paul6891 Posted November 19, 2011 Share Posted November 19, 2011 Hi guys, getting a new ssd card, and I would like some opinions. It is going to be 120Gb. so there's lion that takes up 7Gb of space. Logic studio is 9 Gb. Then there are all the extras. I only really have interest in the drum loops. I have a few sample cd/dvds I have spectrasonics omnisphere, which is 50Gb. Then there are the odd few smaller synths, sylenth etc. I was wondering, if you were me, would you try to put everything onto the SSD? Would it make a big difference to the performance of my machine, or would I be better off putting the loops/samples etc on another hard drive? I cant remember from my omnisphere installation whether it is possible to install the program on one hard drive, and all the content on another. For the time being, I'll probably be using an external hard drive as my second, as the price of hard drives is ridiculous due to the Thailand floods. Any help, or input would be greatly appreciated! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
paul6891 Posted November 19, 2011 Author Share Posted November 19, 2011 or would I be better off getting 2 separate smaller SSDs and putting the os/logic on one, and samples on the other? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
n6smith Posted November 19, 2011 Share Posted November 19, 2011 (edited) I currently do not see any real benefits of SSD over FW800 given the cost/GB ratio... and the fact that long term use/reliability of SSDs is, as of now, unknown.. For most Audio uses, FW800 is plenty fast enough... Plus.. with the advent of cheaper Thunderbolt drives/hubs coming in the next six months or so.. I'm not sure SSDs are a wise investment to make at this point in time. (Typo corrected...) Edited November 19, 2011 by n6smith Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jordi Torres Posted November 19, 2011 Share Posted November 19, 2011 with the advert of cheaper Thunderbolt drives/hubs coming in the next six months or so.. Can you share this advert? Where did you see it? A magazine? TV? Thanks, J. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
n6smith Posted November 19, 2011 Share Posted November 19, 2011 with the advert of cheaper Thunderbolt drives/hubs coming in the next six months or so.. Can you share this advert? Where did you see it? A magazine? TV? Thanks, J. LOL.. Typo corrected in original post! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
paul6891 Posted November 19, 2011 Author Share Posted November 19, 2011 Thunderbolt isn't an option for me unfortunately as my CPU doesnt support it. With the Thailand floods, there are barely any other hard drives on the market, and those that are available are 2 or 3 times the price what they would normally be. It should take months before prices are somewhat reasonable again. I think that if there was ever a time to justify buying a SSD, now would be it. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
n6smith Posted November 19, 2011 Share Posted November 19, 2011 While I agree the price of HDs has increased in the last month or so, there are still some great bargains out there if you take the time to look see... For example, I picked up 2 x 7200rpm 1.5TB FW800 Glyphs for $209 no tax/no shipping each... last week on Amazon... which, given their normal price.. is a great deal when you also take into account the Glyph recovery warranty that's included. Even with the recent price hikes.. FW800 drives are still better value for money in terms of dollar per GB compared to SSDs... and as I said, imho... for almost every Audio use, FW800's fit the bill perfectly without having to pay the premium for SSDs.. But as always, the choice and decision is yours.. Just don't believe all the hype you read about SSDs... They have their own issues and even worse ones possibly, later on in life.. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
paul6891 Posted November 19, 2011 Author Share Posted November 19, 2011 How does an external hard drive compare with an internal hard drive Nigel? Given the current prices, I had planned on putting the OS, apps and my omnisphere library on the ssd, and use an external hard drive for recording to. I dont know if you'd be asking for trouble if you were to buy an external and convert it into an internal?! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
n6smith Posted November 20, 2011 Share Posted November 20, 2011 Hi Paul, I think you will find that most users here would never recommend using your system drive for anything other than your OS system files and apps. Everything else is better off located on an external FW800 drive if possible... An SSD will speed up your start up time and how fast apps will load but.. if you want to replace your system HD with a SSD then you will also want to install everything else.. samples.. loops etc.. onto an external drive... simply because of the HD space they take up... given how expensive SSD's are per GB of storage. My external FW800 HDs are plenty fast enough for streaming samples and loops without an issue. My internal HD, is plenty fast enough too to do that.. if that is all it was doing.. but when you start streaming multiple audio files from one drive and running the OS and apps from that same drive, you are asking for a few of the good old "Your Hard Drive was too slow" kind of msgs in Logic.. so I keep my internal System drive for just the OS and apps and everything else resides on various external HDs.. and I can't recall the last time I saw a "HD too slow" msg to be honest... Hope that makes sense? Maybe others here would like to add their own opinions and experiences regarding this.. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
paul6891 Posted November 20, 2011 Author Share Posted November 20, 2011 Thats for your input, it makes perfect sense. I had planned on putting all the loops on a separate drive, but with the cost of hard drives, I though that I'd wait a couple of months. this would possibly be short term Another thing that I had contemplated was getting a cheap(ish)/small 16/32GB SSD just for the OS/Logic and then keeping samples on the other SSD. I have a USB 2.0 500Gb external hard drive which will suffice for saving songs etc for the time being. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
n6smith Posted November 20, 2011 Share Posted November 20, 2011 I think if I were going to buy a SSD I'd buy just one for the OS only and then use either an internal SATA drive for samples or, as I said earlier.. an external FW800. USB2 externals are really not that fast when it comes to sample streaming.. so be warned about the possibility of 'slow drive' errors if you push Logic a bit... However, I know what you mean by keeping costs down.. so whatever works best for you.. As an aside.. and though this won't apply to you, one thing I discovered and have used to my advantage, is that when HD prices were at an all time low this summer.. I picked up several of the Seagate GoFlex 7200 rpm 2TB external USB2 HDs for about $70 each. These are the ones where you can remove the USB2 base and plug in a SATA , USB3 or FW800 connecter base instead. I then grabbed some of the Seagate GoFlex FW800 adaptors for $20 each off of Ebay and converted them all over to FW800 and they fly! $90 for a 7200rpm 2TB FW800 External Drive.. was a great deal... Hopefully HD prices will drop again in the near future.. but I have a feeling it's going to be a while... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Eric Cardenas Posted November 20, 2011 Share Posted November 20, 2011 Once you go SSD you'll never go back! I have all my macs on LSD... I mean SSD. The laptop uses an optibay, letting me use a secondary hard drive instead of the optical disk reader. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
fisherking Posted November 20, 2011 Share Posted November 20, 2011 i don't record (except a rare vocal demo) on my macbook, i just mix on it. am moving to a new macbook pro next week, and have decided to get an ssd for it; so will be working from the internal drive... am looking forward to it (am currently using a 5400rpm drive); getting disk slow errors frequently. i want everything self-contained, for travel, etc. we'll see how it goes with a faster processor and the SSD... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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