# Multiple SSDs vs a Single SSD Performance Question



## muziksculp (Sep 22, 2021)

Hi,

I'm planning to install the EW-Hollywood Orchestra OPUS library, and have the ability to install the entire library on a single SSD, or Install the various sections on separate SSDs. 

Is there an advantage of separating them ? or is having the entire library on a single SSD offer the same performance ? 

Thanks,
Muziksculp


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## easyrider (Sep 22, 2021)

muziksculp said:


> Hi,
> 
> I'm planning to install the EW-Hollywood Orchestra OPUS library, and have the ability to install the entire library on a single SSD, or Install the various sections on separate SSDs.
> 
> ...


Are you on windows?


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## storyteller (Sep 22, 2021)

Each ssd has a bandwidth limit (e.g. simultaneous streaming voices). Each ssd has a peak random read speed. Dividing up your orchestral sections across SSDs will almost certainly perform better due to these two factors. It will help keep your Kontakt buffer lower.

One other consideration is that bandwidth is also limited based on the connector. Multiple SSDs on the same usb buss can cause each ssd to throttle voice counts. But, you still have better random read performance across multiple drives than one.


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## muziksculp (Sep 22, 2021)

easyrider said:


> Are you on windows?


Yes, Windows 10.


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## muziksculp (Sep 22, 2021)

storyteller said:


> Each ssd has a bandwidth limit (e.g. simultaneous streaming voices). Each ssd has a peak random read speed. Dividing up your orchestral sections across SSDs will almost certainly perform better due to these two factors. It will help keep your Kontakt buffer lower.
> 
> One other consideration is that bandwidth is also limited based on the connector. Multiple SSDs on the same usb buss can cause each ssd to throttle voice counts. But, you still have better random read performance across multiple drives than one.


THANKS


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## easyrider (Sep 22, 2021)

muziksculp said:


> Yes, Windows 10.


Then install Stablebit drivepool….pool all drives into one volume….

Makes managing libraries a breeze and backup easy….






StableBit - The home of StableBit CloudDrive, StableBit DrivePool and the StableBit Scanner







stablebit.com





Files are stored across drives but windows sees the drives as one single disk…

Improves IO when streaming libraries etc….I’ve been using it for years. It is a game changer for windows users.


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## muziksculp (Sep 22, 2021)

easyrider said:


> Then install Stablebit drivepool….pool all drives into one volume….
> 
> Makes managing libraries a breeze and backup easy….
> 
> ...


THANKS  

Will also consult with my Studio's custom PC builder.


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## easyrider (Sep 22, 2021)

muziksculp said:


> THANKS
> 
> Will also consult with my Studio's custom PC builder.


If he says it’s RAID he’s clueless 😜


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## jbuhler (Sep 22, 2021)

storyteller said:


> Each ssd has a bandwidth limit (e.g. simultaneous streaming voices). Each ssd has a peak random read speed. Dividing up your orchestral sections across SSDs will almost certainly perform better due to these two factors. It will help keep your Kontakt buffer lower.
> 
> One other consideration is that bandwidth is also limited based on the connector. Multiple SSDs on the same usb buss can cause each ssd to throttle voice counts. But, you still have better random read performance across multiple drives than one.


I can see why this should be true in theory, but I’ve not encountered it in practice.


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## Dewdman42 (Sep 22, 2021)

In my experience you are not going to notice any appreciable difference between putting your library on one drive or spreading it across drives and I definitely do not reccomend the complexity of a raid setup either. Do whatever makes the most sense for you in terms of easy organization.


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## Nick Batzdorf (Sep 23, 2021)

If your system is crapping out, the odds of a detail like this making the difference are very low.

And yes, small factors can add up. But - as I've posted before - even putting the same SSD on a SATA bus that's twice as fast (SATA 3 vs. 2) makes exactly no difference in the real world.

On an even more practical matter, is it worth the time it'll take to get Opus to find everything when it's spread out across multiple drives?


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## easyrider (Sep 23, 2021)

Dewdman42 said:


> In my experience you are not going to notice any appreciable difference between putting your library on one drive or spreading it across drives and I definitely do not reccomend the complexity of a raid setup either. Do whatever makes the most sense for you in terms of easy organization.


Who mentioned RAID?


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## Nick Batzdorf (Sep 23, 2021)

easyrider said:


> Who mentioned RAID?


It's an extension of the same subject, i'nit - spreading the library across multiple SSDs.

And no, I'm not going to put in the obligatory Spinal Tap dadjoke.


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## easyrider (Sep 23, 2021)

Nick Batzdorf said:


> It's an extension of the same subject, i'nit - spreading the library across multiple SSDs.
> 
> And no, I'm not going to put in the obligatory Spinal Tap dadjoke.


This can be achieved without RAID and it can also be achieved automatically.


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## Dewdman42 (Sep 23, 2021)

easyrider said:


> Who mentioned RAID?


it was mentioned several times in the thread.


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## chimuelo (Sep 23, 2021)

More reading mechanisms always worked for me.


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## easyrider (Sep 23, 2021)

Dewdman42 said:


> it was mentioned several times in the thread.


No it wasn’t


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## Dewdman42 (Sep 23, 2021)

Maybe I confused it with another thread. Oh well..too bad for you I guess you have to read it


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## gsilbers (Sep 23, 2021)

muziksculp said:


> Hi,
> 
> I'm planning to install the EW-Hollywood Orchestra OPUS library, and have the ability to install the entire library on a single SSD, or Install the various sections on separate SSDs.
> 
> ...


If you buy those new ssd m2 I think one will be more than enough. 
Prices are very low for the speed you are getting versus normal ssd.


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## Nick Batzdorf (Sep 23, 2021)

easyrider said:


> This can be achieved without RAID and it can also be achieved automatically.


Are you talking about drive spanning ("achieving automatically")? That could work, but I can't think of any particular advantage over JBOD.

I did that (drive spanning) with my system drive a few years ago, but... I forget the details, but there was some issue with recovery if something went wrong. That wouldn't affect a sample drive, but I have the impression that Macs only let you do that grudgingly. Don't know about PCs.

I know what you're asking, since this is so riveting: why would he do that with a system drive?

My compliments on an excellent question. The answer is that this was in the early days of SSD, and - being cheap - I started off thinking I could get away with a smaller system drive. When it turned out I was quite wrong, I added a second small drive.

Ah, the ignorance of youth.


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## easyrider (Sep 23, 2021)

Nick Batzdorf said:


> Are you talking about drive spanning ("achieving automatically")? That could work, but I can't think of any particular advantage over JBOD.
> 
> I did that (drive spanning) with my system drive a few years ago, but... I forget the details, but there was some issue with recovery if something went wrong. That wouldn't affect a sample drive, but I have the impression that Macs only let you do that grudgingly. Don't know about PCs.
> 
> ...


No, Complete files are stored on each disk….each disk is pooled…you can remove and add disks….you can read the data on any of the pooled disks on any machine that can read NTFS.

You can choose which folders get written to what disk…






StableBit - The home of StableBit CloudDrive, StableBit DrivePool and the StableBit Scanner







stablebit.com


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## muziksculp (Sep 23, 2021)

gsilbers said:


> If you buy those new ssd m2 I think one will be more than enough.
> Prices are very low for the speed you are getting versus normal ssd.


Hi @gsilbers ,

Thanks for the helpful feedback. 

The Samsung brand has those, i.e. 870 QVO SATA III 2.5" SSD 4TB (560 MB/S Read Speed). 

Price is $350 - $400. 

Is this the SSD m2 you are recommending ?


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## Nick Batzdorf (Sep 23, 2021)

easyrider said:


> No, Complete files are stored on each disk….each disk is pooled…you can remove and add disks….you can read the data on any of the pooled disks on any machine that can read NTFS.
> 
> You can choose which folders get written to what disk…
> 
> ...


Ah. Well, that seems like several extra layers of complexity for zero benefit other than $29 being a lot of extra weight to carry around in your pocket.

(2900 pennies weighs quite a lot.)


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## easyrider (Sep 23, 2021)

Nick Batzdorf said:


> Ah. Well, that seems like several extra layers of complexity for zero benefit other than $29 being a lot of extra weight to carry around in your pocket.
> 
> (2900 pennies weighs quite a lot.)


Zero Benefit? Have you actually read what Stablebit drivepool does?
Have you read what it can do?

Managing multiple SSDs and libraries is complexity…

Managing a single 12TB SSD Drive is easy. Creating a pool takes 10 seconds…

Spitfire See ones Drive
Native Access sees one drive
My Backup Servers see one drive

To state that it offers no benefit is just nonsense.

Having multiple drives to manage is a waste of time. Seeing multiple drives in explorer is messy.


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## Nick Batzdorf (Sep 23, 2021)

easyrider said:


> Seeing multiple drives in explorer is messy


I would consider having to see Explorer messy in the first place. 

Anyway, please don't get mad at me - I'm really not trying to fight over something this trivial.


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## Nick Batzdorf (Sep 23, 2021)

Oh - by the way, that *is* drive spanning.

I'm not sure whether it's still in Disk Utility in macOS now that they've switched to a new disk format (APFS), but in the past it was built in.


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## easyrider (Sep 23, 2021)

Nick Batzdorf said:


> I would consider having to see Explorer messy in the first place.
> 
> Anyway, please don't get mad at me - I'm really not trying to fight over something this trivial.


I’m not getting mad….but suggesting there is zero benefit is just plain nonsense.


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## easyrider (Sep 23, 2021)

Nick Batzdorf said:


> Oh - by the way, that *is* drive spanning.
> 
> I'm not sure whether it's still in Disk Utility in macOS now that they've switched to a new disk format (APFS), but in the past it was built in.


No it’s not….plus the software I linked to is not available for MAC OS….


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## Symfoniq (Sep 23, 2021)

Nick Batzdorf said:


> Oh - by the way, that *is* drive spanning.
> 
> I'm not sure whether it's still in Disk Utility in macOS now that they've switched to a new disk format (APFS), but in the past it was built in.



Yes, macOS still supports JBOD ("Just a Bunch Of Disks") with APFS. Running it across several NVMe drives here.


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## Nick Batzdorf (Sep 23, 2021)

Symfoniq said:


> Yes, macOS still supports JBOD ("Just a Bunch Of Disks") with APFS. Running it across several NVMe drives here.


JBOD is multiple hard drives. Of course you can do that!

Drive spanning is combining them so they appear as one drive, i.e. one directory.

As I said, I won't do that again. It always felt like a kludge.


easyrider said:


> No it’s not….plus the software I linked to is not available for MAC OS….


Is too is too is too drive spanning.

And you are fighting.


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## easyrider (Sep 23, 2021)

Nick Batzdorf said:


> Is too is too is too drive spanning.
> 
> And you are fighting.


No I’m correcting your inaccuracies.

JBOD is spanning….remove a disk and the array is broken.

Stablebit Drive pool - Is not JBOD….you can remove a drive and the pool stays in tact.

Also the removed disk , the data on that disk can be read by any machine that can read NTFS…

No files are spanned across disks.


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## Symfoniq (Sep 23, 2021)

Nick Batzdorf said:


> JBOD is multiple hard drives. Of course you can do that!
> 
> Drive spanning is combining them so they appear as one drive, i.e. one directory.
> 
> ...


easyrider is correct. JBOD in also known as "spanning RAID". A JBOD set in macOS appears as a single volume.


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## easyrider (Sep 23, 2021)

Symfoniq said:


> easyrider is correct. JBOD in also known as "spanning RAID". A JBOD set in macOS appears as a single volume.


JBOD also means if you want to increase the capacity of the array say from 10TB to 14TB…..and the current data set is 9 TB, You need to move the Data if not backed up from the array , add the 4TB Drive, Rebuild the JBOD create the 14TB and then copy the 9 TB of data back to the JBOD.

Stablebit Drive pool you can add disks to the pool on the fly to increase storage without the need to move any data ,adding a drive takes around 1 second.

You can remove drives from the pool in seconds…

You can have pools within pools if you want…you can add USB drives to the pool….you can create SSD landing zones for the pool….you can set SSD as streaming drives in the pool and keep spinning disks archive drives within the pool….

So it’s not JBOD, Raid , Spanning on any level.

Also if you want to have cloud backup you can pool online storage providers into a pool…..

So say you have 4 Microsoft accounts in the Family….each with 1TB of cloud storage you can pools these accounts into one 4TB Cloud drive 

You can also pool multiple cloud providers into one large cloud pool





__





StableBit - The home of StableBit CloudDrive, StableBit DrivePool and the StableBit Scanner







stablebit.com


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## gsilbers (Sep 23, 2021)

muziksculp said:


> Hi @gsilbers ,
> 
> Thanks for the helpful feedback.
> 
> ...



well, 

I was referring to these




they are 3000 mb/per second instead of 500. 


its almost the same price as the sata drive ssd. 

you'll have to get thunderbolt case and connection to make the most of it. but still.


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## Manaberry (Sep 23, 2021)

What circumstances require having insanely fast SSD bandwidth for libraries? (genuine question here)
Sample streaming? Loading tons of projects a day with VST?


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## Dewdman42 (Sep 23, 2021)

I won't make any difference anyway. There are many other bottlenecks in the loading process that prevent even SATA3 speeds from happening, much less the faster SSD cards, etc.. You won't get any noticeable improvement whatsoever.. This is partially a limitation of the way the software is loading the samples as well as other hardware bottlenecks, etc..

Having super faster SSD transfer speeds is mainly only useful when loading games, because games often have SUPER HUGE files...and so higher bandwidth transfer can be sustained and appreciate some improvements in practical load times, but sample libraries are really hundreds or thousands of much smaller files being loaded...and the extra bandwidth of super fast SSD tech is simply not utilized. You can google all over the internet and find many sources of information explaining this and many people still fruitlessly attempting to spend money to try to load their "stuff" faster....but simply put..you will not be able to. They want to boot faster, but can't. They want to load things like sample libraries faster, but can't. They want to load apps faster, but can't. Some of them are gamers and can get their games with SUPER HUGE files loaded faster. Also perhaps some video editing scenarios.

There are only a couple of people on this forum that have built some extremely hot rodded systems with raid arrays and other things that claim they can load DAW projects faster...after they spent a lot of money on special hardware, etc.. but frankly I take it with a grain of salt.

But the OP asked a simple question, which is taking a typical normal system, should he split his libraries across multiple drives or a single drive...simple answer is..it won't matter at all other then making the management more difficult of where everything is.

Some of us have done some testing in this area, attempting to load larger projects into different DAW's and VePro...using SATA2, SATA3, raids, etc.. Sata3 will benchmark faster then Sata2 and raid can benchmark even much faster then that...yet the Daw projects still take about the same amount of time to load.

there is also a factor about the SSD latency, which could potentially be more of a factor for reducing sample library load times, look at that spec if anything...not that full bandwidth spec.

another consideration would be related, not to loading the project, but rather can you reduce or eliminate pre-loading of your samples...so that basically the entire project can playback through your sample instruments, 100% streamed! That would certainly be an interesting consideration for say using an M1 Mac as of today. I personally haven't done any comparative testing in this area, but I also suspect that the real indicator of whether you could get better SSD streaming of many software inst tracks would be more related to the SSD seek latency then the actual transfer speed. 

And to the point would this affect things differently if a sample library was spread across drives? hard to say, but I think unlikely to see a difference and especially for common case hardware and common case scenarios....people aren't going to see a difference. 

SSD was a huge jump forward in tech from HDD. Back in the HDD days we had to split things across different drives because the drives were WAYYYY slower then they are today and so they were the weak link, the bottleneck. In particular was the fact that an actual mechanical arm had to move from one part of the disk to another part of the disk to access different files. SSD's are based on no moving parts, no mechanical arm or spinning disk. They are orders of magnitude more efficient then HDD's. Today, typical SSD's are not the bottleneck, so investing a lot of time and money into trying to make them faster isn't going to clear the bottleneck, which now resides in other places.


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## Nick Batzdorf (Sep 24, 2021)

Symfoniq said:


> easyrider is correct. JBOD in also known as "spanning RAID". A JBOD set in macOS appears as a single volume.


I am always correct and easyrider is always wrong when he disagrees with me. So are you if you're taking his side of this violent debate on such an important subject.

JBOD = just a bunch of drives.

If someone is calling it a spanning RAID, that's a new term. It was called concatenation in Mac OS X when I did it, and everyone else called it drive spanning. But then OS X is now called macOS, so terms can change.

It is different from all the other types of RAID, because there's no inherent redundancy in the array of independent drives. And if JBOD is now an official term, it's been adopted, because originally it was just someone kidding around.


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## Nick Batzdorf (Sep 24, 2021)

> No I’m correcting your inaccuracies



Okay, I've had enough.

Sabres or foils, easyrider?


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## easyrider (Sep 24, 2021)

Nick Batzdorf said:


> Okay, I've had enough.
> 
> Sabres or foils, easyrider?


I’ll fight you with 100mm Faders….🤣


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## Nick Batzdorf (Sep 24, 2021)

If they're motorized, please make sure the fronts of their finger knobs (whatever they're called) are sensitive on the fronts. I insist upon being able to nudge the faders up.


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## JohnG (Sep 24, 2021)

Dewdman42 said:


> But the OP asked a simple question, which is taking a typical normal system, should he split his libraries across multiple drives or a single drive...simple answer is..it won't matter at all other then making the management more difficult of where everything is.


agree 100%.

Simple to use is better than even a 10% benefit, and I doubt it's as much as that anyway.


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## muziksculp (Sep 24, 2021)

JohnG said:


> agree 100%.
> 
> Simple to use is better than even a 10% benefit, and I doubt it's as much as that anyway.


OK.

I guess I will be fine performance wise by just installing EW Hollywood Orchestra OPUS on a single SSD drive, which will make it easier to manage.

Thanks for all the helpful feedback.


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## guerrax (Sep 30, 2021)

Very interesting subject. I planned to span my sections in different SSD too...and then I fall on this thread.


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## colony nofi (Oct 2, 2021)

We've done the tests for multiple studios.
For most people and most workflows, it is not worth spanning libraries across drives unless you need to for space reasons.


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## muziksculp (Oct 2, 2021)

colony nofi said:


> We've done the tests for multiple studios.
> For most people and most workflows, it is not worth spanning libraries across drives unless you need to for space reasons.


Good to know. 

THANKS


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## odod (Oct 2, 2021)

this happened with single SSD ..


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## colony nofi (Oct 3, 2021)

odod said:


> this happened with single SSD ..


How many voices / what software are you running / what size pre-load etc etc etc?
A normal SATA III SSD is able to stream a massive amount of voices, but it can at times not be enough depending on setup.


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## odod (Oct 3, 2021)

i only run Opus orchestrator .. one SSD of around 931Gb outta 1Tb


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## colony nofi (Oct 13, 2021)

@odod : I'm not sure exactly what is happening for you.
Without going into things in a tonnes of detail, its difficult to tell what is causing this error message. 

I doubt its SSD speed. It *could* be issues around how opus is reading off the drive. (This is not unprecedented... kontakt doesn't even scratch the surface of a drive in terms of using the speed that is avaliable to it due to some legacy code which is extremely inefficient.)

I would be interested to see you run some tests on the real-time I/O that is going on with your disk at the point this error appears.

Now - the following is full of assumptions, but its a useful thought experiment.

Lets look at audio bandwidth a little closer.

A 48k, 24bit mono (single channel) sample requires bandwidth of
48000*24 bits per second
= 1 152 000 bits/s
= 1 152 Kb/s
= 144000 Bytes/s (/8)
= 144KB/s
(double for stereo)

Thats an astonishingly SMALL amount of bandwidth compared to what a SATA III SSD is capable of.

Due to all sorts of technical limitations, the real world bandwidth for a decent SATA III SSD is around 550MB/s
550000KB/s

550000/144 = 3819 streams of 48k/24b audio can be read off a SATA III SSD before it tops out.

Now, there are some sample instruments that DO use very high amounts of voices at a time. You can cause some instruments to have extremely high voice counts with certain playing styles. However, I'm not sure I've seen a composition that requires this amount. I'm sure its been done.

(Note also that samplers pre-load some of the sample as well - often around .1 to .2 or so of a second, which allows more efficient reading of samples as required - giving a drive every opportunity to work at max speed)

Bottlenecks do surface though (kontakt cough cough) which means that they might only achieve 30% of these speeds. Still - its a large number of voices.

Therefore, it is usually only under extreme circumstances when spreading libraries across SSD's makes sense for real time performance. Even less so for when loading the cache on library load, as this is where many limitations of samplers I/O come into play.


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## iMovieShout (Oct 13, 2021)

I've 17TB spanned in RAID0 across x11 SSDs. 
This was done to make it easier to manage the file storage and file management. Before setting this up (way back in 2019) we compared speeds of a single SSD versus RAID0 and found a slight increase in read speed (an extra 5Mb/sec) but virtually no difference in write speed. Since then the RAID0 has been moved to a Dell fileserver with a fast storage manager and 2GB buffer memory, which has increased read speeds by another 20MB/sec and write by roughly 15MB/sec. Again, nothing really significant.
The SSDs used in the RAID0 are all Samsung EVO 860.

I also have a Samsung 860 PRO on my PC which is lightening fast - much faster than any sample library really needs.


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## colony nofi (Oct 13, 2021)

jpb007.uk said:


> I've 17TB spanned in RAID0 across x11 SSDs.
> This was done to make it easier to manage the file storage and file management. Before setting this up (way back in 2019) we compared speeds of a single SSD versus RAID0 and found a slight increase in read speed (an extra 5Mb/sec) but virtually no difference in write speed. Since then the RAID0 has been moved to a Dell fileserver with a fast storage manager and 2GB buffer memory, which has increased read speeds by another 20MB/sec and write by roughly 15MB/sec. Again, nothing really significant.
> The SSDs used in the RAID0 are all Samsung EVO 860.
> 
> I also have a Samsung 860 PRO on my PC which is lightening fast - much faster than any sample library really needs.


I've thought of doing this. Recently I went thru libraries and forced myself to fit those I use into around 6.5TB. Then grabbed the rocket 8TB NVMe SSD. I do a bunch of work on the road, so need to be able to grab my sample drive to take with me - something that is hard when spanning drives. In the studio, I still run a blackmagic doc which is full of 4TB SSD's, but i can't say exactly what is on it right now 

Know that feeling? At least the smaller drive is super organised and backed up...


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## odod (Oct 13, 2021)

colony nofi said:


> @odod : I'm not sure exactly what is happening for you.
> Without going into things in a tonnes of detail, its difficult to tell what is causing this error message.
> 
> I doubt its SSD speed. It *could* be issues around how opus is reading off the drive. (This is not unprecedented... kontakt doesn't even scratch the surface of a drive in terms of using the speed that is avaliable to it due to some legacy code which is extremely inefficient.)
> ...


Hi, yess indeed .. apparently i have solved the problem, the OPUS needs to get some tweaking so now it run smoother. 

thank you for the kind explanation here. 

cheers


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## ptram (Oct 15, 2021)

An empirical test with my ultraslow system (a 12-core Mac Pro 2013 with external SSD drives connected to the USB 3 ports).

My VSL library was divided between four drives, hosted in a drive docking station. Four drives sharing the same USB port.

Now, the main library is in a single box, connected to its own USB port. Synchron Player reports increases in reading from around 80 MB/s to around 115 MB/s.

The speed increase is perceptibly higher. I would say much higher. 

Paolo


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## holywilly (Oct 15, 2021)

ptram said:


> An empirical test with my ultraslow system (a 12-core Mac Pro 2013 with external SSD drives connected to the USB 3 ports).
> 
> My VSL library was divided between four drives, hosted in a drive docking station. Four drives sharing the same USB port.
> 
> ...


What ssd docking system are you using?


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## ptram (Oct 16, 2021)

holywilly said:


> What ssd docking system are you using?


This one:









4 Bay SATA to USB 3.0 External HDD Docking Station with duplicate / clone function multi bay


Thanks to four SATA ports and a stand-alone clone function, you can secure your files and data and duplicate them in a single operation.




www.orico.shop





Not elegant, but it has been working fine and reliabily.

EDIT: I have to add "not fast".

Paolo


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## Brian Cho (Oct 25, 2021)

Hello! Any thoughts on going from two 2Tb Samsung T5's to one 4tb external SSD? The one I'm looking at is the SanDisk 4TB Extreme Portable SSD - Up to 1050MB/s. This is mainly to streamline my setup.


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## odod (Oct 28, 2021)

you might want to use this instruction


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## heisenberg (Oct 28, 2021)

ptram said:


> This one:
> 
> 
> 
> ...


I am using a similar setup. Works well and allows you to eek out more life from your PC until the industry gets its shit together with faster CPU’s and current data bus protocols.

EDIT: Read more of above posts. I was wrongly assuming we were talking about Windows based machines.


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## Roland-Music (Nov 24, 2021)

Hey there, I'll also buy next time a second M.2 PCIe SSD, which speed is recommended for EW Opus, BBC SO, etc. *3.500 mb/per* *second* or the highest *6.500 mb/per* *second*, is there a *noticeable* difference in the loading time? The price is also nearly 2x higher....


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## Symfoniq (Nov 24, 2021)

Roland-Music said:


> Hey there, I'll also buy next time a second M.2 PCIe SSD, which speed is recommended for EW Opus, BBC SO, etc. *3.500 mb/per* *second* or the highest *6.500 mb/per* *second*, is there a *noticeable* difference in the loading time? The price is also nearly 2x higher....


The 3,500 MB/sec sustained read speed is _more_ than enough for samples. And you won't be able to hit 6,500 MB/sec read speeds anyway, unless your computer supports PCIe 4.0.


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## Crossroads (Nov 24, 2021)

Roland-Music said:


> Hey there, I'll also buy next time a second M.2 PCIe SSD, which speed is recommended for EW Opus, BBC SO, etc. *3.500 mb/per* *second* or the highest *6.500 mb/per* *second*, is there a *noticeable* difference in the loading time? The price is also nearly 2x higher....


It won't matter, at all. Loading time will not be increased as said earlier in this thread. My simple QVO SSD's don't even hit their maximum speed because the small file sizes you are loading up with samples, having faster drives than that will not increase sample loading speed.


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## pcarrilho (Nov 25, 2021)

Guys, if you want to think about SSD "performance" regarding streaming samples Libs from SSD, you must look at IOPS or 4K reads section of your benchmarks tests... 3500mb per second is about sequencing reading LARGE files (like video files with several giga bytes). Streaming samples is all about LOT of SMALL FILES processing.


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