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Best Use Of Two M.2 SSD's

DaddyO

DaddyO

Senior Member
As part of a recent computer rebuild I added two SSD's:

1. Samsung 860 Evo M.2 SATA
2. Samsung 970 Evo Plus M.2 NVMe (PCIe)

Currently I boot off the Samsung 860 Evo regular SATA SSD.

I want to use one of the two M.2's as a boot/installed programs drive that will also host Microsoft OneDrive files and a few other things.

I want to use the other as a DAW drive that will host samples.

Knowing that the NVMe drive is faster than the SATA, what is the best use of the two drives? Which should I use as boot and which as sample host?
Click to read more...
 
Seeing how a SATA SSD has a maximum speed of 600 Mb per second and M.2 PCIe cards (like your Samsung 970) can get up to 3.5 GB per second... I feel the best bang for the buck for a composer is to put the libraries that are slowest to load on the M.2s. A regular SATA SSD is fine for a boot drive.

I'm sure a lot of computer users want the power and the hyper-speed on the boot drive, but I think composers get more benefit from M.2 s as sample drives. As I only have two M.2 slots on my computer, I want to save them for this purpose.
 
Thanks for the comment, Tiger.

So if I understand you correctly, you recommend I continue to use my current (regular) SATA boot drive, use the 600mb/sec SATA M.2 for my fastest load libraries, and the 3.5gb/sec NVMe M.2 for my slowest loading libraries.

Is there no significant benefit for programs like Cubase, Dorico, VE Pro, MIR Pro, VI Pro, and Synchron Player to run off an M.2 SSD? I guess I was making the assumption that the key DAW programs I run would indeed benefit from using one of the M.2's as a boot/installed programs drive. Am I wrong?

edited to add: I should mention that as of now all my sample libraries total about 600 GB.
 
DaddyO said:
Thanks for the comment, Tiger.

So if I understand you correctly, you recommend I continue to use my current (regular) SATA boot drive, use the 600mb/sec SATA M.2 for my fastest load libraries, and the 3.5gb/sec NVMe M.2 for my slowest loading libraries.

Is there no significant benefit for programs like Cubase, Dorico, VE Pro, MIR Pro, VI Pro, and Synchron Player to run off an M.2 SSD? I guess I was making the assumption that the key DAW programs I run would indeed benefit from using one of the M.2's as a boot/installed programs drive. Am I wrong?

edited to add: I should mention that as of now all my sample libraries total about 600 GB.
Click to expand...
Others may be able to answer this question better than me. I don't consider myself an expert. But as per Jim Roseberry of (broken link removed)

OS drive:
SSD as OS drive is certainly nice... but not an absolute necessity (conventional HD is fine).
With a SSD, the machine boots quicker, apps open quicker, and navigating the OS is a little more "snappy".

Samples Drive:
Disk-streaming sample libraries is where SSD really shines.
2.5" SSDs sustain over 500MB/Sec (three times the speed of a conventional HD).
PCIe SSDs sustain 2600MB/Sec (fourteen times the speed of a conventional HD).

m.2 Ultra SSD:
Disk-streaming sample libraries is where SSD really shines.
m.2 Ultra SSDs use 4 PCIe lanes and sustain 3200-3500MB/Sec (seventeen times the speed of conventional HD). If pushing the limits with disk-streaming sample libraries, m.2 Ultra will yield absolute maximum polyphony.
 
Synetos said:
What about the recording drive? Would that be best on m.2 Ultra?
Click to expand...
Per Jim R regarding the Audio Drive:
A conventional HD can sustain over 100 solid/contiguous 24Bit/44.1k tracks of audio.
No need for SSD as Audio drive... (unless you're working at higher sample-rates)

Based on his advice I got a regular 7200 HD to put my Cubase files.

But, obviously if money is no object and you have the drives, you can make everything an SSD. But it's a question of where you can spend your money to get the greatest increase in speed and power. It's not just drives--it's the power of the CPU, number of cores and processing threads, amount of RAM, etc.
 
I have about 14TB in my DAW, all SSD. I have not purchased an m.2 drive and thought maybe it would be good for tracking live audio. I have not needed anything more than I have, but I am always tweaking my DAW

SSD run cooler and quieter, which is why that is all i have in my DAW.

I record at 24/48 or 96k.
 
So it appears that everyone is saying the difference of an M.2 SSD, most particularly a PCIe SSD, over a non-M.2 SATA SSD is negligable when it comes to OS and the running of programs like Cubase, Dorico, VSL software, etc.

That helps to have one's assumptions, ahem, clarified, or shall we say, contradicted. That's how we learn!

Thanks all.
 
Synetos said:
What about the recording drive? Would that be best on m.2 Ultra?
Click to expand...

As I don't record as much audio as I once did, I may have answered this incorrectly. I keep my Cubase data files in a regular hard drive, but maybe SSDs would be "better" for recording audio. I really don't know. But I have been recording audio on regular hard drives for decades, with no problems.

Let me be clear: I am not an expert on these things. I've just been talking over the phone about all these issues with Jim Roseberry as he is building my new computer. His entire career and business has been devoted to building PCs for composers, touring musicians, institutions, etc. For example, he designed and built all the computers Sweetwater sold for the first several years.

Like a lot of people my instinct is that if I bought something just a little faster or more powerful (ie more expensive) everything will work better. But Jim would say, no you don't need to get that fan--the one you have is more than sufficient. That particular graphics card will do what you want to do. On the other hand, he said there were some things I absolutely needed to get, like Windows Pro. If I was rich, of course I would have got the Intel i9 9900k with 8 cores and 16 processing threads at 5 Ghz. But as a non-pro, the processor I got will more than handle my needs. I am sure of that, because the computer I have now does that.

There's no reason anybody can't use SSDs on all their drives. It will definitely increase their speed. But my budget is limited, and Jim has been telling me how to make my dollars take me as far as possible. I'm leaning on his advice, as it is based on so much experience. Jim is a musician himself.

But I'm sure there are others on this forum who have contrasting needs (ie running massive templates) so need a different setup from me.
 
Yeah Studio CAT actually knows the difference between live rigs and recording/editing rigs too.
 
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