Thanks Mesh. I had everything in my card ready to go and then got to thinking... The SSD on the boot drive is fantastic, just not sure about the music or data drive.
 
This is a great deal on a drive for those that need one!

smallstonefan
Thanks Mesh. I had everything in my card ready to go and then got to thinking... The SSD on the boot drive is fantastic, just not sure about the music or data drive.
 
This is a great deal on a drive for those that need one!

Yes it is... if I had the money I'd be buying it...I have 2 128 Gb SSD's...and won't look back...
Definitely a huge speed improvement...

I've heard mixed opinions (from people who ought to know) that say an SSD for your system drive really won't get you any noticeable improvement whereas you will see a major improvement when used for samples.
I thinking as well you must see some improvement when storing cakewalks audio files on an SSD and as for the system drive surely SSD have a much quicker seek time which should improve start up times.
 
I think just the fact that they're silent and require not cooling makes them almost worth while just for that.
The only downside I see in them so far is the cost (still a little high here in the UK) and the fact that unlike sata drives, when SSD drives go they give you know warning and data recovery is apparently nowhere near as easy as sata drive although I would have thought there should be software available now that works as well as the sata equivalent?
 
Having said that I just bought 512GB Crucial MX100 2.5" 7mm SSD for £150 ($255) dollars which is apparently a very good deal, I have all my fxpansion kits on there and loading times are much better now.
 
Steve

I'd think the best bang for the buck would be DFD-streaming sample players such as Kontakt. Not only would samples load faster, it should allow you to configure smaller preload buffers, freeing RAM for other things and making it possible to load more multis and large libraries simultaneously.
 
I'm reluctant to consider SSD for audio data, though, because they have a lifespan that's much, much shorter than a conventional hard drive. As they approach their end of life they'll start taking errors that are handled invisibly, at least until they can't. I'm afraid the first clue that your SSD was dying would be corrupt recordings.

I would tend to agree with Bit on this one...
 
For streaming samples (e.g. Kontakt) they will add some life to an older machine.
For OS, and especially for temp files they can also be a real machine stretched.
 
For my project files? I'm inclined to stick to spinning platters - they have a longer life span, they are less expensive, and they can provide a warning before going belly up. They don't always do that, but at least they can. And I don't need the speed of SSD for audio files - yet. I suppose when I switch to 64 bit at 192kHz I might have to reconsider. But by then SSDs will be a lot cheaper<G>!

For now I can get away with a 240GB drive for the OS, apps, and temp, which also reduces the heat from two drives (I still keep all temp directories on a separate drive - not sure it makes a difference, but it is habit.).

I need at least 1TB for streaming libraries, although I could put most of the larger libs on a 500GB drive and leave a copy of them, plus all the smaller libraries and SFX on the current 2TB drive.

Man I need more money<G>...

Within the last month I moved to Samsung SSD drives, two of them.

I'll never go back!

The responsiveness of everything related to the recording process has sped up miraculously.

Everything loads and processes super fast. It's pure joy. If I was to look back and say what was the most important thing to upgrade and how did that help, I would put SSDs at the top of the list. The bigger the drive the better if possible, depending on how much you intend to record or load with stuff of course.

But it would be a shame to have just a 125 GB SSD and run out of space. The price has come way down on these now. It's like HD widescreen TV prices just fell from the sky. Seems the same with SSDs - they are actually becoming reasonably priced now.