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Band-in-a-Box for Windows
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Joined: Feb 2010
Posts: 49
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Peace and Harmony to all,
Does anyone in the group have experience using Biab (and/or ancillary DAW software) with solid state drives (SSD)in their setup?
Of particular interest are multiple-drive systems (whether incorporating SSD or all HDD's) and successful strategies used to relocate Biab (or any other DAW software) files to different drives.
If you are doing somthing like this I'd appreciate a synopsis of your experience.
SSD's are incredibly fast. The real advantage is in seek time. Old platter drives (HDD) have typical real world seek times of 12-18 ms while solid state drives deliver .08 ms to .20 ms (yeah, that's **point oh eight ms**). Read speeds are phenomenal and, depending on your operating system controllers, range from ~100Mb/s to over 250MB/s.
Whoa! Could you use that kind of speed throughout your entire DAW? Yeah, but there are caveats.
SSD weaknesses are relatively slower re-write speeds (due to their architecture), a limited write cycle lifespan of around 10,000 writes per memory cell, and higher cost per GB and, currently, lower drive capacity. 30GB solid state costs around ~$100. A hundred dollars right now can buy a 1TB HDD (or 1000MB)or more of platter disk drives.
To best utilize SSD strengths and avoid their weaknesses my strategy is a hybrid SSD/HDD system: Store the operating systems and essential programs that don't change a lot on an SSD and distribute the data files -- the files that are either very large or are frequently re-written -- among the 'old tech' HDD platter drives.
Maybe another SSD for reading essential audio sample files (that aren't re-written)? Comments and suggestions welcome on this point.
Buying a thousand GB's of solid state is still too expensive for my taste right now, but adding 60-80GB under $200 for the core systems looks good. Even 30GB at ~$100 is enough for the core OS and some essential programs.
Windows ( XP I'm using) writes a bunch of little files and I know how to move those to the platter drives. Biab (and other audio programs) write a bunch of little files, too, and I'd like to hear from anyone with experience or knowledge on moving these files to the platter drives.
Thanks
Lawrence
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Band-in-a-Box for Windows
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Joined: Mar 2006
Posts: 812
Expert
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Expert
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I've been waiting for the price of SSD drives to come down and capacity to go WAY up. I check Newegg and the other tech sellers. Things haven't changed much. I like the reviews I've been reading about the performance. It seems really well suited to laptops, as it cuts way down on heat.
I would like to find information about using an External SSD. Would it need a power supply? Will it come out in USB 3 variety?
I'd love to move away from platter drives......I just can't spend $750 to get a 360 GB SSD!
Ed
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Band-in-a-Box for Windows
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If I went with one, it would only be on the boot drive for the OS and for programs, the things that require a lot of Reads and few Writes. I know a few others who have said they are already doing that with good results. The price/capacity is still keeping me from making the move now. I do use a 10,000 rpm WD Raptor drive as my boot drive, and that has convinced me of the benefits of having the fastest boot drive you can get, once it is affordable. I think 60 GB is still too small for the OS and programs, and a larger SSD is cost-prohibitive at the moment.
I don't know about trying an SSD as an external drive. That would guarantee it was not used for the OS, and the only thing stored on it would be data, which gets written to a lot. Loading BIAB from one, though, might make sense. Extremely fast Read speed would be nice for Real Tracks.
BIAB 2025 Win Audiophile. Software: Studio One 7 Pro, Swam horns, Acoustica-7, Notion 6, Song Master Pro, Win 11 Home. Hardware: Intel i9, 32 Gb; Presonus 192 & Faderport 8, Royer 121, Slate VSX, Adam Sub8 & Neumann 120 monitors.
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Band-in-a-Box for Windows
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Joined: Aug 2007
Posts: 674
Journeyman
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Journeyman
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+1 to what Matt said. they're too expensive for me when 7200rpm HD's are less than $100 for a 1T SATA drive right now!
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Band-in-a-Box for Windows
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Joined: Dec 2003
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Journeyman
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Journeyman
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I have a 30GB SSD drive I use to boot Windows 7. My other principal drive is a Western Digital 10K Raptor. I use that for swap file (which I know I really don't need but some old apps demand that you have one.) I keep about 7GB free on the C: (Boot) drive, which gives Windows (and those despicable 3rd party apps that don't ask where to put their files) about 22GB.
I get a somewhat faster boot (not close to instant) but what really flies are backups and restores. All my BIAB and RealBand are on a USB 2.0 external. I have never had drive latency issues...
Jan - 12 Core AMD Ryzen 9 3900X
32GB DDR4
Win 10 64-bit
Samsung m.2 SSD Boot drive,other SSD internal and USB drives.
MOTO 2
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VB-Audio virtual cables
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Band-in-a-Box for Windows
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Thought I would update this thread.
It has now been a year since I installed an SSD as my boot drive. Mine is an Intel, but since then there are new ones with better controllers, SATA 6 speeds etc. Even so, I'm thrilled with the performance I get from mine. The best part is that, in one year, I have had zero BSOD. How much of that is Windows 7 64-bit and how much is the stability of the SSD drive, I do not know, but I'm not arguing with success. Plus, Windows boots in 15 seconds.
I run BIAB from the SSD, but my RealTracks are on another drive, a Western Digital 10,000 rpm traditional hard drive. When SSDs are inexpensive enough to buy one large enough for the RealTracks, I will put them on one.
BIAB 2025 Win Audiophile. Software: Studio One 7 Pro, Swam horns, Acoustica-7, Notion 6, Song Master Pro, Win 11 Home. Hardware: Intel i9, 32 Gb; Presonus 192 & Faderport 8, Royer 121, Slate VSX, Adam Sub8 & Neumann 120 monitors.
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Band-in-a-Box for Windows
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Joined: Dec 2007
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Apprentice
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I realize this isn't really what you're talking about in this thread, but it's similar.
I recently installed most of BIAB & RB on a 32 gig USB flash drive. All the RTs wouldn't fit, so I left off those I'm not really interested in. I'm getting ready to travel in my RV and wanted something smaller than the USB hard drive BIAB came on. Seems to work fine. I get the feeling generating RTs is a bit faster than my laptop hard drive, but never measured it. BIAB does seem to take more time to shut down. Looks like it's writing some sort of file to the flash drive. My flash drive appears to be slow in writing, as evidenced by the loooong time it took to copy BIAB stuff to it initially. I keep all my songs and generated WAVs on my laptop drive.
Overall, I'm very satisfied with it so far.
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Band-in-a-Box for Windows
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Joined: May 2000
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Interesting. So using your Flash drive for just the 'read' operation works great, but you notice it's slower to 'write' to than the laptop drive. I like learning these little tips.
If you are seeing a long write time at the end of a session, see if you have afolder on the Flash drive called RBBackup. If so you may want to keep an eye on that and keep the settings minimal. RB stores a backup file of each project in this folder. Eats space on a smaller drive. But comes in handy at times!
Matt,
I have never experienced a BSOD in W7 64 either.
Then again I don't recall the last BSOD in XP either. It has been quite a while, years.
I think the OS is now much more stable than the reputation. Most crashes are pretty traceable nowadays. Usually an infection (attack) of some sort is the cause. Program crashes are a different story of course. Those don't usually result in BSOD though.
Last edited by rharv; 04/28/11 06:41 PM.
I do not work here, but the benefits are still awesome
Make your sound your own!
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Band-in-a-Box for Windows
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OK, Bob, there is a bubble now burst (and it's your fault), but I'm equally happy for you that you have no BSOD either. My guess was that the non-volatile SSD was better at recovering from program crashes, but maybe that's irrelevant. Instead, perhaps the stability really is from Windows 7 64-bit.
The flash drive surprises me too, that it would work as well as described. I do think they are optimized for read speed rather than write speed.
BIAB 2025 Win Audiophile. Software: Studio One 7 Pro, Swam horns, Acoustica-7, Notion 6, Song Master Pro, Win 11 Home. Hardware: Intel i9, 32 Gb; Presonus 192 & Faderport 8, Royer 121, Slate VSX, Adam Sub8 & Neumann 120 monitors.
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Band-in-a-Box for Windows
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Oh, don't get me wrong; I admire the boot time, access speeds and write speeds of the SSD drives. It's something I plan investigating (read purchasing). My next rcording system will utilize that.
Since recent OS can use Flash drives for extended RAM, the read doesn't surprise me so much. I'm hoping the write times are due to the backup files being writtten (as described above). I can hope can't I?
I do not work here, but the benefits are still awesome
Make your sound your own!
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Band-in-a-Box for Windows
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Bob, I think you'll really like using a SSD.
My BSOD problems were usually caused by device drivers. I hope I have stable ones, at least for awhile.
BIAB 2025 Win Audiophile. Software: Studio One 7 Pro, Swam horns, Acoustica-7, Notion 6, Song Master Pro, Win 11 Home. Hardware: Intel i9, 32 Gb; Presonus 192 & Faderport 8, Royer 121, Slate VSX, Adam Sub8 & Neumann 120 monitors.
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Band-in-a-Box for Windows
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Matt. Me too. It's been about a year since installing an Intel SSD boot drive. Initially with XP. I added an installation of Windows 7 in a dual boot to my DAW a few months ago. W7 blows away XP imho.
SSD performance is stellar and I'd never go back to platter HDD for my OS drive.
For anyone venturing into SSD / DAW territory, this is what I did:
Drive 0: = SSD Operating System(s) and program files
Drive 1: = HDD "Write" drive
Drive 2: = HDD "Read" drive
Drive 0, C:/ and D:/, OS system(s) on Intel SSD (I have a XP and W7 on separate parititons as dual boot keeping aXP for old apps W7 doesn't play nice with.) P:/Programs (biab,RB,NI Bandstand, Kontakt)
Drive 1, WD 7200RPM platter HDD - first partition T:/ TEMP and TMP folders, 20GB with a AudioRender folder for rendering audio/projects; 2nd partition - M:/ My Documents folder {XP}
With Windows 7 I also moved Temp and TMP folders to individual folders on T:/ and all the W7 Libraries off the OS system drive to folders on M:/.
(google sevenforums and tweakhound for tutorials on moving these folders off the main os drive)
Drive 2, WD 7200RPM platter HDD - First partition, S:/Sample, (duh, for sample libraries i.e. Bandstand, Kontakt); 2nd partition, R:/RealTracks, Drums
Space on the back of the drives used for backups and data archives.
Note 1 :If you have the extra drive channels, you could further devide the folders for Temp, Audio/projects, etc. among individual dedicated drives.
Note 2: SSD's are fast for read/write Page File, so I leave that on the OS SSD fixed size = to RAM.
This setup has been working great for my DAW with XP pre-SSD, post-SSD; and W7-SSD.
As with any data management strategy, your preferences and mileage may vary.
Last edited by Lawrence.1955; 04/29/11 07:04 PM.
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Band-in-a-Box for Windows
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Biggest tip for users of an SSD: do not run Defrag on it. Watch out for this being "auto-scheduled".
Also, with an Intel SSD, run the Intel SSD Toolbox utility periodically; the first menu choice invokes the Trim command to keep the drive organized optimally after file deletes.
About your drive 1, the original generation of SSD drives are supposedly not as well suited for 'writes' as they are for 'reads', even if you do have an OS that supports the Trim command (as Windows 7 does). Perhaps the advice has now changed, but it used to be recommended that SSD drives worked best for holding the OS and apps, but not as well for data.
BIAB 2025 Win Audiophile. Software: Studio One 7 Pro, Swam horns, Acoustica-7, Notion 6, Song Master Pro, Win 11 Home. Hardware: Intel i9, 32 Gb; Presonus 192 & Faderport 8, Royer 121, Slate VSX, Adam Sub8 & Neumann 120 monitors.
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Band-in-a-Box for Windows
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Joined: Feb 2010
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No Defrag on SSD, good advice, Matt.
To anyone reading this, there are a host of good and not so good tweaks for SSD's and Windows 7 published on the web. Use caution. I pretty much followed tweakhounds Windows 7 tutorials for installing and setting up my W7 OS on SSD with excellent results. With a few well researched variations for a DAW specific application. Again, caution is wise.
Matt, my Drive 0 is my Intel SSD. Drives 1, 2 are Western Digital rotating HDD's. Initially, I had a 80GB Intel Generation 1 (no trim support) but recently upgraded that to a 160GB G2 Intel SSD which supports trim.
My old Intel G1 SSD with XP OS has been on "standby" since migrating to the Intel G2. I envision eventually wiping the old G1 and using it for S:/Samples and R:/RealTracks (all reads other than additions and updates). In my testing, pulling RT/RD and NI samples from the Intel G1 SSD rendered a bit faster, with a lower cpu load and allowed a 6ms lower latency setting vs. pulling them from the Western Digital 7200RPM rotating HDD.
Band in a Box 2011 is really snappy with an SSD in my DAW machine.
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Band-in-a-Box for Windows
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Anyone else want an SSD now??
I do not work here, but the benefits are still awesome
Make your sound your own!
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Band-in-a-Box for Windows
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Joined: Feb 2004
Posts: 150
Apprentice
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Apprentice
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I'm running BIAB on a Macbook pro quad 2.3GHZ with a OCZ Vertex 3, 240GB, 6gbps SSD, with Colossus as the soft syth (prefer it to even to real tracks).
Thing is, i'm running it in a virtual machine (VMware). It's as fast as native, even running Kontakt.
No sense installing Bootcamp any longer LOL.
BTW, this Vertex gives me 475 Mb/s reads and writes. (for those who may not know, a 7200 rpm WD drive gets about 110 Mb/s (at best? )
The good thing about these VM's, is that you can freeze them, shuffle them around, copy them, and save them for later.
Very convenient.
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