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

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

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
 
 

Wow! That was a lot. But not enough to have you go back to hard disk?

Backups and backups!!

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 first question would be: How big is the SSD you purchased? That info would give an idea of the most useful use for it. IMO it's no use putting a, say, 125 Gb SSD for audio, because it would be filled up so quickly.
Then again, if it's 500 Gb, it would be hard to decide, as that would be quite much for a system disc. Then you fill it with something else aside, and are soon in the situation that you need to move stuff from the system disc or move the OS etc.
 
Due to the price of SSDs, and for other practical reasons, I would use a smallish SSD as system disc like so many do. 

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.

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

If you are using large sample libraries the SSD should hold them.  You'll be waiting far more cumulative time for samples to load that booting.

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
 

Sort of on pause here ... I have a 2TB raid mirror in my DAW for long term project storage, and a external 3TB USB drive for Acronis backups. I'm currently only trusting this drive. 
 
I am going to buy a different brand SSD to replace the type that failed repeatedly.
 

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