SSDs: best setup and recommendation for managing

Configure and optimize you computer for Audio.
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Hello guys. I'm preparing my new pc for home recording. I would like to know, according to your experience, what is the best setup for SSD. So basically,

1. How many of them should be needed
2. How much memory it's recommended
3. Is it better to have all SSDs internal, rather than internal + external
4. What to save in one SSD and what to save in the other one

These are really generic questions, the one I came up with when thinking about what and how to purchase. I believe there are other factors that I'm not aware of so thank you for pointing that out.

My whole budget for the PC is around €1800, but I don't know how much should I invest in the SSDs with this budget.

Thank you for helping

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I got a 1TB SSD in which all my audio data and project files fit comfortably with a fair bit of room to spare. The more time goes by the cheaper it gets, and by now it's quite affordable.
I do recommend getting a M.2 NVMe boot drive for the OS, it makes everything very smooth.
It's quite easy to have a silent PC once there are no mechanical hard drives.

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Since SSD's are not electro-mechanical devices, it doesn't really matter for the access latency how you set them up or whether you use one or several. You don't have to worry about short-stroking or storing frequently used data on outer tracks etc. as with HDD's.

acYm made a good suggestion - get a fast ~250 GB NVMe drive for the OS and software installations, then a larger, cheaper (per GB) drive for samples and other content that requires more capacity. However if you want to save some money, even relatively slow, cheap SSD's perform very well so you could just get one, cheap SSD and partition it if you wanted. The amount of storage needed really depends on what you're doing - if you record lots of audio or have a huge sample library, you're going to need more than if you primarily work with VST's.

Also, don't forget about backups, SSD's are not invincible. An external HDD is the cheapest/easiest solution but there are a multitude of ways to go about it.

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ilwoody wrote:Hello guys. I'm preparing my new pc for home recording. I would like to know, according to your experience, what is the best setup for SSD. So basically,

1. How many of them should be needed
2. How much memory it's recommended
3. Is it better to have all SSDs internal, rather than internal + external
4. What to save in one SSD and what to save in the other one
16GB RAM is perfect fine for VA/wavetable instruments, but for Kontakt orchestral
sample libraries I would aim at more...
https://vi-control.net/community/thread ... ate.60743/

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-One smaler SSD M.2 NVMe for boot/programs (Samsung 970 EVO/PRO)
-One bigger SSD SATA for the rest (Samsung 860 EVO)
-One Icy Dock Duoswap MB971SP-B + HD for backup (Seagate BarraCuda Pro)
https://youtu.be/UvrmmGH-cBY

https://3dnews.ru/938764/page-3.html
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I'm also doing my research on building a PC and the one thing I've noticed about SSD is the HUGE difference in read and write speeds typically between internal and external SSD. It can be several times faster with an internal drive according to benchmark tests.

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Yes, unless you're using E-Sata or Thunderbolt most external connections can't touch the bandwidth that onboard Sata manages.

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wasn't nvme ssd can affect latency? since it is pcie?

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Audio ASIO latency no.
But some SSDs are more responsive.
https://www.anandtech.com/show/13080/th ... -preview/2
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https://www.custompcreview.com/articles ... enchmarks/
"Latency is generally defined as how long it takes for an IO operation to be completed from beginning to end. As such, latency is very much connected to IOPS and the size of the files you’re working with. In our test above, we can see that the average latency is just 0.05ms, which is very good for a consumer drive. IOmeter, the benchmarking app used, will also provide maximum latency, which in this case is 3.06ms. The maximum latency is important as it shows the worst case scenario for the drive being tested. Typically a sub-10ms latency is decent for a consumer SSD."

https://linustechtips.com/main/topic/91 ... cy-matter/
"If the latency values are in microseconds, it doesn't matter unless your use-case involves a huge amount of file I/O over extended periods of time. Most consumers won't ever really have a use case like that. To put in perspective, even if you make 1000 file requests, it's still less than a 1/10 of a second of latency (not including any other latency due to protocol overhead)."

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certainly Kaine would know best; I can report what works best for me(I've played around with several diff configs of SSD, HDs)
I'm doing a larger 500gb C: with a smaller 250gb(tho still a lot of information) D: drive being used as backup/storage for projects, pix, samples
All of my LIVE and VST software are that on the C:
It really cut any latency(both performance/record & load time) altogether having all current project files on the C: rather than being split b/t the two

best of luck with your new install
expert only on what it feels like to be me
https://soundcloud.com/mrnatural-1/tracks

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I'm using 3 internal 1TB SSDs. I have my OS, programs & vsts on the C: drive, audio files on another drive, and video files on the third SSD. I use a couple of external drives (1TB & 500gb) for backups.

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I just ordered a 1TB NVME for my new 8700k build. I've been using an AMD Phenom ii x 4 2.6ghz for the last few years with only mechanical drives, so I'm pretty excited.
In my case, it made more sense budget wise to get one large NVME so I can load all those large files in NI Komplete much faster. That's usually where I spend a lot of time waiting while making music.
So the SSD will have OS, applications and most of my regularly used sample libraries.
I have an external drive still, which hopefully will still work, for saving projects and any extra samples and other files.
Can I partition the NVME to have the OS on one part and my other files in the rest? Is there any benefit to doing so? I also just read that it's a good practice to turn off file compression on drives with audio files, so for the sample libraries I'll probably do this. Could I leave the compression on one partition and leave it off on the rest?

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Compression is off by default, you've got to go out of your way to turn it on... T.B.H I'd even forgotten it existed until this post, I see it that rarely.

You can divide up the drive if you wish, you won't see any speed optimization in doing so (as we did with HDD's), so the only real reason for doing so would be organizational. You should be able to enable compression on a per logical drive/partition basis I imagine, you could on older OS versions, I don't see why they would remove it now (famous last words).

And yes, you're right, don't do it on sample libaries or anything else that require disk streaming. The extra decompression time I imagine would play havoc with your total available track total when streaming files.

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I use 4 SSD's.1 internal for my applications and 3 external for my sound libraries and video files 2x Samsung 1x Lacie externals
No moving parts :-)
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Patches for PHASEPLANT ACE,PREDATOR, SYNPLANT, SUB BOOM BASS2,PUNCH , PUNCH BD
AALTO,CIRCLE,BLADE and V-Haus Card For Tiptop Audio ONE Module
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Kaine wrote: Thu Oct 25, 2018 9:11 am Compression is off by default, you've got to go out of your way to turn it on... T.B.H I'd even forgotten it existed until this post, I see it that rarely.

You can divide up the drive if you wish, you won't see any speed optimization in doing so (as we did with HDD's), so the only real reason for doing so would be organizational. You should be able to enable compression on a per logical drive/partition basis I imagine, you could on older OS versions, I don't see why they would remove it now (famous last words).

And yes, you're right, don't do it on sample libaries or anything else that require disk streaming. The extra decompression time I imagine would play havoc with your total available track total when streaming files.
Cool, thank you.
I think compressing anything would be pointless really. Even if I upgrade to the new version of Komplete and add some other stuff, I'd still have a couple hundred gigs of space left.
I'll just add a SATA SSD in a year or two when necessary.

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