*@^#%&( sample hard drive went down!!

[manninghollow]

Sample hard drive went Ka Put. I'm thinking of getting SSHD for samples. Anybody using one for samples. It would make sense they would be more reliable?

[orest]

I have 2 SSD drives, 1 Samsung 512 gig and 1 Intel 512 gig.
So far they are working extremely fast and they are yet to be very reliable!

[Razor7Music]

My external HDD just crashed. I was able to remove the drive from the case and connect it to my PC and recover the data--thank goodness. I have some samples of my late mother playing a violin my late uncle made.

Hopefully you could recover your data.

My day job is at a hard drive company so I get employee discounts. I think SSDs are better in every way: small form factor, cooler, quieter, less fragile, don't fragment, faster. My biggest challenge is their capacity isn't as large as I'd like and they're dang expensive compared to mech drives.

I can hardly wait for the day through competition, innovation, etc. when SSDs have large capacities and don't cost so much compared to HDDs.

[manninghollow]

Well i have found info that does not recommend ssd use in XP(I live in the past). I have purchased a new Mech HD and I am now re installing Komplete 8. I wonder how many hours this will take?

This is interesting. I am about to upgrade to a new computer and Cubase7 ( I have it to study on my laptop). It is a sign from God I'm doing the right thing because my old system is gettin FUNKY!

I'm thinking of using "Thinkmate Custom Servers and Workstations" to build new PC
Processor Quad-Core Intel® Xeon® Processor E3-1275v2 3.50 GHz 8MB Cache (77W)
Processor Heatsink Thinkmate Quiet Cooling Performance Heatsink for Intel LGA1155/1156
Motherboard Intel® Z77 Chipset - ATX - Intel® HD Graphics - 4x 6Gb/s SATA
Memory 2 x Crucial 8GB PC3-12800 1600MHz DDR3
Chassis Thinkmate® VSX-R4 Series Mid Tower Chassis - ATX - Black
Power Supply Corsair HX650 - Gold Certified - 650W Modular Power Supply
Hard Drive 500GB SATA 6.0Gbps 7200RPM - 3.5" - Seagate Barracuda® 7200.14
5.25" Bay Samsung 24x DVD+/-RW Dual Layer (SATA)
3.5" Bay All-in-One 3.5" Card Reader (Black)
Video Card NVIDIA® GeForce GT 610 1GB GDDR3 (1xDVI, 1xVGA, 1xHDMI) (Fanless) (LP)
Accessories Thinkmate Award-Winning 120mm 700/500RPM Case Fan
Operating System Microsoft Windows 7 SP1 Professional (64-bit) with Recovery Partition
Warranty Thinkmate® Three Year Warranty with Advanced Parts Replacement and RSL
Configured Tech Specs
Processors
Product Line Xeon E3-1200 v2
Socket LGA1155 Socket
Clock Speed 3.50 GHz
Direct Media Interface 5.0 GT/s
Smart Cache 8 MB
L3 Cache 8 MB Shared
Cores/Threads 4C / 8T
Intel VT Technology Yes
Intel Hyper-Threading Technology Yes
Intel Turbo Boost Technology Yes
Wattage 77W
Memory
Technology DDR3
Type 240-pin DIMM
Speed 1600 MHz
Error Checking NON-ECC
Signal Processing Unbuffered
Motherboards
North Bridge Intel Z77
Memory Technology DDR3 SDRAM Dual-Channel Memory
Memory Slots 4x 240-pin DDR3 DIMM
Expansion Slots 2x PCI Express 3.0 x16
3x PCI Express 2.0 x1
2x PCI
Graphics Controller Intel® HD Graphics
Network Controller Intel® 82579V Gigabit Ethernet
Sound Controller Intel® HD Audio
On-Board Interfaces 4x SATA 6Gbps
3x SATA 3Gbps
USB 3.0 Ports 6x USB 3.0 (4 external ports, 2 via internal headers)
USB 2.0 Ports 10x USB 2.0 (4 rear ports, 6 via internal headers)
IEEE-1394A Ports 2 (1 port, 1 optional via header)
LAN Ports 1
SATA 3Gbps Ports 3
SATA 6Gbps Ports 4
eSATA Ports 1x eSATA 3.0 Gbps port
HDMI Ports 1
DisplayPort Ports 1
Video Cards
Memory Capacity 1 GB
Processor GeForce GT 610
Core Clock Speed 810MHz
DVI Output x 1

RME PCE CARD

I'm using Cubase7 , Komplete 8 , Ozone 4 and 5, Addictive Drums, and a couple of Waves plug ins
ANY COMMENTS FROM ANY OF YOU FELLOW GEAR HEADED PICKERS ABOUT THINKMATE AND THIS SYSTEM WOULD BE GREATLY GREATLY appreciated.

[andygabrys]

wow looks like a lot more juice.

just one thing I see:

you might want to read up on the actual performance of mechanical vs SSD 6gb/s SATA III hard drives.

I see you have a 500 GB 6 gb/s mechanical drive spec'd out.

What I checked out recently stated that 3 gb/s on mechanical drives is fine, but that 6gb/s on a mechanical drive provides a fast connection, but that the performance of the physical drive head will restrict the drive from ever really transferring data at that 6 gb/s rate.

Contrast vs. an SSD at 6gb/s - the interface is fast, and the drive performance is really fast so the drive can actually move data at a speed much closer to the interface speed.

so it might be a better call to get several smaller (and therefore cheaper) 6gb/s SSD's for samples instead of a larger mechanical HD especially if the tower has lots of spaces for drives.

Maybe Razor7 has some more info on that too - due to his line of work.

good luck!!

[Razor7Music]

Although I'm not an engineer, you're right. On a good system, with all things being considered, your HDD I/O is always going to be the bottleneck. You're better having a dedicated drive for your OS separate from your samples/music drive so the system isn't trying to access it while you're recording, etc.

BTW--not many people know SSDs (and thumb drives) have a semi-finite number of writes. For the money, many are looking at hybrid drives. You MUST check your BIOS to make sure you have a compatible system, but they combine the speed and the capacity of both worlds. Something to look at.

[manninghollow]

Hey Razor what do you mean SSD has a semi finite # of writes? Do you mean after a while you can't write on it any longer? (have patience with me I'm from South Georgia)

[Russell Landwehr]

From http://www.howtogeek.com/howto/45359/ht ... d-to-know/

Reliability: Individual manufacturing issues aside (bad drives, firmware issues, etc.) SSD drives come out ahead in the physical reliability department. The vast majority of HDD failures are a result of mechanical failure; at some point after X tens of thousands of hours of operation, a mechanical drive will simply wear out. In terms of read/write life, HDDs win (there is no write limit on a magnetic disk, you can change the polarity and indefinite number of times).

Conversely, Solid State Drives have a finite number of write cycles. This limited-write-cycle issue is much trumpeted by people decrying Solid State Drives but the reality is that the average computer user would be hard pressed to hit the ceiling of read-write cycles on a SSD. Intel’s X25-M drive, for example, can handle 20GB of data writing for 5 years without failure. How often do you erase and write 20GB of data to your primary disk on a daily basis?

[Russell Landwehr]

you might want to read up on the actual performance of mechanical vs SSD 6gb/s SATA III hard drives.

I see you have a 500 GB 6 gb/s mechanical drive spec'd out.

What I checked out recently stated that 3 gb/s on mechanical drives is fine, but that 6gb/s on a mechanical drive provides a fast connection, but that the performance of the physical drive head will restrict the drive from ever really transferring data at that 6 gb/s rate.

Contrast vs. an SSD at 6gb/s - the interface is fast, and the drive performance is really fast so the drive can actually move data at a speed much closer to the interface speed.

Andy, Something I was thinking about the other day, this whole gb/s thing. I would think this would only be an issue for people streaming a TON of high samplerate/bitdepth tracks. I know we've all been trained to think in terms of higher RPMs and access rates and data speeds and all. I think it has a lot to do with what we learned with the old MFM and RLL and SCSI and ESDI stuff. I know way back when, you had to eek out all the performance you could from a system to even get 16 tracks of 44.1/16 to keep from glitching on a low-buffer setup. But I've successfully streamed upwards of thirty 44.1/16 tracks during live mixing using USB 2.0. I mean, I have yet to hear anyone say that they ran out of hard-drive transfer rate during tracking or playback. Does anyone ever really peak that HD meter anymore? And I really don't understand why it's so critical to keep everything separate from the system drive. Doesn't everyone set the swap file to Zero?

Just airing my ignorance/confusion here.

Russell

[andygabrys]

hey russell,

just saw this.

so what I was getting at in a nutshell if I can put it all in there:

first I was referring mostly to sample streaming. Which would mean very few write cycles, and mostly read cycles. and an SSD would have the edge, as most people load up the sample drive with different libraries, so the likelihood that all the samples you would stream for a particular project being side by side on the drive (contiguous) is just about 0%. Meaning the drive head on a mechanical drive is going to be skipping around like mad.

if you are going to get a 6gb/s mechanical drive, its likely wasted money, as the drive itself will be a bottleneck, not the interface speed. get a 3gb/s one.

If you are going SSD, then yes a 6gb/s speed makes good sense cause the drive can read / write at a speed similar to the interface speed.

and my point about using multiple drives is only cause smaller SSD's are cheaper - not cheaper per GB, just cheaper. If you have small sample libraries, maybe its worth it to buy drives in 60 GB chunks for $60-80 instead of plunking down more on a 240 GB one etc. The converse makes sense to me too, get a 500GB one for $350 or thereabouts on amazon, and just be done with it.

and I agree with you, drives in general are pretty incredible these days, and USB 2.0 is faster than anyone gave it credit for to start with. But there is also some value in future proofing yourself by getting a little better setup than you think you would need right now. you would agree the computing trend is always towards more. Buy whats cheap and works today might be a little less than what you would like in 6 months when the new version 12.92 version of whizbang library comes out.

but that's just the way I see it.