Hard Drive Choices

[T_R_S]

I have 6 SSD on 3 systems - none have had issues.
I have 2 Western Digital Black Drives that are 2 years old one has failed I am sending it back for warranty replacement.
SSD's are getting cheaper and faster. I have not have a single SSD failure since I started using them 3 years ago.
However with DAW technology advancing like RAM Cache on Pro Tools HD - you can playback 250 tracks off a USB thumb drive.
This is probably going to be a standard feature in all DAW's in the future.

[efflux]

I've used SSDs. I still have them in two PCs. My Macbook no longer has one and I just got a Mac Mini server with 7200 rpm drives. No SSDs going in that.

Performance wise, there is no comparison. SSDs are awesome. However, they are unreliable. For a while (I don't know if this is still true) OCZ were terribly unreliable. I had one in my Macbook. It loaded BFD2 samples at lightening speed but it failed.

For speed, the best place for them is the system drive. It will make the whole system very fast but in another sense this is the worst place to have them when they fail. Best to have them connected as firewire for audio or sample drives in my opinion. Have that backed up though then failure is not a major problem.

[mtl777]

Thanks everyone for your replies! Sorry I've been too busy and have not had time to get back to this thread.

Originally Posted by T_R_S

I have 6 SSD on 3 systems - none have had issues.
I have 2 Western Digital Black Drives that are 2 years old one has failed I am sending it back for warranty replacement.
SSD's are getting cheaper and faster. I have not have a single SSD failure since I started using them 3 years ago.

That's encouraging about SSD's! What SSD brand did you have?

However with DAW technology advancing like RAM Cache on Pro Tools HD - you can playback 250 tracks off a USB thumb drive.
This is probably going to be a standard feature in all DAW's in the future.

Wow, there's a 128GB thumb drive in there! I didn't know thumb drive storage capacities are now so big. How fast are these compared to SSD or SATA hard drives? Are thumb drives reliable now?

Originally Posted by efflux

I've used SSDs. I still have them in two PCs. My Macbook no longer has one and I just got a Mac Mini server with 7200 rpm drives. No SSDs going in that.

Performance wise, there is no comparison. SSDs are awesome. However, they are unreliable. For a while (I don't know if this is still true) OCZ were terribly unreliable. I had one in my Macbook. It loaded BFD2 samples at lightening speed but it failed.

Thanks for sharing your experience! I guess I'll have to research more on the reliability question and I'll have to avoid the OCZ brand.

For speed, the best place for them is the system drive. It will make the whole system very fast but in another sense this is the worst place to have them when they fail. Best to have them connected as firewire for audio or sample drives in my opinion. Have that backed up though then failure is not a major problem.

Why firewire? I thought SSD's use SATA?

BTW I found a greate site for researching and comparing SSD's, hard drives, etc.

[T_R_S]

Here is a 256GB Flash Drive
Kingston DataTraveler 310 - USB flash drive - 256 GB - DT310/256GB - USB Thumb Drives - CDW.CA

Flash drives are much slower that SATA SSD's of course But I was comment on DAW's now having the ability to load the entire session in the computers RAM which makes drive speed a non-issue.

I use Toshiba/Apple, OCZ, & OWC SSD drives.
I believe the flash drive is soldered direct to the motherboard on my Retina MBP - but it's blazing fast I have had read speeds of 180MB/sec when editing video.
Audio does not need near the the BW video does.

[mtl777]

Thanks TRS! A 256GB flash drive - that's even more huge! But it's pricey. And flash drives are also slower than hard drives, right?

[DAW PLUS]

SSDs are great. While their use as OS drive is not a big thing IMO compared to office systems, it does make the system more snappy.
Using them as sample drives makes most sense, since their loading time is immensely faster and hardly any writing happens, which causes them to to wear off so fast. Also, with 1200+ voices possible, using them also for audio should work fine in most normal studio environments.
And they make no noise....

[Slik dA Relic]

i dont know if hot SSDs are the norm, but they do need improving in the reliability dept... but the less movin parts the better.. thats the best part of the SSD at this point.

da relic

[DAW PLUS]

Originally Posted by Paul in SoCal

True, but they still get hot and need a fan, making the point kinda moot.

Fans are not an issue. HDD vibration resonance is a bigger challenge.