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Looking for a portable 4tb SSD for the road.

ag75

Senior Member
Would this drive work for hosting samples?

Samsung 860 QVO 4 TB Internal SSD - 2.5" - MZ-76Q4T0B - SATA 6Gb/

amazon has a pretty good deal on them at the moment.

Any other suggestions? I have 4 1tb drives currently and I’m tired of dragging them all over the county. 🤪
 
Yes, because there are no spindles. An HDD can only read one thing at a time. An SSD is only limited by the connection speed with a potential jam at the bus, from what I understand. More drives may be better, but only if you have multiple busses. And that would depend on you laptop setup. I'm thinking a 4TB drive into a single USB port would be the same as 4 1TB drives running through a hub and plugged into the same port.

The QVO's have a slower write speed than the EVOs, but with the same read speed. A sample library only needs to be read, so there is no read difference.
 
Yes, because there are no spindles. An HDD can only read one thing at a time. An SSD is only limited by the connection speed with a potential jam at the bus, from what I understand. More drives may be better, but only if you have multiple busses. And that would depend on you laptop setup. I'm thinking a 4TB drive into a single USB port would be the same as 4 1TB drives running through a hub and plugged into the same port.

The QVO's have a slower write speed than the EVOs, but with the same read speed. A sample library only needs to be read, so there is no read difference.
Thanks for this. Most helpful!
 
Here's https://www.amazon.com/Shadow-USB-C-Rugged-Portable-Solid/dp/B078TMW9PX/ref=sr_1_11?keywords=4tb+ssd+external&qid=1576999244&s=electronics&sr=1-11 (one other option), higher price but built for travel.
 
When you can buy an enclosure for $10 and a case for about the same, not sure that much more is worth it.
 
Sorry dzilizzi, not working like that, a HDD got few readings heads, depends on the number of trays ...
Is it one head per platter but only one reads at a time?
They are working on or maybe even finished with designs that allow multiple simultaneous read heads!
Not sure if that is aimed at reducing latency or increasing throughput. That will depend on whether they stripe the data across multiple platters or not.

SSDs have such great throughput partly because the data is written in a sort of RAID type style so each file is written across multiple channels.
That's why smaller capacity drives usually have lower maximum throughput, this due to them having fewer discrete banks of NAND which reduces the number of channels available for data to be stored on.
 
Sorry dzilizzi, not working like that, a HDD got few readings heads, depends on the number of trays ...
But from what I understand, they all move together. They don't move separately, which is what you need for multi access.

SSD will access more than one bit at a time. Not sure how much more, but I understand it is more.
 
I think the ones I buy are only single read at a time, I'm sure. :)
I did say earlier that I’m not sure that they are on the market yet.
When they do I suspect we will be looking at a large premium.

Added.
Two companies have demoed them but nothing released yet.
As I suspected these will be more for data centre.
500GBs isn’t too bad for a hard drive but latency is still rubbish compared to an SSD.
 
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I did say earlier that I’m not sure that they are on the market yet.
When they do I suspect we will be looking at a large premium.

Added.
Two companies have demoed them but nothing released yet.
As I suspected these will be more for data centre.
500GBs isn’t too bad for a hard drive but latency is still rubbish compared to an SSD.

Multiple or single read, the benefit is not SO significant. Reading is already very very speedy, the thing is the bridge, the way those readings are processed .
Very fast drive on a bad bridge/process are even slower than a slow HD with a good bridge !
a balance should be found .

But, a ssd is still faster, no question about it.

The thing is more what YOU are waiting from a HD : 10 seconds for a Kontakt patch or 25 seconds ?
4 mn for a full orchestral environment or 7 mn ? ;)

Is it really important ?
 
Multiple or single read, the benefit is not SO significant. Reading is already very very speedy, the thing is the bridge, the way those readings are processed .
Very fast drive on a bad bridge/process are even slower than a slow HD with a good bridge !
The manufacturers are claiming very significant gains but these are niche future products for data centres so not something to interest DAW users.
 
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