# Does SSD Quality Matter?



## Prockamanisc (Oct 17, 2017)

I'm looking to get a new 2TB SSD to replace a couple of 500GB SSDs. Right now I'm using the Samgung 850 Evos, and they're great. If I end up replacing them with a lesser quality SSD (cuz it's a good bit cheaper), will I see any performance decreases?

I'm using these entirely as sample drives. Typically I set all of the buffer sizes in Kontakt, Vienna Player, etc, to the lowest setting so it loads very little into RAM. Then it streams from the drives once a note is played. I've really experienced no buffer hiccups (like one would experience when streaming from SSDs), and it's been awesome. I'm afraid of losing that...do I have anything to worry about?


----------



## W Ackerman (Oct 17, 2017)

Quality also equals reliability. I've used Samsung and Intel SSDs for several years for music libraries and have NEVER had a single reliability issue. When I needed another one this year, I went with Crucial 2TB to save more than a little money. Within about 6 months, it failed. Crucial was great about quickly replacing it and the new one has been trouble-free, but I'm sticking with Samsung for now.


----------



## Prockamanisc (Oct 17, 2017)

Oh wow, that's unexpected. How does the Crucial perform compared to the Samsung? That's what I was leaning towards.


----------



## W Ackerman (Oct 17, 2017)

All of my Samsungs now are now PCIe/NVMe and the Crucial is SATA so .... I have the larger, more frequently used libraries (e.g., Virharmonic) on the NVMes and the smaller or less-used ones on the Crucial.


----------



## JohnG (Oct 17, 2017)

I haven't noticed a jot of difference among a grab-bag of SSDs. I do back everything up of course, but that's standard.

Not sure I would buy "Joe Handyman" brand SSDs, but performance of SSDs from the major manufacturers appear indistinguishable here.


----------



## J-M (Oct 17, 2017)

Following this thread with interest...I need a new SSD and not sure what to buy.


----------



## Nick Batzdorf (Oct 17, 2017)

W Ackerman said:


> Quality also equals reliability



The question is whether price = quality. I still haven't heard an argument why it's necessary to pay so much more for Samsung SSDs than other ones - with the caveat that I don't have experience with NVMe drives.

However, my experience with there being zero real-world difference between SSDs on SATA 2 and SATA 3 buses leads me to be skeptical.



W Ackerman said:


> I went with Crucial 2TB to save more than a little money. Within about 6 months, it failed.



Fair enough, but you really do need more than one failure to draw conclusions. Same with a lack of failure, of course!

It took four spinning drive failures within a month, just out of warranty - combined with the company reps being nasty - to convince me never to buy another Seagate product.



JohnG said:


> Not sure I would buy "Joe Handyman" brand SSDs



Are there really any Joe Handyman SSDs? It's possible, but I've always argued about memory that it costs millions and millions to set up a factory!


----------



## synthpunk (Oct 17, 2017)

Samsung and Crucial working like a charm here. (knock on wood 

I also have two of these Micron 1TB (OEM'ed Crucials) used to go on sale for $189/199usd but looks like the price has gone up.
https://www.smithbuy.com/micron-1tb-2-5-sata-solid-state-drive-mtfddak1t0mbf-1an1zabyy.html

I always like to use this SSD site for reference
https://www.hardware-revolution.com/best-sdd-solid-state-drive-august-2017/

I read a while back increased SSD production has made RAM prices go up. But we certainly have not see much is any SSD prices go down minus the Mushkin's. You can't win!


----------



## N.Caffrey (Oct 17, 2017)

I run my samples with USB 3 hard drives, but with big projects with 70-80 orchestral instruments the playback its a pain, so I'm planning to use SSDs. How do you guys mostly use them? with Blackmagik multidock? Any suggestion on how to start? many thanks!


----------



## synthpunk (Oct 17, 2017)

Two Multidocks's here. Also a great product if you can budget the investment.



N.Caffrey said:


> I run my samples with USB 3 hard drives, but with big projects with 70-80 orchestral instruments the playback its a pain, so I'm planning to use SSDs. How do you guys mostly use them? with Blackmagik multidock? Any suggestion on how to start? many thanks!


----------



## N.Caffrey (Oct 17, 2017)

synthpunk said:


> Two Multidocks's here. Also a great product if you can budget the investment.


The only thing for which I'm holding off a bit with that is that now Thunderbolt 3 is getting more popular, so I wouldn't like to get a BM multidock and after a bit the Thunderbolt 3 version comes out. What do you think?


----------



## JohnG (Oct 17, 2017)

N.Caffrey said:


> I'm holding off a bit with that is that now Thunderbolt 3 is getting more popular, so I wouldn't like to get a BM multidock and after a bit the Thunderbolt 3 version comes out.



The specs for Thunderbolt 2 or 3 (whatever the latest version is) are staggering -- far better than any USB. They may be better than for PCIe connections, for all I know (can't remember).

Accordingly, if I were considering a large investment today in a multidock I would probably wait if I could.


----------



## N.Caffrey (Oct 17, 2017)

Do you run your SSDs on a multidock?


----------



## W Ackerman (Oct 17, 2017)

Nick Batzdorf said:


> Fair enough, but you really do need more than one failure to draw conclusions.


I would generally agree, but my conclusion after more than a day of flailing around, running diagnostics, and working with Crucial tech support was that there was a defect in the SSD firmware. Maybe I was the only one who ever has and ever will encounter that precise sequence of events, but the massive size of the Samsung customer-base makes me confident that such defects are much less likely in their SSDs. The higher cost is worth it to me.


----------



## whinecellar (Oct 17, 2017)

I’ve used SSDs from OWC, Samsung and Crucial for years - even a few entry-level ones from OCZ - and haven’t had so much as a hiccup with any of them with constant use. I have more Crucials than anything else (including the latest 2TB one that’s half the price of the Samsungs) and so far so good...


----------



## Gerhard Westphalen (Oct 17, 2017)

I'd be careful with your 2TB plan depending on what samples are on it. You won't be able to run an entire orchestra off of a single SSD. Especially if you're lowering the preload buffer. 4x 500GB will give you so much more performance power that if you're used to that, you'll be disappointed by trying to run it all on a 2TB. If, however, it's just a bunch of random bits and bobs type of libraries that don't get used much it would be fine.

I've only used Intel and Samsung and haven't had any issues. My Intels are from when they were first released so they're probably at least 5 years old and still being used daily as OS and project drives.


----------



## W Ackerman (Oct 17, 2017)

Nick Batzdorf said:


> However, my experience with there being zero real-world difference between SSDs on SATA 2 and SATA 3 buses leads me to be skeptical.



Real world, loading Virharmonic Violin 96kHZ 18GB UVI Soundbank:

Crucial 2TB SATA SSD: 42 seconds
Samsung 950 PRO 512GB PCIe NVMe M.2 SSD: 31 seconds

FWIW.


----------



## Nick Batzdorf (Oct 17, 2017)

So NVMe loads faster, good to know.


----------



## Prockamanisc (Oct 17, 2017)

I got similar numbers with my NVME- it used to take 7 minutes to load a giant template but now it loads in 5. That's with only switching out the OS drive.


----------



## Prockamanisc (Oct 17, 2017)

Gerhard Westphalen said:


> I'd be careful with your 2TB plan depending on what samples are on it. You won't be able to run an entire orchestra off of a single SSD. Especially if you're lowering the preload buffer. 4x 500GB will give you so much more performance power that if you're used to that, you'll be disappointed by trying to run it all on a 2TB. If, however, it's just a bunch of random bits and bobs type of libraries that don't get used much it would be fine.
> 
> I've only used Intel and Samsung and haven't had any issues. My Intels are from when they were first released so they're probably at least 5 years old and still being used daily as OS and project drives.


This is pretty much the crux of my inquiry. I'm planning on putting my entire VSL library onto a single drive. How do you know that the performance will be better if it's spread out? I have that in the back of my head, but I'd love to have it confirmed with real numbers or something. 

Alternatively, I like your bits and bobs idea.


----------



## JohnG (Oct 17, 2017)

The best performance I've had is from a PCIe-mounted array of SSDs, although a Thunderbolt setup might beat that performance -- don't know. 

The PCIe route is faster because the bus speed of PCI (I understand) is greater than that of the SATA bus. How much greater? It's something of a moving target, depending on whether you have SATA II or III, but even then the actual, reliable evidence seems only anecdotal.

In my case, I was able to run Hollywood Strings with more than one mic position off the PCIe setup, but not from a "regular" SSD, at that time. But "at that time" says a lot -- it was a long time ago in technology-land -- the mists of time, really.

Today, if you are going to try using a multidock, I assume Thunderbolt is fastest, but I don't know how the "real life" performance will be.

Alternatively, to get at the PCIe bus, you can either buy a card with the SSDs mounted on it, hardwired (best); or a PCIe

card that has ports into which you can plug your SSDs (not as good, I'm told).




N.Caffrey said:


> Do you run your SSDs on a multidock?



No, I don't.



Prockamanisc said:


> How do you know that the performance will be better if it's spread out?



I don't know if people are sure, and I think the facts on the ground change frequently enough so that the correct answer even a few months ago may no longer be true today. 

The speed of serving up samples is constrained not just by the disk, but by your entire setup. Although SSDs have zero seek time (I've read), a single disk still has a maximum speed; however, the disk's speed is also constrained by the bus through which the disk is putting data. Whether the speed of a single SSD today exceeds the capacity of the bus is something you could research. Put differently, if the entire SATA bus on your computer has a capacity of x GB/second and your SSD can push 2x GB / second, it already exceeds what your computer can handle, so there is no upside to multiple disks, apart from risking a single catastrophic loss of an expensive, high-capacity SSD.

However, if you use both an SSD through SATA and also a PCIe-mounted SSD, you might overcome the SATA bus' capacity constraint.

Or use Thunderbolt, which may be faster than all, and can be daisy-chained.

Good luck -- please share your results.

Kind regards,

John


----------



## Gerhard Westphalen (Oct 17, 2017)

Prockamanisc said:


> This is pretty much the crux of my inquiry. I'm planning on putting my entire VSL library onto a single drive. How do you know that the performance will be better if it's spread out? I have that in the back of my head, but I'd love to have it confirmed with real numbers or something.
> 
> Alternatively, I like your bits and bobs idea.



Well you just can't stream that much off of a single drive. I remember Hollywood strings alone hitting 300MB/s according to its own meter.

Right now I've made my setup so that mocking up Test Drive from HTTYD is basically at the streaming limit. Everything that isn't legato is 12kb and legato I believe is 36kb or around there. I have strings + perc on one SSD, brass on another, and woodwind on another. Then I have all of my other random libraries spread across those plus another SSD. I recommend splitting the orchestral and then the rest doesn't matter.

Edit: I should add that my Test Drive "test" is with 2-3 mic positions on for everything and pretty much everything was Spitfire.

If you have 2TB of random libraries like sound design, guitars, ethnic instruments, unused libraries etc. then throwing it all on one drive is fine.

From what I've heard an SSD is pretty much the limit of what you can stream. Getting m.2 or PCIe options won't let you stream more. It'll just load faster. If it's 2x faster than an SSD, you're not going to get 2x the amount of streaming from it.


----------



## JohnG (Oct 17, 2017)

Gerhard Westphalen said:


> From what I've heard an SSD is pretty much the limit of what you can stream. Getting m.2 or PCIe options won't let you stream more. It'll just load faster



I think the accuracy of that statement -- that the SSD's speed makes the rest irrelevant -- keeps changing, Gerhard. It may be true to say that an SSD is faster than the SATA bus or the NVME or the PCIe bus, but that doesn't rule out the ability to squeeze in a little more capacity by accessing more than one of them.


----------



## ironbut (Oct 17, 2017)

The only ssd's that I've had that failed were OWC 3G. Those were early examples though and I've since gone "all in" with Sammy evo and evo pro.
Just wondering if anyone here have ever had a Samsung Evo series fail (other than DOA)?


----------



## Gerhard Westphalen (Oct 17, 2017)

JohnG said:


> I think the accuracy of that statement -- that the SSD's speed makes the rest irrelevant -- keeps changing, Gerhard. It may be true to say that an SSD is faster than the SATA bus or the NVME or the PCIe bus, but that doesn't rule out the ability to squeeze in a little more capacity by accessing more than one of them.



What I'm saying is that the speed of the SSD is what's irrelevant. Doesn't matter what type or what bus. Once you're at the normal sata 3 SSD level you can't really get more performance for streaming. I think the issue is a combination of IOPS, latency, and the bus but the newer drives don't overcome whatever it is despite having those specs be better. The only way to get better performance is with more drives which is why I don't get drives bigger than 500GB for main libraries.


----------



## ZenFaced (Oct 17, 2017)

MrLinssi said:


> Following this thread with interest...I need a new SSD and not sure what to buy.



Samsung EVO 850


----------



## whinecellar (Oct 17, 2017)

Gerhard Westphalen said:


> I'd be careful with your 2TB plan depending on what samples are on it. You won't be able to run an entire orchestra off of a single SSD...



Agreed. I just use a 2 TB with all my go-to libraries on it so I can access those while traveling. In the studio, each of my slave machines has libraries allocated to dedicated SSDs (strings, brass, perc, etc.).


----------



## dethbyoogabooga (Oct 17, 2017)

What are your thoughts on RAID systems? I got 2 SATA3 1TB drives, stripped as my library drive. would it be beneficial to switch to SSD's instead?


----------



## synthpunk (Oct 17, 2017)

No failures that I have heard of. Always like to point out Apple use Samsung Pro's in Mac Pro factory installs.



ironbut said:


> The only ssd's that I've had that failed were OWC 3G. Those were early examples though and I've since gone "all in" with Sammy evo and evo pro.
> Just wondering if anyone here have ever had a Samsung Evo series fail (other than DOA)?


----------



## Midihead (Oct 17, 2017)

I'm going to echo what a few of the guys here are saying, but add some info because I recently did a whole lot of research on this topic. First and foremost, throughput matters. The fastest speed on the market is Thunderbolt 3. But to get that speed to matter with an SSD, you need an NVMe M.2 SSD (stick of gum looking thing) and if you can make it a RAID config, all the better. This is a much more expensive option, of course. Samsung makes the best consumer drives, bar none. Their 'Pro' series are excellent. Crucial's drives are good, but can clash with other chipsets (like if you want to put one in a 3rd party case to make it external. This happened to me). 

Here's something to consider: https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/1312723-REG/sonnet_echo_exp_se1_t3_echo_express_se_i.html

But you'll need to find PCIe 3 expansion cards that will fit it....

Or, for internal use: https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/1358493-REG/asus_hyper_m_2_x16_card_hyper_m_2_x16_pcie.html

If you want to see a thorughput chart and compare all the speeds available, I put one together. Let me know if you want to look at it!

All the best,


----------



## JohnG (Oct 17, 2017)

Gerhard Westphalen said:


> What I'm saying is that the speed of the SSD is what's irrelevant. Doesn't matter what type or what bus. Once you're at the normal sata 3 SSD level you can't really get more performance for streaming. I think the issue is a combination of IOPS, latency, and the bus but the newer drives don't overcome whatever it is despite having those specs be better. The only way to get better performance is with more drives which is why I don't get drives bigger than 500GB for main libraries.



Ok -- thanks for clarifying. I misunderstood what you had written originally.

Kind regards,

John


----------



## Nick Batzdorf (Oct 17, 2017)

Are people here saturating a SATA 2 bus? I don't know how to figure out how many voices 300MB/sec is, but it's a LOT.

I've never done it.


----------



## Gerhard Westphalen (Oct 17, 2017)

Nick Batzdorf said:


> Are people here saturating a SATA 2 bus? I don't know how to figure out how many voices 300MB/sec is, but it's a LOT.
> 
> I've never done it.


 I've saturated SSD's on sata 3. There's usually a big disk spike on some sustain patches when they hit the loop point so I often lose notes there when there isn't enough streaming power. I'm normally using 3 mic positions so that's already 6 mono voices per note. A single Hollywood strings legato patch with only 1 mic position can hit over 100MB/s.


----------



## chimuelo (Oct 17, 2017)

Micro$oft/App£€ & Int€£, they just want too many permissions anymore.
When you see Gaming and Video excel from NVMe and we get to load a palette quicker it’s better than nothing I suppose.


----------



## Jeremy Spencer (Oct 18, 2017)

I have Samsungs which are great, and a "bargain bin" Kingston that is still going strong since 2010. I don't think it makes a difference....anything is prone to failing.


----------



## AlexanderSchiborr (Oct 18, 2017)

Prockamanisc said:


> I'm looking to get a new 2TB SSD to replace a couple of 500GB SSDs. Right now I'm using the Samgung 850 Evos, and they're great. If I end up replacing them with a lesser quality SSD (cuz it's a good bit cheaper), will I see any performance decreases?
> 
> I'm using these entirely as sample drives. Typically I set all of the buffer sizes in Kontakt, Vienna Player, etc, to the lowest setting so it loads very little into RAM. Then it streams from the drives once a note is played. I've really experienced no buffer hiccups (like one would experience when streaming from SSDs), and it's been awesome. I'm afraid of losing that...do I have anything to worry about?



Don´t take this as a general guide, just my own experience: I have a vast different arrays of SSDs used over the years, from solid old intels (back in 2010) over some midprice kingston models to samsung. They are a slight different speeds..but in my normal work with libraries, Kontakt, Cubase I don´t feel that much of a difference. Even my oldest intel from 2010 still holds pretty fairly up and I can use it. My newest NVME Samung Pro 960 2 TB model is great, but just get another 850 EVO 2TB. The difference is not that huge as it looks on the paper.


----------



## babylonwaves (Oct 18, 2017)

Nick Batzdorf said:


> Are people here saturating a SATA 2 bus? I don't know how to figure out how many voices 300MB/sec is, but it's a LOT.


of course.


----------



## jamwerks (Oct 18, 2017)

Check out the different read and random read specs. That's what's more important in your setup.


----------



## chimuelo (Oct 18, 2017)

850 Pros for the best warranty, EVO for an average warranty.
850 Pros are higher binned, like RAM/CPUs SKUs


----------



## esounds (Oct 18, 2017)

Gerhard Westphalen said:


> I've saturated SSD's on sata 3. There's usually a big disk spike on some sustain patches when they hit the loop point so I often lose notes there when there isn't enough streaming power. I'm normally using 3 mic positions so that's already 6 mono voices per note. A single Hollywood strings legato patch with only 1 mic position can hit over 100MB/s.




That loop point cutting out is a very frustrating well known Kontakt bug that probably has nothing to do with your SSD drives as mine can show this problem with 1 voice playing and nothing else going on. This bug that has been around for years apparently is somewhat erratic and hard to reproduce consistently so I doubt NI will ever fix it. Unfortunately this has caused me to have to not use many libraries as they are too unpredictable and unreliable as they seem more susceptible to the bug then most other libraries.


----------



## N.Caffrey (Oct 18, 2017)

Guys, sorry it's slightly OT, but do you have any experience with the thunder3-quad-mini by Akitio? https://www.akitio.com/portable-storage/akitio-thunder3-quad-mini
I was planning to get one to start using SSDs


----------



## Nick Batzdorf (Oct 18, 2017)

Chim - higher binned? I dunno. My instinct tells me that lower-binned components with 3-year warranties aren't likely to last longer than ones warranted for five.



Gerhard Westphalen said:


> I've saturated SSD's on sata 3. There's usually a big disk spike on some sustain patches when they hit the loop point so I often lose notes there when there isn't enough streaming power. I'm normally using 3 mic positions so that's already 6 mono voices per note. A single Hollywood strings legato patch with only 1 mic position can hit over 100MB/s.



First, how are you calculating the /s rate? I haven't been able to find the formula - not that multiplication is all that difficult...

Anyway - leaving aside that this is probably God's way of telling you to use a reverb  - is the bottleneck really the SATA 3 bus rather than the drive, subsystem, CPU, or position of the stars?


----------



## Nick Batzdorf (Oct 18, 2017)

jamwerks said:


> Check out the different read and random read specs. That's what's more important in your setup


 
SSDs use flash memory, so their read times are minuscule.


----------



## AoiichiNiiSan (Oct 18, 2017)

Nick Batzdorf said:


> SSDs use flash memory, so their read times are minuscule.



Ah, but faster is always better isn't it? Especially when they vary between model and manufacturer. Gotta pay another $100 to shave off those milliseconds...


----------



## storyteller (Oct 18, 2017)

Nick Batzdorf said:


> Anyway - leaving aside that this is probably God's way of telling you to use a reverb  - is the bottleneck really the SATA 3 bus rather than the drive, subsystem, CPU, or position of the stars?


It is _*always*_ the position of the stars. People seem to forget that.  But I do truly subscribe to the "spread-sections-out-over-multiple-drives-_without_-raid" philosophy though.... you know, just to help offset the celestial energy thing.


----------



## Nick Batzdorf (Oct 18, 2017)

I subscribe to that theory for a different reason: I've been adding smaller drives as needed.


----------



## Nick Batzdorf (Oct 18, 2017)

AoiichiNiiSan said:


> Gotta pay another $100 to shave off those milliseconds...



To maintain the deeply serious spirit of this banter: SSD read (or really seek) times are in the microsecond range - hundredths of a millisecond!


----------



## Gerhard Westphalen (Oct 18, 2017)

Nick Batzdorf said:


> First, how are you calculating the /s rate? I haven't been able to find the formula - not that multiplication is all that difficult...


That's just the value the Play shows when playing. If you really wanted the data you could use the Windows Performance Analyzer which basically can record any aspect of your computer's performance.



Nick Batzdorf said:


> Anyway - leaving aside that this is probably God's way of telling you to use a reverb  - is the bottleneck really the SATA 3 bus rather than the drive, subsystem, CPU, or position of the stars?


Changing sata 2 to 3 has made things that weren't playable playable so that was directly a result of the bus bottleneck. When hitting the bottleneck of one SSD, splitting to multiple also made it playable so that was either a limitation of the bus or the drive. I haven't tried faster than sata 3 drives. I've only heard from others that they offer no streaming advantage.


----------



## Nick Batzdorf (Oct 18, 2017)

Are you talking about the drives or the bus? Older drives might not perform as well, in other words.

(I actually do have HS on a SATA 3 bus - an OWC Accelsior card I bought as an experiment.)


----------



## babylonwaves (Oct 18, 2017)

N.Caffrey said:


> Guys, sorry it's slightly OT, but do you have any experience with the thunder3-quad-mini by Akitio? https://www.akitio.com/portable-storage/akitio-thunder3-quad-mini
> I was planning to get one to start using SSDs


it looks exactly like the OWC Thunderbay Mini and I suspect it is more or less the same. I have a TB mini and can recommend it a lot. The fan is audible, a good replacement is the Noctua NF-A6x25 - I had mine running without a fan for 2 years now and it is fine.


----------



## N.Caffrey (Oct 18, 2017)

babylonwaves said:


> it looks exactly like the OWC Thunderbay Mini and I suspect it is more or less the same. I have a TB mini and can recommend it a lot. The fan is audible, a good replacement is the Noctua NF-A6x25 - I had mine running without a fan for 2 years now and it is fine.


thanks for the reply, I'll check them out!


----------

