[Solved] SSD brand and size recommendations

My old hard drive is about to give out, so it's time for a new one... Any recommendations on brand and size for audio??
 
Thanks!
 
Freq

Sorry, double post.

I have quite a few SSDs for video. I usually buy Sandisk. I have the Ultra II and the Extreme Pro. The Pro versions are usually like $100 more expensive. I believe Samsung offers a pro version also and the price difference is similar. Looking at the specs you will not see why there is a difference between the models so I would just get the cheaper ones. I finally called B&H Photo to find out what the difference is. I was told that the sustained speed of the drives are more consistent with the pro. And sure enough that is what I have found. I use the drives in the same external USB 3 interface and I consistently get about 450 MB/S write with the pro versions regardless of age and how full the drives are. I've found the non pro versions drop significantly in speed as the drives get filled up to around 200MB/S write. Also, the non pro versions seemed to have slowed down to around 200 MB/S write even when reformatted so they are once again blank.
 
So, I just wanted to pass this information along as to what I have found regarding the Pro versions of these drives, at least as far as Sandisk is concerned.
 
As far as size, I guess that really depends on how your going to use the drive. Audio doesn't really take up that much space. But at the same time it kinda sucks when you start running out of space. Are you going to using this drive for current projects and move off old projects. Or are you planning on storing all projects on the drive. Again, compared to video, audio projects don't really use that much room. You may want to look at how much room your current projects use just to get an idea.

I buy the cheapest name brand disks. Usually around the 50-70 euro ballmark. They all are around 240 GB size. There is less strain on the powersupply, boots faster and I like it.
 
My laptop has two. A normal 2,5 inch and a square one for a special slot. Wich works great for recording.

When I built my current DAW 3 or 4 years ago I put in a 256 gb samsung SSD and haven't had any problems with it. A couple years ago I added a 500 gb drive - I was going to put in another samsung, but they were having problems at the time so I used a Radeon/OCZ instead and haven't had any problems with it. 
 
In terms of size the bigger the better. These days I would think you'd want 500 gb or 1 tb. I use the 500 gb ssd as the system drive and it has the audio SW and vsts/vstis. I also have a 1 tb hdd that has the user folders and I put utilities and audio editors and the like there.
 
Whatever you decide on I suggest googling it first to make sure there aren't any reported problems. 
 
http://www.pcworld.com/article/2887255/samsung-promises-yet-another-fix-for-slowed-840-evo-ssds.html
 
 

I got a Samsung SSD 500 GB, but I wish I had held out for the 1 TB since modern programs now are space hungry and they tend to pile up.

I cloned my drive with Macrium Reflect the free edition. It worked perfect and booted 1st try.

In my laptop (an MSI GT72S gaming laptop with 48GB of RAM) I use a Samsung PCI NVMe 950 for my boot drive and a Mushkin 1TB SSD for my audio. The Mushkin would be fine as a boot drive too. Both are fast but the Samsung is in a class by itself, routinely hitting read speeds of 2000mbs and higher. It's stupid fast. Windows boots in about three seconds, no kidding. I run Sonar from my boot disk as well. I would never go back to spinning platters. 
 
The laptop is no slouch either, with a 4 proc Intel i7-6820HK CPU. It's my work machine (and I really do need all that power) and my play/music machine. I use it for mixing, but not recording since my interface is a firewire box and this laptop doesn't have firewire.

Went with a Samsung 850 for under $100... cloned just the windows OS partition from my original C drive, and now boot from the SSD... pretty quick, I must say (ala Ed Grimley)
Haven't had a chance to see if it improves Sonar performance, but looking forward to good results.  
 
Thanks all for your recommendations and assistance.