shut down times of 2 seconds and much smoother operation in general compared to a conventional hard disk.

eric_peterson
I have three SSDs in my new DAW: OS, Samples, Projects. They are lighting fast!

However, I have had thee hard failures in 6 months. OCZ took care of me and quickly under warranty, but still ... I was hoping for better. Just make sure you have backup strategy.

I used to have multiple GIANT 512 GB SSD's, and they failed on me within 6 months of owning.  I went back to multiple SATA III regular drives, 7200 rpm, and never looked back.  I have ZERO performance problems doing streaming audio with Sonar X3b, including all kinds of samples being loaded and played in each project.  (I am a keyboard player).
 
Bob Bone
 

From my understanding, SSD drives will offer the most improvement in recording/mixing when used with your large sample libraries, like Hollywood Strings, Brass, LASS etc.  Having it for your OS will offer faster load times, but no increase performance in recording/mixing.  Of course, if you don't have large CPU intensive sample libraries, then a normal drive would suffice.

I have two terabyte drives, one of which is all drums from fxpansion and a few others. My other terabyte drive has my audio files and native instruments komplete 7. I have never had any issues at all that could be down to band width or poor performance so I don't feel any need to spend way over the odds for a little extra quietness. That and the fact that data retrieval is much less straight forward than disk drives makes me think it's really not worth the bother.
 All my drives are sata 3 but I would like to get a ssd drive and run it as my c:drive someday as disk drives can be quiet noisy and the reduced head means less fan use which also helps reduce the noise.
 
Steve

Small SSDs for OS and audio data coupled with big external hard drives for backup and samples works for me.  I suspect the SSD improves more than just boot times as an OS drive, speeding up disk access for software and OS behind the scenes as well.
 
The biggest advantage to solid state drives for me is that they are silent.  Sample and backup drives don't need to be spinning all the time, so that the entire system can be acoustically dead silent when necessary if the computer is fanless as well.
 
If you have the money, obviously a large SSD for samples would also be ideal.

Yeah, I've got an SSD for OS and programs, and it seems to me the best use. I haven't experienced a hard drive streaming bottleneck in about 10 years or more, so it's not a problem that needs solving as far as I can see.
 
On the other hand, the experience of booting up fast, loading Sonar fast, launching plugins fast, passing audio in and out of external editors fast; that's a tangible, and sizeable, improvement in your working day.

I want to go fully SSD eventually, as the hard drives are the last part of my computer that isn't completely silent. But it's not a pressing need; going to wait for prices to drop some more.

If your projects are large and complex, then a dedicated SSD for projects would be beneficial, as they would load faster.

Some drives are fast at reading but slow to write.  These would be best used for sample libaries.

Regarding SSD vs traditional HDDs, it's horses for courses.  Remember that traditional magnetic platter drives are actually faster for large sequential writes than SSDs are.  Also, SSDs are limited in the total number of write operations before their cells start to fail.  So because you are writing lots of data when recording, this is best suited to a magnetic drive.
 
So for me, it's an SSD for the OS and for Sonar and soft-synths, etc (mainly file reads).  But all my Sonar projects write to a large, fast magnetic drive (lots of file writes).