szlafarski Posted February 3, 2013 Share Posted February 3, 2013 Hey guys, So I'm fortunate enough to have come into an opportunity to move my composing workstation out of my bedroom and into a proper studio. I'm ditching my Apogee Duet, getting a new PreSonus 1818VSL, control surface, proper environment etc. One thing I want to do is increase the performance of the computer itself. I'm going to have instruments at my disposal, such as multi track drum recording. I already have 24gb of RAM which does wonders with running my samples for composing work, however I want to boost anything I can in order to set myself up properly. I currently have three internal drives on my 2010 Mac Pro - two Seagate's at 2TB each, 7200 and the stock WD 1TB drive. I have the OS and programs running off one Seagate unit, all of my samples running off another Seagate, a backup of everything on the WD and also a Seagate GoFlex USB2.0 external running a backup of everything Logic related. I'm going to be doing more audio-heavy work at this new studio. I also want to try and add a little bit of extra muscle for sample work. I've been contemplating replacing some of the HDD's with SSD's. I understand that the performance of sample playback is especially good on SSD's. Is there a way I can boost my performance with what I already have? Should I try running certain things off other drives? Should I upgrade the GoFLex to Firewire? Will SSD's help me in the long run? Any and all input is much appreciated. Thanks! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Scott Jackson Posted February 3, 2013 Share Posted February 3, 2013 I currently have three internal drives on my 2010 Mac Pro - two Seagate's at 2TB each, 7200 and the stock WD 1TB drive. I have the OS and programs running off one Seagate unit, all of my samples running off another Seagate, a backup of everything on the WD and also a Seagate GoFlex USB2.0 external running a backup of everything Logic related. You don't mention which drive you record your projects to. Is there a way I can boost my performance with what I already have? Should I try running certain things off other drives? Should I upgrade the GoFLex to Firewire? Will SSD's help me in the long run? Any and all input is much appreciated. If you're recording to the same disc that your OS and Logic are on you can boost your performance by recording to an internal drive other than your system drive. You have one more bay in the Mac Pro, you could consider either adding another 2 TB HD (relatively inexpensive) to record to or you could get an SSD (expensive) and put your OS and apps on it and use one HD for samples, another HD to record to and continue to use one of the internal HD's for back-up. Regarding the external GoFlex, since you use it only for back-up, you really do not need to upgrade it to Firewire. Your back-ups would be completed a little faster with Firewire but I'm sure the time it takes to back-up is not your highest priority. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
szlafarski Posted February 3, 2013 Author Share Posted February 3, 2013 Sorry, I got that one but wrong. OS on one HD, Logic Project files on another, samples on another, and the external for backup. Would it be wisest to get a SSD for samples and one for project files? Writing time would be faster for audio tracking and playback for samples would be much smoother. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Eriksimon Posted February 4, 2013 Share Posted February 4, 2013 I think if you are going to go "heavier" on your audio that an SSD would help, not because of transfer speeds (these are already more than adequate on spinning disks), but because of their much shorter seek time; that's often the bottleneck (learnt this via Davids' posts on the topic). You can see on the HD meter that when you play back an audio-heavy project, it peaks when starting (looking for all the needed audiofile(s)). If you need to start enough audiotracks simultaneously, you may get an HD-overload message and no play. So, yes, I think an SSD would help you. Since your samples already stream well enough, maybe the priority to put them also on SSD is lower. They're still pretty expensive (5 to 10 times more than 7200 rpm platterdisks, per GB of space). Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Atlas007 Posted April 24, 2013 Share Posted April 24, 2013 If you can afford it (which sounds to be the case) go all the way for SSD! If you haven't tried it before, you will be awed for sure! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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