How big a factor is having a solid state hard drive?

Discussion in 'Audio Hardware' started by Diver110, Oct 23, 2018.

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  1. Diver110

    Diver110 Forum Resident Thread Starter

    Location:
    Camas
    Obviously for those using digital storage. I have been told it is important. FWIW, that is consistent with my experience, though I have never been able to keep everything else constant.
     
  2. Synthfreek

    Synthfreek I’m a ray of sunshine & bastion of positivity

    They are quieter and it makes a remarkable difference if your applications reside on one. Not a necessity if your media library is on an external hdd and you're wanting to switch it out...unless you want that extra quietness. I have 8TB of music so I haven't gone that route yet.
     
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  3. Spin Doctor

    Spin Doctor Forum Resident

    Solid State?!?!?!? Tubes man, Tubes...
     
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  4. Carrman

    Carrman Forum Resident

    Location:
    Toronto
    On a computer, if you install an SSD for your main system drive, you will have a very fast, snappy computer. Boots up in 30 seconds, programs open in much less time, copying files go extremely fast.
    Not necessary, but nice.

    For your external, secondary or media drives, you won't see much of a difference when playing media files except for the small amount of noise HDD's produce, as said above.

    The other thing to consider is that SSD have a limited lifespan so it's important to have a back up on a spinning disk. When an SSD dies, it really dies.
     
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  5. PhilBiker

    PhilBiker sh.tv member number 666

    Location:
    Northern VA, USA
    Here's your vacuum tube based storage.... 16K probably.

    [​IMG]
     
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  6. DyersEve726

    DyersEve726 Schmo Diggy

    Location:
    Michigan, USA
    This topic has come up a lot lately. It's absolutely an awesome investment as a boot drive. You'll never go back to HDDs again.
     
  7. Spin Doctor

    Spin Doctor Forum Resident

    I would think not having moving parts makes this a sort of no-brainier. I've never heard of a SSD dying.
     
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  8. Grant

    Grant Life is a rock, but the radio rolled me!

    A SSD has a longer life than an HDD. It is also more shock resistant, as there are no moving parts.

    With an SSD, remember to enable ACHI to improve speed
    Do not defrag a SSD. It is useless to do so, and uses up read/write cycles that shorten its life
    It's better to get a larger SSD for reasons of space allocation. Like HDD, SSD needs room to function at its best.
    I advise not putting your page/swap file on your SSD. If you have Windows 10, just let Windows manage all of this.
    Whatever type of drive you use, back up everything. That should go without saying.
    Mount the SSD in a cool spot in the computer. As with any RAM, heat will slow it down.

    If you have a motherboard that supports it, consider an M.2 drive. It's even faster, and, depending on your motherboard and drive type, it may not take up a SATA slot.

    The only real reason to use an HDD today is for cheaper storage space. Where a, say 8TB HDD costs around $150 today, an 8TB SSD is still prohibitively expensive. If you use an SSD for your boot drive, and have lots of media, store your media on an HDD, as they are cheaper and offer more space. For my music, a 5400 RPM internal drive has served me well for many years, with external backups.

    Brand? I would say that the absolute most reliable brand is Samsung, and they made the first consumer SSD drive. San Disk seems to be good, too. I understand ven Intel makes a good SSD. There's Western Digital, Crucial, Kingston, Adata, and many others. I just bought an Adata that should be here tomorrow from Newegg. I've heard good things about them, so I hope it serves well.
     
    Last edited: Oct 23, 2018
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  9. Dennis0675

    Dennis0675 Hyperactive!

    Location:
    Ohio
    It's happened to me and it didn't very long. That may have been one of the first generations of the SSD (it was years ago) but it only had the operating system and crashed hard after a couple months.
     
  10. DyersEve726

    DyersEve726 Schmo Diggy

    Location:
    Michigan, USA
    I had an early generation SSD die on me early also. I feel like they've gotten WAY better and more reliable since then.
     
  11. Dennis0675

    Dennis0675 Hyperactive!

    Location:
    Ohio
    yea, I've never stopped using them and haven't had any problems since then.
     
  12. gakerty

    gakerty Forum Resident

    Location:
    California
    I use SSD for my boot drives (this decreases boot time significantly), HDD for my audio/video which I also stream from. No issues there at all, can't see why an SSD would improve on that. Wouldn't hurt though, just costs more for the same amount of space.
     
    Grant likes this.
  13. Grant

    Grant Life is a rock, but the radio rolled me!

    If you read the comments on failed SSDs on Amazon or whatever, you kind of wonder about that. But, we also don't know what they are doing with their machines or how they configured them. For all we know, their failed SSDs could be operator error.
     
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  14. DyersEve726

    DyersEve726 Schmo Diggy

    Location:
    Michigan, USA
    One thing I always try and remember when reading reviews is that someone is MUCH more likely to feel the need to write a review if they get a faulty product than they are if they get one that works, especially with things like SSDs. I have never written a review on one, and I've probably purchased 10+ in my life. I don't often write reviews on things I just expect to work when they just work.
     
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  15. HDOM

    HDOM Well-Known Member

    Usb memory, is nice cheaper than ssd
     
  16. Grant

    Grant Life is a rock, but the radio rolled me!

    Good point. People who are unhappy are always in the minority, but have the loudest voice. And, again, we don't know what these people with failed SSDs may have done.
     
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  17. Grant

    Grant Life is a rock, but the radio rolled me!

    Have you read the thread to know what we are talking about? If you had, you would realize that your post makes no sense, logically or otherwise. USB will not be faster than an SSD.
     
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  18. HDOM

    HDOM Well-Known Member

    Ok is about fast, then forget what i wrote!
     
  19. DyersEve726

    DyersEve726 Schmo Diggy

    Location:
    Michigan, USA
    You can never rule out the idiot factor, lol.
     
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  20. Mike-48

    Mike-48 A shadow of my former self

    Location:
    Portland, Oregon
    From your question, I infer you don't mean as a boot drive (where an SSD is way faster and really worth it), but rather, for music-file storage. I haven't compared directly, but I use spinning drives in my NAS and get outstanding sound. SSDs are too expensive right now to replace spinning drives for mass storage, like a music library. That probably will change, but it's not here yet.

    HTH
     
  21. Grant

    Grant Life is a rock, but the radio rolled me!

    Those days are closer than you think. There are always sales on SSDs. You could probably get a 2TB drive for less than $300 if you look around, or just wait a bit longer.
     
    Aftermath likes this.
  22. Grant

    Grant Life is a rock, but the radio rolled me!

    I just installed an ADATA SU650 480GB SSD as my new boot drive. It took me all of 40 minutes from start to finish.

    I simply put the SSD in a USB drive dock I bought last year, opened up my 2013 Acronis True Image WD Edition i've had spinning on my hard drive for years, and cloned my Windows 10 boot drive to the SSD. Then, I just opened up the computer, replaced the WD drive with the new SSD, booted it up, and everything works great! It's faster. Since i'm running an old motherboard with a duo core chip, it's not that fast, but it is snappier! And, it has a MTBF of 2,000,000 hours, and a three-year warranty for $65 at Newegg. Not bad! And, anyone can do it!
     
  23. harby

    harby Forum Resident

    Location:
    Portland, OR, USA
    For actually storing a music library, SSD is not necessary, and is 10x the price. A standard hard drive can read a whole 50MB FLAC file in one second, and a hard-drive based portable player could do the same with MP3 15 years ago and turn off the drive for the rest of the song.
     
    Grant likes this.
  24. frummox

    frummox Forum Resident

    Location:
    New York
    I replaced all 4 drives in my Mac Pro tower with SSDs and I would never go back. I did read that when SSD's die they do so abruptly as opposed to gradually like old drives. Might be an issue if data recovery becomes an issue.
     
  25. Mike-48

    Mike-48 A shadow of my former self

    Location:
    Portland, Oregon
    Yes, you are right that prices have come down a lot. On the other hand, I've got four reliable 3Tb conventional drives in a NAS -- total cost, about $430. Since they are in RAID, any single disk failure is not a problem.

    Another thing to consider: the newer, cheaper SSD use NAND technology, like flash drives. They are cheaper, but said to be considerably slower and less reliable than previous SSD. I don't claim to be an expert in this, but I'd recommend that anyone buying look into it.
     
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