# M2 NVMe drives vs standard SSDs for heavy Sample Library use?



## Boulez

Hello Folks

Newbie here. Are there some heavy users of Orchestral Sample Libraries here? Am I in the right part of the forum? I have some questions about NVMe drives vs standard SSDs. I've read what I can find, but would be grateful for more clarity if possible!

Are heavy sample library users now employing things like Sonnet M.2 4x4 PCIe Card (Silent) with NVMe SSDs as their main sample drives? https://www.sonnettech.com/product/m2-4 ... rview.html Have these now basically replaced SATA SSDs as the storage platform of choice? Is NVMe now the recommended setup, regardless of price? That's my impression...

I have a 2019 Mac Pro 16-Core, and will soon invest in bits of VSL, Spitfire BBC, Orchestral Tools, Synthogy Ivory and other instrument libraries. I’ll use large templates in Logic and the work will be in extreme detail. So I'm wondering...

If you’re using Sonnet/M2/NVMe (or similar), relative to SATA SSDs, are you experiencing: 

1. Reduced wait when loading large templates?
2. Smooth and trouble-free playing of instrument samples? 
3. Any over-heating of the M2 NVMe SSDs during short or long sessions?
4. Any other problems / issues?






Do you recommend this route—or have alternative suggestions? 

I’m not toooo concerned about cost—I’m mainly just interested in getting maximum speed, efficiency and reliability. 

Also, from what I gather, there seems to be a debate



whether Samsung 970 Evo Plus (or Samsung 970 Pro for reliability?) or perhaps Intel Optane is best for sample library use. Anyone have direct experience or comparison of these? Or did I misunderstand?

Any advice would be much appreciated as I’m much more musician than computer hardware expert! 

Thanks


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## Kent

Have you seen these threads?






NVMe vs SATA: Will it make Kontakt faster?


On the subject of the benefit of NVMe over a modest SATA SSD, specifically as it relates to Kontakt, I've commented here and elsewhere that: At least with Kontakt's compressed samples, NVMe is completely wasted. Decent SATA SSDs are too for that matter: I bottleneck my CPU decompressing the...




vi-control.net










M2 nvme vs sata


Hey there ! I'm actually in the process of building a new computer (intel 8700k & w10) and wondering if M2 nvme is worth the money, when the samsung 860 evo & crucial MX 500 are much cheaper. So far my understanding is that M2 sata is basicaly the same thing than a 2'5 ssd, so no gain here. But...




vi-control.net


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## Boulez

Thanks kmaster! Yes, I had read (some of) this but confess (a) I found it confusing and did not find the clarity I was looking for (b) the early part of the threads are 2 + 1/2 years old, so I wasn't sure how much is still relevant now. That said, maybe I should try again? Or maybe there's a summary of conclusions (if there are conclusions) somewhere? 

I'm in the UK and will be sleeping for a while in case you (or anyone answers) quickly. Thanks again, appreciated.


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## EgM

I've recently installed an NVMe WD Black SN750 2TB to replace 4 SATA SSDs and I have to say that it has made a real difference here, in loading time and as well as general samples playing stability.


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## rgames

When I went from HDD to SATA III SSD I saw a huge reduction in load times and huge increase in voice counts. When I went from SATA III SSD to NVME I saw very little change in load times (*maybe* 10% better) and absoultely no change in voice counts. Anything over 500 MB/s read and 100k IOPS seems to provide little benefit as far as I can tell.

There are definitely a lot of discussions on this topic but I'd say my experience is consistent with those who have measured load times and voice counts for large templates.

It seems there are a few particular libraries that show some benefit in load times but because it's just one library here and there it doesn't matter in terms of overall productivity. Going from 10 seconds to 5 seconds on one library is a 50% reduction, yes, but it's only 5 seconds...

rgames


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## Alex Sopala

rgames said:


> When I went from HDD to SATA III SSD I saw a huge reduction in load times and huge increase in voice counts. When I went from SATA III SSD to NVME I saw very little change in load times (*maybe* 10% better) and absoultely no change in voice counts. Anything over 500 MB/s read and 100k IOPS seems to provide little benefit as far as I can tell.
> 
> There are definitely a lot of discussions on this topic but I'd say my experience is consistent with those who have measured load times and voice counts for large templates.
> 
> It seems there are a few particular libraries that show some benefit in load times but because it's just one library here and there it doesn't matter in terms of overall productivity. Going from 10 seconds to 5 seconds on one library is a 50% reduction, yes, but it's only 5 seconds...
> 
> rgames



I guess begs the question, when one needs an improvement in voice counts (or really just voices being dropped in heavy situations such as orchestral tutti), what would you say is the best course of action?


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## rgames

Alex Sopala said:


> I guess begs the question, when one needs an improvement in voice counts (or really just voices being dropped in heavy situations such as orchestral tutti), what would you say is the best course of action?


I think slave machines are still the best option if you're hitting voice count limitations. Also speeds up load times much more than anything you can do on a single machine because you have multiple disk-to-RAM pathways. Two eight-core systems will (likely) vastly outperform a single sixteen-core system in terms of load times and voice counts.

But I really don't hit voice count limitations these days. So if you can live with the load times, working from a single machine is definitely do-able unless you're running a ton of mic positions. It's very dependent on what you write and what libraries you use.

rgames


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## Boulez

Hi All, thanks for the responses.

So, what I gather is, yes the NMVe drives work more-or-less reliably, and while there may be some speed gains compared to SATA SSD, they are not that significant, except maybe in certain cases. And so, it might be worth waiting until NMVe prices come down a bit... or just take the hit and run with it. Cool.

In which case, can I just check the temperature question? This review of the Samsung 970 Evo Plus 

shows (@ 3’ 40”) a temperature of 93 degrees, admittedly with ‘extreme’ use.

Many years ago I had the Mac G5; when the fans started it sounded like Concorde taking off! (OK, that dates me…). Anyway, one of the incentives for paying Apple Tax (for the 2019 Mac Pro) was to get a near-silent machine (it isn’t actually silent, but it _is _damn quiet). And so, what I DON’T want to do is to add-in components that again make my studio sound like Heathrow Airport (or Dallas Fort Worth).

So, does anybody run NVMe SSD on a 2019 Mac Pro? Do they run hot (or very hot) during extended sample library use?

A technical thing I don’t know: I can imagine that _writing to_ a drive generates more heat than _reading from_ it. Is that true? If true, it would put my mind at rest somewhat.

Thanks!


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## Neutron Star

I have got sample libraries on both NVME and SATA SSD. I can detect absolutely zero load time difference.


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## Boulez

Hi Neutron Star, Thanks. Is that loading in very large templates (like complete VSL or Spitfire orchestra)?


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## Neutron Star

Yes. The piece I am working on at the moment has about forty instances of kontakt, and 6 instances of Omnisphere. Some of the individual sounds are around 1.5gb. I am using Studio one 5, and you can see them loading on startup. its so fast it's really just a blur.


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## Boulez

Thanks Neutron Star, good to know! 

I'm particularly interested to know whether the same is the case for products like VSL, Orchestral Tools, Spitfire BBC SO, etc. I'm not sure why it might be different—then again there are often surprises with these dang computers.


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## Neutron Star

I have products from virtually all the big names. The developer is irrelevant. it's just the ram footprint of each sound. As i said, the loads speeds are astonishing from both types!


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## iMovieShout

NVMe is definitely better than SSD as the NVMe modules will utilise the motherboard's native speeds, whereas SSDs can only go as fast as the SATA2 interface (circa 600MB/sec - I think thats right). I have a dual-Intel CPU workstation PC (Windows10Pro with 512GB RAM) with 4x 2TB Samsung 970 NVMe PCIE drives mounted on the motherboard and loading around 200GB samples in one go is really fast - about 14 minutes with each NVMe having around 3200MB/sec read time.  I've had this setup for about a year. Before then I used standalone (not RAID) SSDs and the load time was around 1 to 2 hours.
We also have a bunch of Dell servers with 14TB RAID0 spread over 9x 2TB SSDs (Samsung 860 EVO) networked over a 10GBE network from which we load instruments and sample libraries and these load fairly quickly (between 60 and 90 minutes for around 5TB of samples loaded) which again is fairly fast - but not as fast as NVMe drives. With speeds like these it means we can shtdown and reboot servers etc quickly and therefore save a load of $$$ in energy bills as we don't need everything up and running all the time.


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## Boulez

Many thanks Jonathan and Neutron Star again.

My background is that I got into this in the 1990’s (Atari, Notator), continued for 15 years or so (Gigasampler)… then returned to working with pen and paper… and am only now just getting back into it, attracted mainly by improvements in the (relative) realism of acoustic instrument libraries, computer speeds etc. So—I can’t really judge the ‘speediness’ or otherwise of these load times etc – but it’s really helpful to have an idea!

Interesting that people are having different experiences re the speed of NVMe vs SATA SSDs.

Perhaps these result from difference of OS (Mac / Windows / Linux and which versions), computer specification, and the relative quantities (number Gbs) that different users tend to work with and consider normal?


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## Neutron Star

NVME has a much higher spec than SATA. However, it is not the bottleneck. It's the software that uses it. Your OS daw kontakt etc.( Studio one 5 loads much much faster than version 3.5 ) I have the same libraries on a NVME and SSD. They both load just as quickly. If there is a difference, its microseconds. I recently built a computer with an NVME for both OS and for sample libraries on the belief they would make a big difference. In real world use, i have detected nothing. The only exception would be writing say 5 gig file. NVME is faster then.


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## Technostica

Boulez said:


> In which case, can I just check the temperature question? This review of the Samsung 970 Evo Plus
> shows (@ 3’ 40”) a temperature of 93 degrees, admittedly with ‘extreme’ use.



There are newer PCIe drives which are much more power efficient than the 970 EVO Plus.












Images taken from this review:








The Best NVMe SSD for Laptops and Notebooks: SK hynix Gold P31 1TB SSD Reviewed







www.anandtech.com





Samsung SSDs are a premium price now because they were the number one for consumer SSDs many years ago.
I don't see that they are generally worth a premium these days.
It's not as if they have a great track record in quality; the 840 and 840 Evos had a major issue which took them over a year to fix. Should have been recalled as they weren't fit for purpose.


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## Alex Fraser

Massive apologies if the following comes across as snarky - it's not meant to.

I think unless your pursuing these things at scale, (1) The time saved by using the faster drives is completely frittered away by the amount of time we (all) spend on the forum debating these things and (2) You can use those previous extra seconds while waiting for a load to inhale more coffee. 👍


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## Reid Rosefelt

Boulez said:


> Hello Folks
> 
> Newbie here. Are there some heavy users of Orchestral Sample Libraries here? Am I in the right part of the forum? I have some questions about NVMe drives vs standard SSDs. I've read what I can find, but would be grateful for more clarity if possible!
> 
> Are heavy sample library users now employing things like Sonnet M.2 4x4 PCIe Card (Silent) with NVMe SSDs as their main sample drives? https://www.sonnettech.com/product/m2-4 ... rview.html Have these now basically replaced SATA SSDs as the storage platform of choice? Is NVMe now the recommended setup, regardless of price? That's my impression...
> 
> I have a 2019 Mac Pro 16-Core, and will soon invest in bits of VSL, Spitfire BBC, Orchestral Tools, Synthogy Ivory and other instrument libraries. I’ll use large templates in Logic and the work will be in extreme detail. So I'm wondering...
> 
> If you’re using Sonnet/M2/NVMe (or similar), relative to SATA SSDs, are you experiencing:
> 
> 1. Reduced wait when loading large templates?
> 2. Smooth and trouble-free playing of instrument samples?
> 3. Any over-heating of the M2 NVMe SSDs during short or long sessions?
> 4. Any other problems / issues?
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Do you recommend this route—or have alternative suggestions?
> 
> I’m not toooo concerned about cost—I’m mainly just interested in getting maximum speed, efficiency and reliability.
> 
> Also, from what I gather, there seems to be a debate
> 
> 
> 
> whether Samsung 970 Evo Plus (or Samsung 970 Pro for reliability?) or perhaps Intel Optane is best for sample library use. Anyone have direct experience or comparison of these? Or did I misunderstand?
> 
> Any advice would be much appreciated as I’m much more musician than computer hardware expert!
> 
> Thanks


No, NVMe are absolutely not the standard. I think the majority of musicians have never tried one.

If you see any change, it will ONLY be in speed of loading. None of the other things you mention. 

People will ONLY see a change of speed based on what the NVMe is hooked to. It's just a fast car on the information highway and if there's traffic, it can only go so fast. For example, what generation is the PCIe port? This is why when you go on Amazon and look on reviews you get very happy customers and very angry customers. After all there are many drives in the same size that are SATA, so they are the same as regular SSDs, just smaller, and a lot of people don't understand this. 

I have used these things for years and they have made a big difference for me:
Some libraries work fine on a 7200 drive, and that's where I keep them.
Some of my libraries load fine on my SSDs and that's where I keep them. 
With SOME libraries--and only some--they load in 10-15 seconds on a regular SSD vs vs insta-load on the NVme. Totally depends on the library and I have no idea why that is.

With all the others it is a not a big difference. I use that NVMe space carefully.

So I agree 100% with people who say they found zero difference. People can say I'm wrong, but their experience does not disprove mine, in fact it confirms what I have found to be true, more times than not. NVme is not going to super-charge everything. But it doesn't need to cost more and it can be useful. 

Unless you are a Samsung snob, the prices are practically the same. But I don't plan to only buy NVmes because on my motherboard, I lose two SATA slots for every NVMe I install on the motherboard. And I only have a limited amount of PCie ports. I don't know what the story is with your Mac Pro, but you should read the manual. 

So unless you are strategic and buy multi-TB NVme drives, you may be putting limits on future internal expansion. 

My next purchase is going to be to add more RAM. Rightly or wrongly, I believe that will help me work with bigger templates. Anyway, I'm doing it.


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## Boulez

Many thanks Technostica. Please excuse the seriously non-technical reply – but what you’re saying here is that this Hynix card will use less power, therefore will not get so hot, so Heathrow Airport syndrome is more likely to be avoided. Correct?

Thank you Alex, not snarky at all, point understood. I will be pursuing these things at scale. I’m a ‘classical’ composer (whatever that means these days…) in my 60s, and am getting into this MIDI thing again to complete some big orchestral pieces which have enormous amounts of detail. I really don’t mean to waste anyone’s time. If my questions are a bit naïve it’s because (a) I’m pretty non-technical and struggle to understand a lot of this stuff! And (b) I hate fighting with technology (have done enough of it in my time) and would love (if possible) to get it right first time with populating the Mac.

Thanks also Tiger the Frog, much appreciate the comments. Not a snob (Samsung or any other kind!). I ask about Samsung because I used their HDs in PCs for years and never had an issue, and they do well in speed tests in reviews... but I'm learning here that this is probably not important. Re Mac Pro, yes I’ve read the ‘white paper’ (and the short blurb that passes for a manual…). I've also been in touch with Sonnet direct, who were very helpful but surely wanted to sell me their products. In fact I'm a PC guy, not particularly a Mac fan, but having used Logic for so many years, feel tied in. Maybe that’s a mistake, but I’ve made it now. BTW, what is ‘BF’? Thanks!


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## Reid Rosefelt

Boulez said:


> Many thanks Technostica. Please excuse the seriously non-technical reply – but what you’re saying here is that this Hynix card will use less power, therefore will not get so hot, so Heathrow Airport syndrome is more likely to be avoided. Correct?
> 
> Thank you Alex, not snarky at all, point understood. I will be pursuing these things at scale. I’m a ‘classical’ composer (whatever that means these days…) in my 60s, and am getting into this MIDI thing again to complete some big orchestral pieces which have enormous amounts of detail. I really don’t mean to waste anyone’s time. If my questions are a bit naïve it’s because (a) I’m pretty non-technical and struggle to understand a lot of this stuff! And (b) I hate fighting with technology (have done enough of it in my time) and would love (if possible) to get it right first time with populating the Mac.
> 
> Thanks also Tiger the Frog, much appreciate the comments. Not a snob (Samsung or any other kind!). I ask about Samsung because I used their HDs in PCs for years and never had an issue, and they do well in speed tests in reviews... but I'm learning here that this is probably not important. Re Mac Pro, yes I’ve read the ‘white paper’ (and the short blurb that passes for a manual…). I've also been in touch with Sonnet direct, who were very helpful but surely wanted to sell me their products. In fact I'm a PC guy, not particularly a Mac fan, but having used Logic for so many years, feel tied in. Maybe that’s a mistake, but I’ve made it now. BTW, what is ‘BF’? Thanks!


Black Friday, the big sales day after the US Thanksgiving. On stuff like this, you may find even better sales on the monday after, called Cyber-Monday.


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## Boulez

TigerTheFrog said:


> Black Friday, the big sales day after the US Thanksgiving. On stuff like this, you may find even better sales on the monday after, called Cyber-Monday.



Ah, 27 November, yes I hadn't thought of that—good call!


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## Alex Fraser

Boulez said:


> Ah, 27 November, yes I hadn't thought of that—good call!


Heads up - this place becomes a madhouse about a week before in anticipation of sample devs having sales.


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## Boulez

Alex Fraser said:


> Heads up - this place becomes a madhouse about a week before in anticipation of sample devs having sales.


Good to know!


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## Boulez

In case anyone is interested, attached is a compatibility list for this particular Sonnet Card (see my original post). I found this on Mac Rumours, and it dates from July. I'll ask Sonnet if there's an updated list and whether Hynix are also included.


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## Boulez

And now I see Sonnet just released (or announced...) a U2 version:






Fusion Dual U.2 SSD PCIe Card - Sonnet


Two U.2 NVMe SSD slots on a PCIe 3.0 x16 card. Add your own U.2 SSDs for Mac, Windows, and Linux.




www.sonnettech.com


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## ridgero

I only use the internal NVME of my iMac Pro and and external SATA SSD. 

Honestly, there is not much noticeable difference in terms of loading times.


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## Boulez

ridgero said:


> I only use the internal NVME of my iMac Pro and and external SATA SSD.
> 
> Honestly, there is not much noticeable difference in terms of loading times.



Hi Ridgero, thanks for chiming in. When you say 'the internal NVMe of my iMac Pro' what are you referring to? I thought the iMac Pro had internal SATA SSD not NVMe SSD -- or has this changed, or is this something you added? Excuse my ignorance...

EDIT: Having looked this up, I see it is NVMe. Hadn't realised.


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## Pictus

TigerTheFrog said:


> Unless you are a Samsung snob,(...)



The main advantage of Samsung is because they are very reliable and also fast.









Samsung SATA SSD's Amazing Reliability


At Puget Systems, we spend a a lot of effort tracking the failure rates of all our products to make sure that each is living up to our quality standards. Today, we want to publish a short article to specifically call out one line of products for being extremely reliable: Samsung SATA SSDs.




www.pugetsystems.com





https://3dnews.ru/938764/page-3.html


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## babylonwaves

TigerTheFrog said:


> If you see any change, it will ONLY be in speed of loading. None of the other things you mention.


and even that might depend on the player you're using. I've compared Kontakt's loading time for a large library using a single SSD in a thunderbolt enclosure and a RAID0 of four. I didn't see a difference although the theoretical net transfer speeds were very different (approx 500 MB/s vs. 1.3GB/s). There might be latency differences when delivering the data though which would have a theoretical impact on the possible DFD buffer size.


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## Technostica

Pictus said:


> The main advantage of Samsung is because they are very reliable and also fast.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Samsung SATA SSD's Amazing Reliability
> 
> 
> At Puget Systems, we spend a a lot of effort tracking the failure rates of all our products to make sure that each is living up to our quality standards. Today, we want to publish a short article to specifically call out one line of products for being extremely reliable: Samsung SATA SSDs.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> www.pugetsystems.com
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> https://3dnews.ru/938764/page-3.html


That's not a test of reliability in a meaningful way.
It's like pushing your Hard Drives above their rated temperature and seeing which fail first.
It has zero relevance for an SSD used to host samples which is very rarely written to.
It would take hundreds or probably thousands of years to reach the official endurance limit for an SSD used for sample libraries.
So testing how far beyond the official endurance limit you can go is pointless in this context.

Even for boot drives endurance is rarely an issue for most users.
I have a relatively small boot drive (256GB) and based on current usage I will hit the official endurance limit after 25 to 30 years.
I could extend that if I didn't use it as a download folder but there's no need.


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## Buz

The other issue is using measurements of one drive to inform the purchase of an unrelated product within the same brand. I wonder how many people assume their 860 PRO 256gb has better write endurance than all those off-brands higher up the chart.


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## Technostica

Buz said:


> The other issue is using measurements of one drive to inform the purchase of an unrelated product within the same brand. I wonder how many people assume their 860 PRO 256gb has better write endurance than all those off-brands higher up the chart.


The irony is that if you look at other historic drive data, Samsung produced two of the biggest duds for sample library drives; 840 & 840 EVO.
They both had an issue which meant that data that hadn't been read for a while could only be read at much slower speeds; below 100MB/s in some cases.
It took them multiple attempts over a year to fix that, with the fix reducing the quoted endurance of the drive.
Intel had a much rarer issue for which they issued a full product recall, whilst Samsung left you hanging for over a year and required two firmware updates.
So I smile when people talk about the quality of Samsung drives.


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## JohnG

I have one of the Intel Optane drives. Still have a pretty big buffer on strings. Not sure it does anything useful for sample streaming, and that's on a pretty new computer with an i9 CPU.

I mean, it works and all that, but I haven't been able to reduce buffer much

Conclusion: agree with @rgames and others who argue it doesn't make a practical difference


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## Dewdman42

Anyone have practical recommendation for 4TB+ sized SSD drives suitable for what we do? Something in the $500 range....

Like others, I don't think the practical gains of the fastest new M.2 or whatever will make much difference for what we are doing. SSD is huge win over Hard drive, but there are too many other bottlenecks that prevents us from seeing appreciable gains from getting the newer stuff that specs out as being much faster then SATA3 SSD. 

Well that is my experience with a cheese grater, including with the use of PCIe card for the SSD. I did comparisons between built in sata2 SSD (which is very very slow by modern comparisons), and compared to PCIe dedicated card. The PCI card benchmarks much much faster for sure, but in practical terms, my projects take just as long to load and I don't see any improvement to the CPU usage. zero. I tried with and without raiding the the two devices on the PCIe card...no practical difference whatsoever.

Mind you, my next computer will use the newer tech from the get go, naturally, but I think probably while the gains compared to Hard drive are huge...with SSD, the bottleneck moves to other components and the grains are not nearly as huge.

Anyway, so back to old school SSD at 4TB+ sizes... what do people recommend? I've been eyeing the Samsung 840EVO or QVO for a while now, the EVO is usually priced too high, but I'm skeptical about performance with the QVO and even that one is priced slightly high. I had not heard about the firmware problems with that line, did Samsung work it all out by now?

I have been quite happy with the crucial MX500 that is in in there now, but they don't make 4TB size last time I checked.


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## Technostica

Dewdman42 said:


> I've been eyeing the Samsung 840EVO or QVO for a while now, the EVO is usually priced too high, but I'm skeptical about performance with the QVO and even that one is priced slightly high. I had not heard about the firmware problems with that line, did Samsung work it all out by now?


The 840 (EVO) are old drives so you would have been looking at the 860 or 870 EVO/QVO.



Dewdman42 said:


> Anyone have practical recommendation for 4TB+ sized SSD drives suitable for what we do? Something in the $500 range.


The read latency and throughput on the Samsung QVO drives is much weaker when the drive is full compared to the EVO drives, but not sure how much real world difference that makes for sample libraries.
I’d consider a Micron 5100 ECO/MAX or another Micron TLC Enterprise drive as they tend to be decent.
The Sandisk Ultra 3D and WD Blue 3D are around $500.
Be careful to get the exact model as there are some that have very similar names.


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## Dewdman42

Technostica said:


> The 840 (EVO) are old drives so you would have been looking at the 860 or 870 EVO/QVO.



Alright. HAs the issue you mentioned been fully resolved in the newer Samsung drives?



> The read latency and throughput on the Samsung QVO drives is much weaker when the drive is full compared to the EVO drives, but not sure how much real world difference that makes for sample libraries.
> I’d consider a Micron 5100 ECO/MAX or another Micron TLC Enterprise drive as they tend to be decent.
> The Sandisk Ultra 3D and WD Blue are around $500.



Thanks!


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## Technostica

Dewdman42 said:


> Alright. HAs the issue you mentioned been fully resolved in the newer Samsung drives?


I'm not aware that drives later than the 840/EVO have had that issue at all. The 840 Pro was fine as it was MLC and not TLC.


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## Technostica

You can even get an ADATA PCIe/NVMe 4TB drive for $460:








XPG SX8100 Series: 4TB M.2 NVMe 3D NAND Gen3 Gaming Internal SSD - Newegg.com


Buy XPG SX8100 Series: 4TB M.2 NVMe 3D NAND Gen3 Gaming Internal SSD with fast shipping and top-rated customer service. Once you know, you Newegg!




www.newegg.com


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## Dewdman42

that doesn't work in my cheesgrater


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## Dewdman42

Looks like the SanDisk is the most affordable 4TB I have seen in a while at under $500. performance-wise how does that compare to the QVO and the WD Blue 3D? Overall data throughput is less interesting to me since they all exceed what sata3 can do anyway, but latencies, seek times, the job counter thing..etc.. those could make a difference.


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## Technostica

Dewdman42 said:


> Looks like the SanDisk is the most affordable 4TB I have seen in a while at under $500. performance-wise how does that compare to the QVO and the WD Blue 3D? Overall data throughput is less interesting to me since they all exceed what sata3 can do anyway, but latencies, seek times, the job counter thing..etc.. those could make a difference.


The Sandisk and the WD are basically the same drive with different badges as the latter own the former; there could be tiny differences.
Make sure you get the 3D versions; no glasses required! 

The QVO drives struggle with random reads which I think is the key metric for libraries:








The Samsung 860 QVO (1TB, 4TB) SSD Review: First Consumer SATA QLC







www.anandtech.com





*ADDED.*
Look how slow they get when they are full and you know you want to fill it.


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## skotterz

Technostica said:


> I'm not aware that drives later than the 840/EVO have had that issue at all. The 840 Pro was fine as it was MLC and not TLC.



fwiw i installed the 840 pro in my 2012 MBP and never had any issues.


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## Technostica

skotterz said:


> fwiw i installed the 840 pro in my 2012 MBP and never had any issues.


Yes, it was only the TLC drives that were substandard.


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## Boulez

JohnG said:


> I have one of the Intel Optane drives. [snip]
> 
> Conclusion: agree with @rgames and others who argue it doesn't make a practical difference



Thanks John, useful info. May I ask which of the Optane drives it is? I was wondering whether the low latency claims might be useful not only in the context of driving samples, but also for some other work I'm involved with.


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## Boulez

Technostica said:


> It has zero relevance for an SSD used to host samples which is very rarely written to.



I was also thinking this. Do test figures exist for the number of times one can READ from an SSD, or is this considered completely unnecessary? Which takes me back to my earlier question whether merely reading from a drive generates a lesser amount of heat as writing to it, and in what proportion?


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## Boulez

So, still some people say they are getting benefits from NVME, and others not. 

I wonder if anyone is using one of these, and what their experience of it is? 






Fusion Dual 2.5-inch SSD RAID - Sonnet


Dual 2.5-inch SSD PCIe 3.0 card with hardware RAID controller, plus 10Gbps USB-C port. Add your own choice of SSDs.




www.sonnettech.com


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## Technostica

Boulez said:


> Which takes me back to my earlier question whether merely reading from a drive generates a lesser amount of heat as writing to it, and in what proportion?


The review below has power figures for multiple drives for reading and writing at different queue depths.
Look at the charts with the raw watts data and underneath you can select a drive.









The Best NVMe SSD for Laptops and Notebooks: SK hynix Gold P31 1TB SSD Reviewed







www.anandtech.com


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## Boulez

Technostica said:


> ... and underneath you can select a drive.



Ah, yes, that's very cool, I hadn't noticed you could do that. Thanks.


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## stabsteer

Trying to follow along with this thread but am newer to sample libraries coming from a video background on my iMac Pro. I've recently invested quite on bit on them and am now looking to house everything.

I was looking to get OWC Thunderblade which rates-

Up to 2800MB/s Read & 2450MB/s Write
Based on what I seem to be reading is this overkill? 






OWC ThunderBlade 2TB External SSD for Mac and PC


Capable of transfer speeds up to 2800MB/s read & 2450MB/s write. With SoftRAID, two ThunderBlades can reach dizzying heights up to 3800MB/s.




eshop.macsales.com





Also I was thinking of spreading out the libraries based on type (strings/Winds/Brass/Other) and getting 4 different 2-4 TB ones. This seems to be common practice.

Would others doing this professionally recommend this as the way to go?

Thanks so much for any advice!


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## iMovieShout

We have 18TB of SSDs configured in RAID0. All SSDs are 2TB Samsung 860 SSDs and run and managed through a dedicated HDD disk device on our studio Dell R720 file server (Windows Server 2012R2) They are reliable, robust (never failed) and provide for around 6500MB/sec read and 4000MB/sec write. This is where our sample libraries (ours and 3rd parties such as 8DIO, Spitfire, CineSample, etc) are stored. Just a single drive.

On my own Windows workstation-PC I have a mix of NVMe drives (Samsung 970 and AddLink) and a couple of Samsung 860 PRO drives (2 TB each). Of these the AddLink NVMe drives give the best performance of around 4500MB/sec read and 3800MB/sec write. The SSD drives max out at 650MB/sec due to SATA limitations. I use these for video editing and storing my own sample libraries that I use offline (ie, when the studio servers are offline or down for maintenance).
In my experience OWC are very reliable but they underperform and not a good investment compared to Samsung and AddLink which never seem to fail. I've personally tried others including OWC, WD, Intel etc, but AddLink and Samsung seem to be the best value for money and most reliable for the money.

Hope that helps.


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## chimuelo

Mushkin Helix NVMe PCI 3.0 x 4 are 80 bucks each, no sale. They were 50 for 1TB on BFDay. I picked up 6 of them.

As far as performance goes no difference between them and my other NVMe’s like the Samsung 960, or BPX’s.

Im going to be using an ASRock B550 for audio which is only PCI 3.0.
No need for speeds that audio apps will never take advantage of any ways.

PCI 3 x 4 devices will be peanuts as soon as Intel goes to 4x.

Fine by me.


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## colony nofi

jpb007.uk said:


> We have 18TB of SSDs configured in RAID0. All SSDs are 2TB Samsung 860 SSDs and run and managed through a dedicated HDD disk device on our studio Dell R720 file server (Windows Server 2012R2) They are reliable, robust (never failed) and provide for around 6500MB/sec read and 4000MB/sec write. This is where our sample libraries (ours and 3rd parties such as 8DIO, Spitfire, CineSample, etc) are stored. Just a single drive.
> 
> On my own Windows workstation-PC I have a mix of NVMe drives (Samsung 970 and AddLink) and a couple of Samsung 860 PRO drives (2 TB each). Of these the AddLink NVMe drives give the best performance of around 4500MB/sec read and 3800MB/sec write. The SSD drives max out at 650MB/sec due to SATA limitations. I use these for video editing and storing my own sample libraries that I use offline (ie, when the studio servers are offline or down for maintenance).
> In my experience OWC are very reliable but they underperform and not a good investment compared to Samsung and AddLink which never seem to fail. I've personally tried others including OWC, WD, Intel etc, but AddLink and Samsung seem to be the best value for money and most reliable for the money.
> 
> Hope that helps.



How are you accessing the sample libraries from the server? How does that work licensing wise for kontakt and the rest? I would *LOVE* to set something like that up here, but not sure how licensing for each machine would be done.
Regarding accessing the server... you say read performance of 4500MB/sec - so well above 10GbE. 

What interconnects are you using? (Or is it just 10GbE and the performance of the drive is CAPABLE internally on the server for those figures?)


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## iMovieShout

colony nofi said:


> How are you accessing the sample libraries from the server? How does that work licensing wise for kontakt and the rest? I would *LOVE* to set something like that up here, but not sure how licensing for each machine would be done.
> Regarding accessing the server... you say read performance of 4500MB/sec - so well above 10GbE.
> 
> What interconnects are you using? (Or is it just 10GbE and the performance of the drive is CAPABLE internally on the server for those figures?)


So the fileserver is setup as a network drive and mapped as such by any of the PCs and VEP servers which run on Windows Server 2012R2 or Windows10. So as far as any VEP server is concerned the fileserver drive is just another drive. Nothing special is needed for licensing.
The fileserver drive is comprised of a bunch of Samsung 860 2TB SSD drives in RAID0 and managed by a Dell RAID controller and provides for circa 6500MB/sec read and 5600MB/sec write and networked via 10GB/sec SFP+. DAW machines are networked with 1GB ethernet which is plenty for audio transmission and VEP. Each server would need an eLicenser, VEP software, windows server 2008 or 2012 (probably works with 2016 or 2019 but these are overkill and expensive). Each of our Dell servers have dual CPU (24 threads total) and at least 192GB RAM and a small 120 GB SSD or HDD to boot windows and any other software to run that server. VEP doesn’t use the local server’s HDD for storage as all samples are pulled from the main fileserver.
A point to note is that although the servers are networked with 10GBE that the bottleneck becomes Kontakt etc which often restricts the loading speeds of samples, probably due to the time needes for sample decompression. But the network definately helps to speed up initial load times we’ve seen spikes of up to 6GB/sec when VEP first loads. A typical VEP server loading its 192GB RAM to 95% takes about 45 minutes on 10GBE or around 2 to 2.5 hours on 1GBE. Around 5GB RAM is needed to run windows.
Also we built our server farm over 3 years. Initially starting with a QNAP drive (easy setup but slow network speeds) then gradually moved to Dell servers with trial and error and as budget allowed. 

Hope that helps


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## colony nofi

jpb007.uk said:


> So the fileserver is setup as a network drive and mapped as such by any of the PCs and VEP servers which run on Windows Server 2012R2 or Windows10. So as far as any VEP server is concerned the fileserver drive is just another drive. Nothing special is needed for licensing.
> The fileserver drive is comprised of a bunch of Samsung 860 2TB SSD drives in RAID0 and managed by a Dell RAID controller and provides for circa 6500MB/sec read and 5600MB/sec write and networked via 10GB/sec SFP+. DAW machines are networked with 1GB ethernet which is plenty for audio transmission and VEP. Each server would need an eLicenser, VEP software, windows server 2008 or 2012 (probably works with 2016 or 2019 but these are overkill and expensive). Each of our Dell servers have dual CPU (24 threads total) and at least 192GB RAM and a small 120 GB SSD or HDD to boot windows and any other software to run that server. VEP doesn’t use the local server’s HDD for storage as all samples are pulled from the main fileserver.
> A point to note is that although the servers are networked with 10GBE that the bottleneck becomes Kontakt etc which often restricts the loading speeds of samples, probably due to the time needes for sample decompression. But the network definately helps to speed up initial load times we’ve seen spikes of up to 6GB/sec when VEP first loads. A typical VEP server loading its 192GB RAM to 95% takes about 45 minutes on 10GBE or around 2 to 2.5 hours on 1GBE. Around 5GB RAM is needed to run windows.
> Also we built our server farm over 3 years. Initially starting with a QNAP drive (easy setup but slow network speeds) then gradually moved to Dell servers with trial and error and as budget allowed.
> 
> Hope that helps


For sure it does.
Thank you.
VEP is the part I was missing. 

I might get a little more time later today for a decent reply. Interesting your experiences with kontakt loading. We have seen similar.


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