# Internal vs External SSD



## Johnny (Feb 4, 2019)

I am looking to migrate about 6TB's worth of sample content onto SSD's. What type of setup are you guys recommending for SSD streaming? I sure don't hear too many conversations about raid setups in 2019, I would love to hear the communities thoughts regarding large quantities of SSD storage and what works best for your current desktop/PC setup? Thanks a million : )


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## Dewdman42 (Feb 4, 2019)

We had a long discussion recently about raid and ssd, search a little bit more to find it. Summary, you will not gain any performance improvement by trying to use Raided SSD. However it can be convenient to use raid with your SSD's just so that you can have one super huge virtual volume. There is some increased risk when you raid things that the volume could become corrupted, because its more complicated. So, you add a bit for risk for that convenience of a larger volume. 

I recently did setup my 2 2tb SSD's into a raid, so that I can have one 4TB SSD volume, but everything on it is replaceable, it never has important stuff I can't lose. If I had to, I could build it back up from scratch again. Mostly holds sample libraries.

I did extensive testing myself, even though the benchmarking tools will show faster throughput, for various reasons related to computer science, there is no practical improvement in performance for what we do in the DAW world. NONE. 

SSD, on the other hand, shows tremendous improvement over HDD, but in general you can just go with sata3 SSD and you will not see much real world practical improvement in load times or DAW performance with any expensive SSD solutions beyond that.


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## Johnny (Feb 4, 2019)

Dewdman42 said:


> We had a long discussion recently about raid and ssd, search a little bit more to find it. Summary, you will not gain any performance improvement by trying to use Raided SSD. However it can be convenient to use raid with your SSD's just so that you can have one super huge virtual volume. There is some increased risk when you raid things that the volume could become corrupted, because its more complicated. So, you add a bit for risk for that convenience of a larger volume.
> 
> I recently did setup my 2 2tb SSD's into a raid, so that I can have one 4TB SSD volume, but everything on it is replaceable, it never has important stuff I can't lose. If I had to, I could build it back up from scratch again. Mostly holds sample libraries.
> 
> ...


Thank you for the info!
In general I'm looking to speed up load times, but yes, SSD's are indeed redundant if you are merely streaming via USB 3.0 like any old HD. I was more curious to know if any template composers like myself are excited in any way about using any of the SSD external (multiple) drive bays for consolidating? If anyone can recommend any particular favorite SSD setup for someone requiring over 6TB of sample storage and equally attempting to migrate the samples over to SSD's entirely. I use SSD's for my operating system, however I am curious if anyone uses them for large template sample streaming- internal or externally? Also what are people using these days in terms of SSD arrays setups? Or do we all still use SATA which I am guessing is not the case judging by Spitfire Creative Crib studio tours ; ) My consensus are that SSD arrays are common these days in Hollywood, but what is the community using for setups? What are you guys doing in regards to consolidating your SSD's? As they are relatively affordable for multiple smaller drives, what hardware or software are you guys using to keep your libraries in some what the same location? 
Thank you for your suggestions in advance : )


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## Dewdman42 (Feb 4, 2019)

load times are not improved by SSD raid. They are improved over HDD by simply moving to SSD. Generally internal will be faster then external, but if you have USB3 might be fast enough. There are other bottlenecks that constrain how fast you can load a template and honest...there is not much that can really make it as fast as you're probably hoping.


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## Johnny (Feb 7, 2019)

Dewdman42 said:


> load times are not improved by SSD raid. They are improved over HDD by simply moving to SSD. Generally internal will be faster then external, but if you have USB3 might be fast enough. There are other bottlenecks that constrain how fast you can load a template and honest...there is not much that can really make it as fast as you're probably hoping.


Thx! Hoping to have user setups chime in, who's using what configuration currently? What works for some, doesn't for others? Trying to keep all of my sample data consolidated on one drive


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## Dewdman42 (Feb 7, 2019)

https://vi-control.net/community/threads/raid-0-no-benefit-on-my-end.77970/


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