Guitar Gear Forum

Hey guys I have been buying pieces of computer components one at a time. I have my motherboard, CPU, RAM, and FireWire card bought; now I am just trying to decide what type of hard drives I want... I am debating on getting a Samsung 850 Pro 128GB SSD for installing Windows, and my recording software. I was planning on getting a second drive [WD Velociraptor 500GB 10,000RPM HDD] that I would use to record music to. I know what PSU and case I want, but really can't decide on what drive to use...

I am worried about the reliability of SSD cards, but it seems that Samsung is really pushing the V-NAND setup in the 850 Pro as being very reliable and very fast. What do you guys think? Should I go for the Samsung 850 Pro/WD Velociraptor setup OR should I just go for 2 WD Velicoraptor drives?

If you are curious about the case and PSU, I will be getting a Corsair 400R and a Corsair HX-750i fully modular PSU.

Thanks for any input!

Cole

Interested to hear what the room thinks - from what I know, I'd be recommending SSD for OS & software, spinning drive for recording data - especially something that's being heavily written / rewritten like temp files and such.

Probably lots to do performance-wise, like striping across multiple data drives, too.

GRIMESPACE wrote:Interested to hear what the room thinks - from what I know, I'd be recommending SSD for OS & software, spinning drive for recording data - especially something that's being heavily written / rewritten like temp files and such.

Probably lots to do performance-wise, like striping across multiple data drives, too.

I figure that is what most people will recommend to me, but I just don't know if it is worth stepping up to SSD for recording purposes yet... I did see online where someone recommend creating partition on RAM [if you have plenty i.e. 32GB] to install commonly ran programs for extremely fast write/read capabilities... I have 16GB of RAM, so I don't plan on doing this, but I might buy some more RAM later down the road to try that method out. I imagine installing your DAW on that partition would be beneficial.

Cole

Thought this was SSDecontrol thread.
As you were.

I don't see how having your DAW on an SSD would help much at all. Your computer isn't having to constantly read and write very many elements of the DAW itself. Sure the initial boot up time of the DAW will be a little quicker but once it's up and running, I don't think you'd get any kind of performance boost.

Markdude wrote:I don't see how having your DAW on an SSD would help much at all. Your computer isn't having to constantly read and write very many elements of the DAW itself. Sure the initial boot up time of the DAW will be a little quicker but once it's up and running, I don't think you'd get any kind of performance boost.

I figured the DAW and plugins on a SSD would benefit being on a drive that could read quickly, maybe I am mistaken, but it seems logical to me

Are you suggesting to just stick with the dual HDD setup? I know the minimum drive speed for writing to is 7,200 RPM, but I know that the WD Velociraptor drive is significantly faster for read/write speeds than the 7,200 RPM variants.

Cole

colejustesen wrote:

Markdude wrote:I don't see how having your DAW on an SSD would help much at all. Your computer isn't having to constantly read and write very many elements of the DAW itself. Sure the initial boot up time of the DAW will be a little quicker but once it's up and running, I don't think you'd get any kind of performance boost.

I figured the DAW and plugins on a SSD would benefit being on a drive that could read quickly, maybe I am mistaken, but it seems logical to me

Are you suggesting to just stick with the dual HDD setup? I know the minimum drive speed for writing to is 7,200 RPM, but I know that the WD Velociraptor drive is significantly faster for read/write speeds than the 7,200 RPM variants.

Cole

Plugins might benefit (although I think they depend more on CPU power for audio processing and RAM for sample-based virtual instruments), but the DAW is basically like a video game level or something being loaded -- it loads pretty much all the elements of the DAW when it starts up and then they're good to go. The initial boot time would be faster, but once that's done, I think the performance would be about the same since the constant reading and writing is audio itself, not elements of the DAW.

10,000 rpm drives are a waste of money. What you want is 7,200 rpm with dual processors. Seagate has a significantly higher failure rate and they don't stand behind their warranties. You want a drive with a 5 year warranty.

I record 640 channels of 720p video on my drives, so you should be more than fine with 16 channels of audio. This is part of what I do for a living.

I like the RE line from WD:

http://www.wdc.com/en/products/products ... d=580#Tab3

They range from 250GB to 6TB. Your best bang for the buck and reliability is the 2TB w/ 64mb cache.

A step up from that would be the Ultrastar 7K4000 2TB. These are Hitachi drives, now made by WD. You probably have SATA and not SAS.

http://www.hgst.com/hard-drives/enterpr ... tar-7k4000

The next step up from here is the Ultrastar 7k6000.

http://www.shopblt.com/item/hgst-2tb-ul ... 23029.html

If you want to have your OS and software on an SSD to boot faster, it will definitely be twice as fast and live one sixth as long. Intel makes the most reliable SSDs. Here is a good one:

http://3btech.net/in730se24ssd.html?gcl ... aQodJmIA7g

There are better SSD drives, but since you'll be replacing it in a year, why waste the money.

My .02 anyway.

Thanks for the information! I decided to not get a SSD, but I ordered a single 250GB WD Velociraptor hard drive today. I will consider the WD RE line. Could you explain a couple things to me? First, why do you feel that 10,000 RPM drives are a waste of money? Second, could you explain the dual processor concept?

I did see that there is an RE and an RE+ drive from WD... Do you know the difference?

Thanks!

Cole

colejustesen wrote:First, why do you feel that 10,000 RPM drives are a waste of money? Second, could you explain the dual processor concept?

I did see that there is an RE and an RE+ drive from WD... Do you know the difference?

Thanks!

Cole

10,000RPM drives have a failure rate of about 20%/year, so there is a 20% chance it dies the first year. With Seagate, good luck getting any money back, so it's good that you went WD.

Dual processors means 2 chips on the circuit board, they are redundant, but basically one for servo control of the actuator of each head and drive speed algorithms and one for I/O and caching. This results in a roughly 30% increase in performance. Since the processor on a 10,000 rpm drive can get bogged down, the 7200rpm drive with dual processor is equal or faster. Also, 7200 rpm enterprise drives have a much lower failure rate.

The RE+ is a 5700rpm drive that is designed to draw less power than the RE, it only comes in 5TB and 6TB.

Jess wunderin...

My iMac has a 16 gig "Fusion" drive and I use a 7200 rpm 2TB external drive that I record to.
Is the "Fusion" drive an SSD drive?

Just googled it... nevermind! Was going to delete this but, it doesn't seem to be an option.

Ry Manchu wrote:

colejustesen wrote:First, why do you feel that 10,000 RPM drives are a waste of money? Second, could you explain the dual processor concept?

I did see that there is an RE and an RE+ drive from WD... Do you know the difference?

Thanks!

Cole

10,000RPM drives have a failure rate of about 20%/year, so there is a 20% chance it dies the first year. With Seagate, good luck getting any money back, so it's good that you went WD.

Dual processors means 2 chips on the circuit board, they are redundant, but basically one for servo control of the actuator of each head and drive speed algorithms and one for I/O and caching. This results in a roughly 30% increase in performance. Since the processor on a 10,000 rpm drive can get bogged down, the 7200rpm drive with dual processor is equal or faster. Also, 7200 rpm enterprise drives have a much lower failure rate.

The RE+ is a 5700rpm drive that is designed to draw less power than the RE, it only comes in 5TB and 6TB.

Thanks for the extra information! It looks like I will be getting the WD Re for the drive that I will actually record audio to. Thanks for explaining all that to me

One last question regarding the dual processor on the Re HDD... I read something about a dual port that can be utilized on an SAS connection that made it sound like that was how the dual processor was accessed. Just to clarify, I will still have access to the dual processor function using SATA?

Cole

colejustesen wrote:

Markdude wrote:I don't see how having your DAW on an SSD would help much at all. Your computer isn't having to constantly read and write very many elements of the DAW itself. Sure the initial boot up time of the DAW will be a little quicker but once it's up and running, I don't think you'd get any kind of performance boost.

I figured the DAW and plugins on a SSD would benefit being on a drive that could read quickly, maybe I am mistaken, but it seems logical to me

Are you suggesting to just stick with the dual HDD setup? I know the minimum drive speed for writing to is 7,200 RPM, but I know that the WD Velociraptor drive is significantly faster for read/write speeds than the 7,200 RPM variants.

Cole

I have a WD 10,000rpm audio drive and It is solid as a rock, VERY fast at loading sessions too.

gt_jumper wrote:

colejustesen wrote:

Markdude wrote:I don't see how having your DAW on an SSD would help much at all. Your computer isn't having to constantly read and write very many elements of the DAW itself. Sure the initial boot up time of the DAW will be a little quicker but once it's up and running, I don't think you'd get any kind of performance boost.

I figured the DAW and plugins on a SSD would benefit being on a drive that could read quickly, maybe I am mistaken, but it seems logical to me

Are you suggesting to just stick with the dual HDD setup? I know the minimum drive speed for writing to is 7,200 RPM, but I know that the WD Velociraptor drive is significantly faster for read/write speeds than the 7,200 RPM variants.

Cole

I have a WD 10,000rpm audio drive and It is solid as a rock, VERY fast at loading sessions too.

Awesome! I appreciate your input!

Cole

Just built a computer for the studio myself. Went with an SSD (Samsung) for the OS drive, and a 1 TB 7200 RPM drive for everything else. So far it's working like a charm, but it's only been a couple weeks.

Sex Panther wrote:Just built a computer for the studio myself. Went with an SSD (Samsung) for the OS drive, and a 1 TB 7200 RPM drive for everything else. So far it's working like a charm, but it's only been a couple weeks.

My concern really is long term with the SSD... I opted to go for the 10,000 RPM WD Velociraptor for my OS drive. I haven't got my recording drive yet, but am planning on grabbing a 7,200 RPM for the record to drive. I should have all my stuff tomorrow to get the build going. Just waiting on the PSU and Case.

Cole

colejustesen wrote:

Sex Panther wrote:Just built a computer for the studio myself. Went with an SSD (Samsung) for the OS drive, and a 1 TB 7200 RPM drive for everything else. So far it's working like a charm, but it's only been a couple weeks.

My concern really is long term with the SSD... I opted to go for the 10,000 RPM WD Velociraptor for my OS drive. I haven't got my recording drive yet, but am planning on grabbing a 7,200 RPM for the record to drive. I should have all my stuff tomorrow to get the build going. Just waiting on the PSU and Case.

Cole

Gotcha, I didn't care too much about that since I don't have anything important on the SSD. If it goes, I get another one and spend the night reinstalling Windows and my Daw and I'm pretty much good to go.

I figured I could do that too if I bought one, but honestly I hate it when the hard drive crashes. I imagine know one enjoys it, but it seems to happen to me when I am most stressed out haha. Those times where I really don't have the time to spend fixing things.

I might eventually get one, but I am not sure as of yet. I guess, I will see how it all goes down later today.

Cole

colejustesen wrote:I figured I could do that too if I bought one, but honestly I hate it when the hard drive crashes. I imagine know one enjoys it, but it seems to happen to me when I am most stressed out haha. Those times where I really don't have the time to spend fixing things.

I might eventually get one, but I am not sure as of yet. I guess, I will see how it all goes down later today.

Cole

Yeah I hear you. I was willing to take the risk. Eventually I may just get two, and do a redundant RAID setup. (Not that I have any clue what I'm doing with that)

I have no idea what a RAID setup is/does/benefits, though I have heard about them. That is the extent of my knowledge. I was actually planning on doing some research to see what it is used for and what the benefits are.

On another note, I got my desktop going yesterday. That had to be the fastest install of Windows I have every experienced! The combination of using the i7-4790K processor, 16GB of RAM, 10,000 RPM HDD, and 750 watt PSU has yielded great results so far. I haven't got my DAW installed yet, or my plugins, but I am not anticipating any trouble.

Cole

colejustesen wrote:I have no idea what a RAID setup is/does/benefits, though I have heard about them. That is the extent of my knowledge. I was actually planning on doing some research to see what it is used for and what the benefits are.

On another note, I got my desktop going yesterday. That had to be the fastest install of Windows I have every experienced! The combination of using the i7-4790K processor, 16GB of RAM, 10,000 RPM HDD, and 750 watt PSU has yielded great results so far. I haven't got my DAW installed yet, or my plugins, but I am not anticipating any trouble.

Cole

Ha, I went 4790k and 16GB as well.

If I'm not mistaken, a certain RAID setup will allow you to run redundant OS drives. So if one crashes, you don't go down.

Yeah, I was thinking the same CPU when you talked about building your setup. I was going to go for the Corsair 400R case (just above yours) but opted for the Fractal Design Define R5 which has very low noise fans and noise reduction paneling. It is super quiet!

Cole