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. Grant

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

    I was under the impression that we were talking about internal SSD drives that run on the SATA bus. A couple of you are bringing up (portable?) SSDs that are USB3 or USB-C compatible? Is that right?

    An advantage of SSD is that there is no seek time. Your only bottleneck is the whatever bus it's connected to, and the drive's temperature. Which, BTW, brings me to...

    My SSD runs from about 45C to 54C. That's 20 C hotter than my HDDs! I wonder why? I don't have it near any heat sources in the case. I'm considering adding a front case fan to see if it makes a difference.
     
  2. GLYNSTYLER

    GLYNSTYLER Forum Resident

    Location:
    NEW ORLEANS
    I'm playing 24/96 flac files (mostly from HDTracks) through an OPPO UDP-205. The files are on a 2TB WD Passport going into the OPPO via USB. During playback many tracks will start skipping forward and back for seconds at a time which causes a stuttering, jumbled sound. I assumed it was because of the disc drive, so I just ordered a Samsung EVO 2TB SSD. Is this logical?
     
  3. Tim S

    Tim S Senior Member

    Location:
    East Tennessee
    I do think it is the drive - mostly because it's actually skipping BACKWARD at times - lots of other system processes can at times cause audio to skip, but not backward.

    24/96 audio files are not any kind of drain on a computer or a standard usb drive, so there's no need to replace usb with ssd.
     
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  4. mavisgold

    mavisgold Senior Member

    Location:
    bellingham wa
    :unhunh:

    let us know the results.
     
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  5. GLYNSTYLER

    GLYNSTYLER Forum Resident

    Location:
    NEW ORLEANS
    I will. Thanks guys!
     
  6. Ham Sandwich

    Ham Sandwich Senior Member

    Location:
    Sherwood, OR, USA
    Some portable spinning drives like to go into power saving mode more aggressively than others. In power saving mode the drive stops spinning. Takes time to get the drive spinning back up again when that happens.

    I'd do an experiment and see if that skipping only happens during long tracks (say 10 minutes per track). Then try playing an album with lots of short tracks (say 3 minutes or so) and see if those don't have the skipping problem. The hypothesis being that the long tracks are long enough to allow the drive to go into power saving mode before reading the next track, and the shorter tracks are short enough that the drive stays spinning and is all ready to read data when told to read the next track.

    If that's the problem then a solid state drive would (should) solve that.
     
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  7. Michael

    Michael I LOVE WIDE S-T-E-R-E-O!

    speed in loading is one of them...
     
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  8. Ponzio

    Ponzio Forum Resident

    Location:
    19462
    Stupid question here.

    I'm assuming those files/tracks are in folders? I realize that Oppo is more advanced than my Yamaha Avantage AVR's when it comes to playing/recognizing digital files on USB data source(s) but I also do know that unless I had the files/tracks in a folder based structure and the USB flash drive formatted in FAT32, they wouldn't play properly.

    Per my "issue" notes for my BDP-105 you should not have any problems with a FAT, FAT32, exFAT, and NTFS formatted drive(s). But I'd be interested to know if the same problem occurs if you put, lets say, 20 of those 24/96 HDTracks FLAC files in a folder on a USB stick/flash drive.
     
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  9. Grant

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

    I think it may have more to do with the transfer rate and buffering.
     
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  10. Grant

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

    A USB2 should be more than enough for music transfer. Today, the standard has been upped to USB3 and USB-C, so there should be no problem. Even USB1 was adequate back in the day.

    Internal SSDs are powered by a SATA bus, so it is at the mercy of your motherboard chipset. If you have a very old motherboard that is about ten years old, an SSD won't offer a big speed improvement, but it should be more stable than an HDD.
     
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  11. h46e55x

    h46e55x What if they believe you?

    Location:
    Gitmo Nation West
    SSDs die all the time.

    In fact the timeline to failure tends to be the same as spinning discs. Even though SSDs have a better MTBF they get used more aggressively and expire on similar timelines.

    However when an SSD fails, it's game over. Your not going to recover anything. And if one SSD in a RAID fails get ready for them all to fail.

    Ain't computers fun?

    That said real unpredictable HD failures are rare. Most of the time end users have been ignoring the warning signs (including a bios or RAID controller message telling you to replace your failing disc!) for weeks if not months.
     
  12. GLYNSTYLER

    GLYNSTYLER Forum Resident

    Location:
    NEW ORLEANS
    Yes, the tracks are in folders. I'll get the SSD tomorrow from Amazon. It's a Samsung 860 Evo 2TB, with Sabrent enclosure.
     
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  13. Grant

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

    I haven't seen a modern SSD die yet. I would say that if one does go belly up, it's because the user didn't leave enough space on the drive or ran a defragger on it. Both are a no-no with SSDs.

    Very true. That is why you back up your stuff. Oh, wait...most people don't ever back up anything and just expect their stuff to be there until the end of time.

    I love 'em!

    With HDD, there are always warning signs. But, here's the kicker: the longer your hard drive lasts, the better its chances of a long life are, provided the thing is properly maintained. If it gets through the first three months, all good. If it gets through the first year, even better! It stands a good chance of exceeding it's warranty.

    Also, many people like to turn off their computers at night. I say leave the thing on. My experience is that a hard drive lasts much, much longer if you just leave it powered up all the time.
     
  14. GLYNSTYLER

    GLYNSTYLER Forum Resident

    Location:
    NEW ORLEANS
    I don't think it's the track length causing it. For example, side-long Yes tracks aren't skittering. A plausible thought, though. Thank you.
     
  15. Ponzio

    Ponzio Forum Resident

    Location:
    19462
    Cool. That should also resolve any spin-up time issues too. Good luck.
     
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  16. mavisgold

    mavisgold Senior Member

    Location:
    bellingham wa
    Backblaze Drive Stats: 2018 Hard Drive Failure Rates


    [​IMG]

    French Fries 282 months ago


    I have a server at home which runs a small SSD for a boot drive and a 500GB Seagate desktop hard drive. It is 11 years old and has over 80,000 hours of runtime and it still runs 24/7. The drive still works so I'd see it as a waste to replace it but as stated in this article higher density drives are not too expensive.

    Blackspots4 months ago


    I use these Backblaze reports as a guide in buying old fashioned platter drives. Of course, these days, I buy solid state drives, and with RAM storage prices dropping (Samsung is intentionally flooding the market to bring down prices), it'll only make more sense to buy these than platter drives.

    Samsung SSD drives also have to longest write life compared to others, one website did a write test to several models and brands, the Samsung 840 Pro (or Evo) was still writing after nearly 1500TB written. Intel died first at around 600TB written.
     
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  17. I play most of my music either CD's ripped to FLAC or Hi Res got from HDTracks or DSD from my ripped SACD's from SSD's, I have two 500 Gig Toshiba SSD's and one Kingston 500 Gig SSD and the three of them have been working flawlessly for three years. I use a Sony UBP X-800 UHD BD player to play my music files and except for the lack of gapless playing I couldn't be happier, track access speed is insanely fast and never had a sound cut off. I also have 1 Tb Samsung EVO SSD on my Toshiba laptop.
     
  18. Grant

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

    I avoid Seagate these days, even though I have two very, very reliable, long-time Seagate external drives. Western Digital has been very good to me.
     
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  19. Ponzio

    Ponzio Forum Resident

    Location:
    19462
    I'd have to agree. I've owned both over the years and the Seagate's fail at a much faster rate than the WD's. Another oddity with Seagate's is I have 2 external 4-TB units, same model (SRD001F1), and one has a significant faster transfer/copy rate than the other, no matter which USB port I use on my PC.
     
  20. Grant

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

    Segates are recognized faster. There is a technical reason for this but I forgot what it is. Anyway, I always notice that Seagate drives are always at least ten dollars cheaper than Western Digital wherever I shop. That tells me something.
     
  21. Matt Richardson

    Matt Richardson Forum Resident

    Location:
    Suburban Chicago
    Also very true for Yelp reviews, I think.
     
  22. Yost

    Yost “It’s only impossible until it’s not”

    I replaced a 750GB HDD with a 1TB SSD in my laptop because I didn’t have any room left for my growing iTunes library. This made it blazing fast. From sleep to fully operational in 4 seconds. Also scrolling through my iTunes library in album view is completely smooth and instantaneous now, while it was seriously lagging behind when using a HDD. I’ll never want to go back.
     
  23. GLYNSTYLER

    GLYNSTYLER Forum Resident

    Location:
    NEW ORLEANS
    It looks like the SSD solved my problem. The tracks that were skipping are now playing perfectly. Too bad SSD's are so expensive!
     
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  24. Brian Hoffman

    Brian Hoffman Obsessive fanatic extraordinaire

    Location:
    Cincinnati, Ohio
    I'm not sure what the rules are on posting links to 3rd party sites, but there are some websites out there that aggregate "slick deals" on all sorts of items. You can regularly see good quality SSDs on such sites at a pretty good price point.
     
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  25. Yost

    Yost “It’s only impossible until it’s not”

    BTW, based on online reviews (and price) I bought a Crucial SSD.
     
    Brian Hoffman likes this.
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