Migrating over to SSD drives

[elser]

I'm in the process of gradually replacing my current hard drives with SSDs. In my current system I use 3 primary drives, a System drive for applications, another drive for samples and loops, and a 3rd drive that stores Logic song and audio files. Of those 3 drives where will I see the biggest performance boost by switching to SSD?

Tanks!

[andygabrys]

hey Jon!

so in your Mac Pro, you have SATA II (3 gb/s) hard drives. If you replace the DVD drive and add another using parts from OWC, its still running at SATA II standard.

so if you replaced:

1) system - it would be an SSD running at 3 gb/s which means the interface would be the bottleneck (SATA II) but at least all your programs would start up really quickly.

2) samples - if you just replace the mech HD with an SSD it again would be running at SATA II speed which means the interface speed would still be the bottleneck and you wouldn't be maximizing the streaming speed that is possible with the SSD

3) Logic Projects - again, unless its a very intensive project with like 100 audio tracks, you won't need SSD speed to stream that project, and the SSD would be running at SATA II speed again. A mech HD running at 7200 RPM is fine and they are super cheap. And possibly more resistant to constant reading / writing than SSDs which do better with lots of reading but not excessive writing.

If it were me:

1) system - buy SSD to replace system drive and put it in regular sled and be ok with it.
2) samples - buy a Sonnet Tempo PCI card to host the SSD's https://www.amazon.com/Sonnet-Technolog ... B0096P62G6 which would allow them to run at > 6gb/s interface speed and maximize the throughput. You can put two SSD's on this card.
3) projects - stay with Mech HD's

[Len911]

The Mac OS is where there would be the most noticeable difference. It's only what ~12GB?

The ram is where the open programs or documents reside. So if you have a lot of plugins open in Logic, ram is the primary limitation to the number of them.

As far as streaming samples, most samplers have disk streaming optimization. Also if you have a couple or a few hdd or ssd for samples, you could split the most used instrument libraries on different disks. The sampler preference page should allow you to enter multiple paths (hdds or ssds) to seek for the location of the samples.

However, it's really about how much at one time will ever be streamed. Or need to be streamed, freeze tracks are a simple tool, that helps out not only streaming, but also the inserts (ram use). These scenarios are really sort of a, "I want it all, and I want it all open at once".

Here's an example I found about the threshold of samples between an ssd and an hdd. They didn't really address the lifespan issues if the hdd is spinning like a top intensively much of the time, tick, tock, lol! They also mention ram and cpu. If the cpu must do a lot of calculating unlike just streaming audio, like perhaps reverb and other processing, that can bottleneck also if there is a lot of calculations on a lot of effects inserts.

EastWest has done extensive testing in which PLAY running with solid state drives for the samples and instruments was able to reproduce over 700 concurrent voices without any pops, clicks, or other artifacts that can occur when the same sequence streams from a traditional hard drive. This difference indicates that it is not the PLAY software that provides the bottleneck in the data flow, but rather the "seek time" required to locate the many hundreds of samples on a traditional hard drive when they need to be streamed to the CPU all at once. For those composers and orchestrators looking to build large projects using the kinds of instruments that add realism through the use of complex cross-fades, solid state drives (along with more than 8 GB of RAM) can help make that happen.

The OS commands everything, so if there is an obstacle in it's path, the delivery of instructions and permissions are delayed.

A lot really depends on the software as far as your optimization methods. I suppose if you have a lot of external hdd sitting around you could install a program and all it's files, such as Finale notation and all of your compositions?? and plug it in and out when need be, otherwise maybe store it on a shelf or a safe??

I've got an antique xp internet computer, single core, 2gb of ram, ide hdd, I've somehow managed to end up with audacity, sonic visualizer, notation programs... and do a few things I didn't think I could, I even piddled around a little with Reaper,lol, though I don't stream video very well, I have to set on low, unless I can download it hd and problem solved. That's probably tmi,lol! Oh, and it will open and shut down nearly as fast as an ssd on a more modern computer if I shutdown in "hibernate" mode!