I have modded my laptop to a 96GB SSD + 250GB HDD combo, and currently have both Windows, Traktor and all my music stored on the SSD.
One of the reasons I bought the SSD was to shockproof my system against too heavy vibrations in live setups, but I have started wondering if it’s really necessary to store your music on the SSD too.
I’m thinking about doing a triple boot (2Win7 and 1Ubuntu), and for performance reasons it would make a lot of sense to install them all on the SSD, but that’s only possible if I can get my music out of there.
In short: is it worth it to store your music on the SSD? I know that performance-wise there is virtually zero difference, I’m talking reliability and stuff.
well i got a 160 gb intel ssd as the only drive on my laptop running w7 and its just split in 2 drives, one for os and one for files,
took the old drive and put in an external enclosure and use it to record when needed
but to answer ur q, i have not had any problems with my ssd and as far as i know it seem to work, have an other of the same drive as os drive in my studio comp at home to
but only thing i have noticed is that load times r effected
Thanks for taking your time, but that’s not quite what I’m after. I just need to free up some space on my SSD, and I’m wondering if it’s worth keeping my music on SSD or not.
I know the SSD ain’t going to cause me problems, it’s the HDD I’m worried about (in live situation, that is).
@TommyQuiet: I already have my SSD, and rest assured it’s worth every penny of it as long as you keep the size reasonable. And no, SSD’s are way faster than any HDD. You can’t just compare sequential read/write times, it’s mainly the random read/writes that matter for real-life performance boost.
the old hd that was in my laptop is now my external recording disc, and I havent had any problems with that disk at all and its been running quite a few years now and i play out 2 days a week.
so its been used as a system/storage disk for 3 years and then like 2 years external recording, no problems so far
it has however had like 3 full wipes prior to reinstalls i have done like once a year it was a syst3m/storage hd
@photojojo: Nope, but I have only played about 4 2h sets so that doesn’t mean a lot. I had read some stories about it, but now upon further investigation it seems that regular HDD’s are in fact robust enough.
good question. i just bought a MBP 13" with a 128gig SSD and put a 500gig hard drive with optibay in it. right now all my music is on the ssd, but i think i will change that soon..
In my honest opinion, you really want to use your SSD for frontend programs and load on boot programs only. Use it to install your OS, DAWs, Photoshop, Traktor- and store any bulk storage and media on a large traditional hard drive, external or otherwise.
I have never encountered issues with loading media from hard drives. But if reliability and stability is your concern, I think I’d still prefer to have a stable OS and frontend programs if that’s your concern.
Besides, not loading your OS on to your SSD would be a dramatic waste of potential for the SSD. That would take priority over the music space IMO.
I think putting music on your SSD is a bad idea. SSD’s have a limited writeability and music has a lot of changes everytime it gets played. So I have all my music on my conventional HDD and when a set is prepared, I move it to the SSD to avoid problems like a HDD that gets shaken so hard by the blowing bass that it gives read errors. After the event, I just delete the folder from the SSD and be done with it.
A little extra work but saves you a whole lotta Skrillex (Yes, I use his name as a verb, I’m sure some of you understand).
@Poizen Jam: OS and apps definitely need to be on the SSD, but a tradeoff has to be made. Either a seperate Traktor partition (added stability) with music on HDD (less stability?), or a 1-for-all partition (less stability) with music on SSD (more stability).
But the general consensus indeed seems to be to just store the music on HDD.
@Audeo: interesting concept. Kinda contradictory too though: copying and removing entire songs everytime seems like way more of a wear down than just very small ID3-tags changing. I’m also skeptical towards this limited writeability caution, SSD’s nowadays are produced to last much longer than anyone will ever use them. Still, something to take into account nonetheless.
About the read errors: will Traktor simply tell me that is hasn’t been able to read the track properly, or may it very well start to stutter unexpectedly while playing it? I am indeed aware of the Skrillex situation, which is why I keep all my important stuff backed up, but a lot of the gigs I play just can’t be planned that much in advance (college parties mostly, where people constantly bug you with track requests).
I guess I’ll just keep a 100-ish songs on my SSD for when the HDD fails, kinda best of both worlds.
I don’t see any reason to put your music on an SSD. Its too expensive. But putting your OS and programs on an SSD is very practical. The chances your laptop will survive a fall off a computer stand or something go up, and performance will increase.
As for music, if my laptop can only take 1 HDD, I would want 2 externals that I keep synced with each other. One stays somewhere safe, and the other I use. One takes a shit, I’m safe. 2 HDDs in a laptop, 1 external that copies everything from the music HDD.
Even though I’m all PC, OSX is great for one thing in my mind. If your mac shits out and its not the HDD that broke, like you cracked your screen, you can fire-wire it to another mac and boot from the HDD. Since mac all have the drivers for every mac, you can stick any HDD with any mac. Something impossible with PCs.
First, no point in storing your music on the ssd. Performance wise you will not see any gains for dj’ing, ssd’s really only help with read times because write times don’t need much help with hdd.
So by having programs and OS on the ssd you will be able to save time setting up etc…but loading songs in traktor isn’t really gonna be a huge difference on your ssd.
As for the whole safety of protecting your songs…you should have songs backed up on atleast one drive away from where your performing incase of theft etc. If you are worried about the vibrations it shouldn’t be an issue at all.
The shock rating on ssd’s is designed so high that you could theoretically drop a computer/device and it shouldn’t skip a beat. But most likely if you drop your comp other things will crap out so its not much benefit.
Also to back someone else up, if it is an older drive then they do have limited writes. The newer versions of Trim (basically defrag, but im sure you knew) don’t have these write problems anymore.
Summary: Put music on your hdd and buy a cheap external to back it up and leave it in your house.
@NotSoSinister: if it’s data recovery you’re talking about, you can stick any HDD in any PC and recover whatever you need to. Booting may not always work, but I’m not really sure what practical use that may have.. Just use the second computer if you have one with you?
@Rukks: small correction: you make it look like trim is part of the ssd. It’s not, it’s an OS feature, it works with old SSD’s too (if the manufacturer updated the firmware, which I believe almost everyone did). It’s also got nothing do to with durability, only with performance durability. SSD’s without TRIM (or garbage collection, which does basically the same) will get much slower in time, but they won’t die sooner.
Limited writes are an issue on every SSD, but with normal usage the lifespan will be much longer than its use.
SSD’s will drop in price the coming years, no doubt about that. But even now they’re about the best upgrade you can buy bang/buck-wise. I’d take an i3 with SSD over an i7 without SSD any day. There are very few applications that need a fast CPU, yet the HDD is a bottleneck in a lot of them.
100 bucks for a lightning fast computer doesn’t seem like a bad investment to me.
