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Is there any point getting Read up to 3200MB/s, Write up to 1500MB/s..Can samples utilize this?

Yes, your CPU would crap out much sooner than hitting those numbers while disk streaming. There's not too many benefits in going with NVMe SSDs for disk streaming, regular ones that go to 500-ish MB/s are plenty enough for hundreds of voices.
 
CPU Intel Core i7 7800X X-series (Base:3.50GHz, Turbo:4.00GHz / 8.25MB /

LGA2066 / 6 Core, Without Fan/Heatsink, Fully Unlocked)

+

Samsung 1TB SSD, 960 EVO Series, M.2 (PCIE), Read up to 3200MB/s,

Write up to 1500MB/s, Type 2280

No good? I'm actually waiting for this part on my new system I could probably change it if necessary.
 
it is an interesting question and I wonder myself.

a single instance of kontakt doesn't utilise the throughput of one SSD but what if you have 20 instances? in a "normal" scenario where you have e.g. one string lib on one drive, would the approx 400mb/s an EVO delivers in real live be enough or would it be better to RAID0 the Evos? the biggest issue I have with a RAID0 (which I have right now) is that i cannot scale/expand it. I could if i'd have a JBOD instead or 4 mounted discreet drives.
 
Note that for disk streaming, 500+ MB/s figures are not it. Those are sequential read times. DFD is all about random reads, and in this case, the figures are not that big (I think for 850 Evo they're about 100 MB/s for 4K random read, which is what DFD would most likely use - small chunks and lots of them). Still, should be plenty for hundreds of voices streamed from a single SSD.

You should've went with JBOD instead of RAID0. Or just nothing. JBOD has no redundancy (but neither does RAID0), so if one drive fails, the whole logical drive will fail. It's best to have individual SSDs then spread libraries over them manually... Then if either of them fails, at least you have all the others still working. And back things up to a big platter drive (or drives), perhaps, in case shit happens.
 
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EvilDragon said:
Note that for disk streaming, 500+ MB/s figures are not it. Those are sequential read times. DFD is all about random reads, and in this case, the figures are not that big (I think for 850 Evo they're about 100 MB/s for 4K random read, which is what DFD would most likely use - small chunks and lots of them). Still, should be plenty for hundreds of voices streamed from a single SSD.

You should've went with JBOD instead of RAID0. Or just nothing. JBOD has no redundancy (but neither does RAID0), so if one drive fails, the whole logical drive will fail. It's best to have individual SSDs then spread libraries over them manually... Then if either of them fails, at least you have all the others still working. And back things up to a big platter drive (or drives), perhaps, in case shit happens.
Click to expand...

i didn't go for JBOD, i'm only considering it, though i don't think i'll go for it. RAID0 sounds best (i have backups). some time ago i've tried to measure loading times in kontakt and ended up with about 100 mb/s. i was using a RAID0 with 4 discs and by the theory of random ready capping @100mb/s i wonder why this factor doesn't go up when you RAID 4 discs for performance. do you know if kontakt itself is limited to about 100 mb/s as well?
 
Initial loading time in Kontakt will not fully utilize your drive speed since it's entirely CPU bound (I'm not talking about background samples loading here). Please read this article, written by our resident @tack here: LINK


IMHO I don't think you're benefiting anything by using RAID0, really. You're definitely risking more if one of the drives goes bad, though.
 
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ED is right on this one (he usually is though). Raid 0 has almost no upside and it places a system at risk for failure. If for a moment, you think of your library being perfectly divided across two drives, then perhaps Raid 0 could be a theoretical benefit. But it is likely that the samples and such are small enough that single files are not spread across multiple drives (at least not discernible), nor will the library necessarily be evenly distributed. So in essence, the performance would indicate you are really using the equivalent of one disk at a time per sample it is pulling. Now with large homogenous video files and large scale backups, raid can certainly increase speeds (though using it for backups is notably questionable). Hope this helps a bit.
 
the only reason I use RAID 0 is if I have two low-capacity SSDs and I want to load a library onto them that won't fit on one or the other. The RAID configuration makes it far easier when the inevitable updates turn up.

That is the only reason I can think of that makes the risks of RAID 0 in any way appealing to us as composers trying to speed up our sample playbacks. The performance boost of RAID 0, while not zero, is negligible when put in the context of the way the whole computer operates.

If you still find RAID appealing, suggest you consider RAID 5 instead, since you don't lose everything if a single disk fails. RAID 5 requires at least three disks.

There are advantages and disadvantages to RAID 5: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/pr...ro/windows-2000-server/cc938485(v=technet.10)

Finally, I might mention the new Optane drives from Intel. That is one smoking fast unit. Using it for my main strings drive and it is remarkable.

[Full disclosure: My mom owns Intel]
 
my 2cent note about Raid0 vs non-raid.

If your working from home, I think it's best to just Raid0 everything and use online backup ($5/month). I say that because, what if someone steals your stuff? Your redundancy does nothing to help. Might as well just Raid0 or whatever (assuming the speed will help you! like dragon said, maybe ssd are fast enough w/o raid being needed)
 
jamwerks said:
Do we even need to backup our libraries? We can just re-download them in minutes...
Click to expand...
If you trust that the products you have licenses to will be available for ever more... backup everything that's important to you, don't rely on other people storing data you want on their computers.
 
EvilDragon said:
Initial loading time in Kontakt will not fully utilize your drive speed since it's entirely CPU bound (I'm not talking about background samples loading here). Please read this article, written by our resident @tack here: LINK

IMHO I don't think you're benefiting anything by using RAID0, really. You're definitely risking more if one of the drives goes bad, though.
Click to expand...
great resource, thanks for the pointer. i have a RAID0 since 2012 and so far no issues. yes, i risk more but then, i always have backups.
 
It's a waste of SSDs you could use for more storage space (i.e. more sample libs installed)! Especially if you still connect those SSDs through SATAIII... even a single SATA SSD is reaching the limits of SATAIII speeds, so there's not much you can gain speed-wise from a striped array of SSDs...
 
EvilDragon said:
It's a waste of SSDs you could use for more storage space (i.e. more sample libs installed)! Especially if you still connect those SSDs through SATAIII... even a single SATA SSD is reaching the limits of SATAIII speeds, so there's not much you can gain speed-wise from a striped array of SSDs...
Click to expand...

Agree. The only reason to use RAID is if you have a bunch of piddly-sized 128 or 256 GB SSDs and you want to combine them to accommodate a larger library.

Speed is not a reason, as @EvilDragon has noted several times.
 
EvilDragon said:
Yes, your CPU would crap out much sooner than hitting those numbers while disk streaming. There's not too many benefits in going with NVMe SSDs for disk streaming, regular ones that go to 500-ish MB/s are plenty enough for hundreds of voices.
Click to expand...

Ok, but what about load times? Wouldn't it be much faster to load, say Omnisphere Presets? That would be really helpful while searching for sounds.
 
Omni loads presets plenty fast on a regular 850 EVO over here, I don't think it's worth the extra price premium for NVME to be able to load presets just a little bit faster. Omni does background loading too, so this is not really a problem in the grand scheme of things. But sure, if you're chasing those milliseconds, by all means go with NVME for everything. :) Me, I just keep it where it's actually important, which is: as OS drive.
 
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