# So what should I put on my SSD?



## Michael Stibor (May 28, 2019)

Not so familiar with computer peripheral stuff, so please excuse my newbie level terminology.

I'm a Logic user running out of space between my mac hard drive and my external WD (non SSD) drive. I figure now is as good a time as any to by an external SSD drive. But the size I get will be largely dependent on how best to use it.

I can't remember if I'm supposed to put Logic on it and project files, libraries only, or both.

I mainly use Cinematic stuff (strings, solos, brass), Spitfire BHCT, as well as VSL for general purpose sounds.

What is the best way for me to make use of an SSD drive? Or simply put, out of what I mentioned, how would you prioritize what goes on the SSD?


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## Pietro (May 28, 2019)

You'll probably benefit the most from having sample libraries on it. 

- Piotr


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## halfwalk (May 28, 2019)

I run absolutely everything on SSDs. Putting your operating system on it will let your computer boot up in a few seconds. But yeah, maybe not what you're asking...

Sample libraries on it means you can turn your Kontakt pre-load buffer override all the way down (assuming all your libs are on SSD) and that will let you use much less RAM as more data is streamed from disk instead.


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## JT (May 28, 2019)

Libraries


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## Nick Batzdorf (May 28, 2019)

mikefrommontreal said:


> I can't remember if I'm supposed to put Logic on it and project files, libraries only, or both.



Both!

Putting your system and programs on SSDs is like getting a new computer - only you're skipping ahead about ten generations. It makes a huge difference that you will notice all day long, from starting up to launching programs to... anything that uses the disk.

Putting your sample libraries on SSDs improves the streaming performance several generations.


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## heisenberg (May 28, 2019)

Nick Batzdorf said:


> Both!
> 
> Putting your system and programs on SSDs is like getting a new computer - only you're skipping ahead about ten generations. It makes a huge difference that you will notice all day long, from starting up to launching programs to... anything that uses the disk.
> 
> Putting your sample libraries on SSDs improves the streaming performance several generations.



Well said, however, you should have an SSD for your OS and an SSD or more for your Sample Libraries.


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## Nick Batzdorf (May 28, 2019)

heisenberg said:


> Well said, however, you should have an SSD for your OS and an SSD or more for your Sample Libraries.



That's the conventional wisdom, and it's right for spinning drives, but I'm not sure that separating your libraries makes any meaningful difference with SSDs.

I do have my system drive separated, but only because I didn't add SSDs all at once.

Does it make a difference?


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## Michael Stibor (May 28, 2019)

Nick Batzdorf said:


> That's the conventional wisdom, and it's right for spinning drives, but I'm not sure that separating your libraries makes any meaningful difference with SSDs.
> 
> I do have my system drive separated, but only because I didn't add SSDs all at once.
> 
> Does it make a difference?



So you're saying it can all go on the same drive with no issue?


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## halfwalk (May 28, 2019)

Nick Batzdorf said:


> Both!
> 
> Putting your system and programs on SSDs is like getting a new computer - only you're skipping ahead about ten generations. It makes a huge difference that you will notice all day long, from starting up to launching programs to... anything that uses the disk.
> 
> Putting your sample libraries on SSDs improves the streaming performance several generations.



I concur wholeheartedly; swapping my system drive out for an SSD was very easily the most significant performance upgrade across the board that I've ever witnessed. Like skipping generations ahead, for real. Almost everything seems so much more responsive, like the way it should have been all along. The several hours spent reinstalling and configuring everything anew were worth it, without a doubt, in my opinion.

However, it will definitely make you notice the other bottlenecks more easily, like CPU.


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## Nick Batzdorf (May 28, 2019)

mikefrommontreal said:


> So you're saying it can all go on the same drive with no issue?



That's what I believe, but let's wait to see whether someone comes up with a reason to disagree with me. There may be one.



halfwalk said:


> However, it will definitely make you notice the other bottlenecks more easily, like CPU.



Well yeah, if you remove seek time as a bottleneck, then any others still remain!

But - and I could be wrong about this - given that buffer size and CPU strain are on opposite sides of a scale (up to a point), it occurs to me that alleviating the streaming bottleneck should help with CPU as well.


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## Bansaw (May 28, 2019)

I've got a 500GB ssd, so I try and keep it reasonably empty (some SSDs when they get fuller , slow down).
So, basically, besides my OS, only a few sample libraries that I use _most often. _
Other libraries that I use sporadically go on my hdd.


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## Nick Batzdorf (May 28, 2019)

Bansaw said:


> some SSDs when they get fuller , slow down



They do?


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## Bansaw (May 28, 2019)

Nick Batzdorf said:


> They do?


Yes - https://www.howtogeek.com/165542/why-solid-state-drives-slow-down-as-you-fill-them-up/


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## Morning Coffee (May 28, 2019)

Nick Batzdorf said:


> They do?



Apparently they do. I seem to remember reading a few articles over the years that suggested not to fill up an SSD more than about 3/4 of its volume as its performance could decrease. I don't think it matters as much with HDDs, but I still try to follow that idea, at least with system drives.

An article from a few years ago
https://www.howtogeek.com/165472/6-things-you-shouldnt-do-with-solid-state-drives/


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## Nick Batzdorf (May 28, 2019)

Interesting.

It looks like writing slows down, not reading.


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## JohnG (May 28, 2019)

Bansaw said:


> some SSDs when they get fuller , slow down



Never seen any data to support that statement. That doesn't mean it's not true, but what I've seen looks anecdotal / "some guy told me"


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## Mucusman (May 28, 2019)

Bansaw said:


> some SSDs when they get fuller , slow down



From the article mentioned above: "Fill your solid-state drive to near-capacity and its write performance will decrease dramatically." Notice the condition: _write performance_.

For sample drives, this ought not be an issue for us, since most of the time we're writing once and then reading the rest of the time. I remember EvilDragon saying repeatedly on this forum to load one's SSDs up to the brim!


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## Bansaw (May 29, 2019)

Mucusman said:


> For sample drives, this ought not be an issue for us, since most of the time we're writing once and then reading the rest of the time.


If your OS is on the same drive as all your samples, then its constantly reading and writing its page file. (Windows, not sure what the MAC does,but it will be doing something.)


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## Nick Batzdorf (May 29, 2019)

Bansaw said:


> If your OS is on the same drive as all your samples, then its constantly reading and writing its page file. (Windows, not sure what the MAC does,but it will be doing something.)



Then that would say you don't want to fill up an SSD to capacity if you have your system and samples on it.

I'd like to hear arguments against doing the latter, why you need separate SSDs for sample libraries. Again, I have a separate system one, but now I'm wondering why.

One argument is just not having all your eggs in one SSD - you don't want everything to go down at once if it fails. But you should have good back-ups to recover from that in any case.


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## visiblenoise (May 29, 2019)

Video games

For real though, I'd put everything on it unless you think you'd get close to running out of space on it. You might have a bit of a difficult time trying to make space afterward (like if you bought a new library and really wanted to get it on there).


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## Damarus (May 29, 2019)

So a few things. There are statements all over the internets saying that filling up SSD's will make it slower. I dont think that is a problem today, and if you're filling up SSDs that close you have a different issue.

What mac do you have? Depending on this answer I would just replace your main drive with a large SSD and put everything on that. You get faster boot times and an overall performance increase. You don't need need two different drives, unless you want that for storage reasons.


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## Michael Stibor (May 29, 2019)

Damarus said:


> So a few things. There are statements all over the internets saying that filling up SSD's will make it slower. I dont think that is a problem today, and if you're filling up SSDs that close you have a different issue.
> 
> What mac do you have? Depending on this answer I would just replace your main drive with a large SSD and put everything on that. You get faster boot times and an overall performance increase. You don't need need two different drives, unless you want that for storage reasons.


I have an i5 imac 2017. I'm not sure of the specs at this moment beyond that as I'm away from my computer at the moment.
I was under the impression that you couldn't add an internal SSD to these units, no?


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## Damarus (May 29, 2019)

mikefrommontreal said:


> I have an i5 imac 2017. I'm not sure of the specs at this moment beyond that as I'm away from my computer at the moment.
> I was under the impression that you couldn't add an internal SSD to these units, no?



Yeah its not worth it at all. Get a USB-C drive or enclouse and throw all your samples on that. Samsung T5 is great, or find a USB-C m.2 enclosure and get a Samsung Pcie drive.


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## Nick Batzdorf (May 29, 2019)

mikefrommontreal said:


> I was under the impression that you couldn't add an internal SSD to these units, no?



As far as I know there's no room to *add* one, but you should be able to *replace* the spinning drive that's in there now.

We had a shop put an SSD in my wife's iMac after its internal Seagate drive failed. It's from 2011 or so.

The reason I didn't do it is that you have to open the case - which is only outpatient surgery, but I didn't want to do it.

If I remember right we needed a utility to stop the fans from spinning out of control, because this machine is from when SSDs were new and its firmware wasn't quite ready.

But it can be done, and it's not a huge expense. My brain says $75 for the shop to do it. Subtract the price of an external enclosure from that, and it makes a lot of sense.


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## Nick Batzdorf (May 29, 2019)

Damarus said:


> Samsung



They're still way more expensive than anything else. I'm still skeptical that there's any difference between them and other companies', other than "I'm happy with mine" testimonials.

The exception is that I'll never buy another Seagate product. Assholes treated me really badly after we had four of their drives fail in a 4-week span.


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## Zero&One (May 29, 2019)

For the price of SSD's my Mac has a 250GB SSD OS drive and several external SSD's rammed to the back teeth with samples. Literally night and day difference you'll get over HDD's.

I have backups of those sample drives to dusty old HDD drives if one fails. Use your old one


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## Michael Stibor (May 29, 2019)

Thank you all for your suggestions and advice. This place is a great resource for these type of questions. Thanks again!


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## kitekrazy (May 30, 2019)

Nick Batzdorf said:


> They're still way more expensive than anything else.* I'm still skeptical that there's any difference between them and other companies', *other than "I'm happy with mine" testimonials.
> 
> The exception is that I'll never buy another Seagate product. Assholes treated me really badly after we had four of their drives fail in a 4-week span.



I think there is a difference. I've seen some 1TB's cheap on New Egg and check the reviews. I will probably stick with WD since I'm familiar with their RMA. I still don't have confidence in SSDs.


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## Nick Batzdorf (May 30, 2019)

kitekrazy said:


> I think there is a difference. I've seen some 1TB's cheap on New Egg and check the reviews. I will probably stick with WD since I'm familiar with their RMA. I still don't have confidence in SSDs.



Oh yeah, you're right not to have confidence in SSDs or any drive. They don't last forever. Must back up.

But which cheap ones on Newegg? And are they just "I was only getting 15.4 genital whetstones when I was counting on higher reads output per bounds rect," or actual failures?

(The question is serious - I really do want to read some!)


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## Nick Batzdorf (May 30, 2019)

> I'm still skeptical that there's any difference between them and other companies'



Also, what I meant is that Samsung SSDs are more expensive than any other brand - less so now, but still more. I haven't heard any convincing arguments to justify that rather than, say, WD.


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## kitekrazy (May 30, 2019)

Nick Batzdorf said:


> Oh yeah, you're right not to have confidence in SSDs or any drive. They don't last forever. Must back up.
> 
> But which cheap ones on Newegg? And are they just "I was only getting 15.4 genital whetstones when I was counting on higher reads output per bounds rect," or actual failures?
> 
> (The question is serious - I really do want to read some!)



Usually the ones from ADATA.


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