I know quite a few of you have added SSD's to your computers and I need some help in understanding what advantage they provide. I understand that due to the flash memory, the installed OS will load faster but I'm more concerned about will it increasing the processing capability of an open program.
Currently, I use two 7200 rpm black WD hard drives. Following the advice of many of you here on the forum, I have my data files (midi files, completed songs, temp files, Sampletank / Kontakt samples, audio, etc) on one drive and my programs on the other.
If I install a SSD and load my OS and programs on that, I wouldn't think it would have any effect on pulling in the data faster from the data drive...would it?
If hard drives are the bottle-neck these days, would my songs regenerate faster in BIAB / RB? Would latency from VSTi's be reduced? Could I run at reduced buffers?
So, the bottom line question is: do SSD's allow programs to load faster or will they allow programs to run faster when data is load on another drive?
If all that an SSD would do is to startup and shut down my system faster, I can live without it, but if it processes data faster, that would be an interest.
BIAB & RB2026 Win.(Audiophile), Windows 10 Pro & Windows 11, Cakewalk Bandlab, Izotope Prod.Bundle, Roland RD-1000, Synthogy Ivory, Session Keys Grand S & Electric R, Kontakt, Focusrite 18i20, KetronSD2, NS40M, Pioneer Active Monitors.
All hard disk related operations are significantly faster.
(if you don't care about the reasoning, skip to last paragraph.)
Reason: a) reading data: The SSD looks up where the data are and electronically goes there to retrieve them. The conventional hard drive looks up where the data are, mechanically goes to a certain position and waits for the data to arrive to retrieve them. If the stream of data is not complete this process repeats until all necessary data are fetched.
b) writing data: Actually it is the same process as above. The process is a little slower because writing needs a little more time in most cases. But the general speed advantage of electronically going to the warehouse location is significant compared to the speed of physically going to the respective warehouse location.
c) processing data: This is only faster using an SSD if there are so many data that the data cannot be kept in working storage but has to be written onto the disk temporarily.
Using BIAB/RB with an SSD speeds up several steps in the work flow -- if all the necessary files are on an SSD -- since retrieving data is much faster, like regenerate a song using another style, or using another RealTrack for a song, or loading another virtual instrument, or
Summary In short: Everything that needs the hard disk is faster using an SSD. Everthing else is as speedy or slow as it was before installing an SSD
Highly recommended. I use two in my production machine: one has Windows and most programs. The other (small early SSD) has only the BIAB program on it (no RealTracks). I have the audiophile version that requires over one TB of space, or I would have the RealTracks on an SSD.
As a general guideline, the best use of an SSD is for programs that are read, but not so much written to. RealTracks fits that definition perfectly. So do VSTi instruments and soft synths.
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.
This is great info folks....really appreciate that. Still have a bit of confusion though. Currently my programs are on one HD and my data on a second HD. If I just move my programs to an SSD and leave my data on the second drive, do I still capture the benefit of the SSD? Or do I have to move my programs and data to the SSD?
I just upgraded my computer and one of the upgrades I made was to change my 1T OS drive to a 500M SSD.
Man, the difference is phenomenal! everything is faster! even browsing loads faster, I'm assuming because of the disk cache it uses.
as far as "moving programs" from old drive to new: use a cloning program. I bought a Samsung EVO 850 and it came with "migrating" software which cloned my 1T drive onto my 500M SSD.
most things worked flawlessly after the migration, but a few things had to be "reauthorized." and even fewer things had to be reinstalled (IK Multimedia was some of the stuff had to be reinstalled - at least for me, others may have a different experience).
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MIDI Styles Set 92: Look Ma! More MIDI 15: Latin Jazz
MIDI SuperTracks Set 46: Piano & Organ
Instrumental Studies Set 24: Groovin' Blues Soloing
Artist Performance Set 19: Songs with Vocals 9
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RealDrums Stems Set 10: Groovin' Sticks
SynthMaster Sounds & Styles Set 2 (sounds & styles with audio demos)
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