Hello, what do you think about an ADATA SU800 - SSD for operative sys and install cubase and the rest of software? Somebody have the experience with this brand? or which one you can recommend for safety?
I was thinking on using SSD for the mentioned purpose, and a HDD for save projects and libraries … so my idea is to use the SSD only for software considering than SSD lose life and speed when you delete and create files a lot of times and its the case when editing audio
hope by your opinions, thanks in advance!
I don’t have experience with this brand, but I have absolutely everything on SSD drives and the difference is stunning. There’s just no comparison – I’ll never buy an HDD again. The Samsung SSD drives, such as EVO (I use them only) are some of the most highly rated.
The losing life with deleting/creating files is misunderstood by many (including me before I read a lot about it). Here’s a quote from an article about it: “To help users estimate how long an SSD will last, most SSD manufacturers present the drive’s endurance by the amount of data that can be written to the drive. For example, the 750GB Crucial MX300 has an endurance of 220TBW, meaning you can write 220 terabytes of data to the drive before it becomes unreliable. To put this in perspective, if you write 50GB of data per day every day to the drive, it will take you some 12 years to wear it out. Most other SSDs have similar or better endurance ratings. Generally the larger the drive, the higher he endurance.” Here’s the article (there are so many that support what he’s saying here): Do this to increase your SSD's lifespan! - CNET
The best SSD drives when talking non NVME drives are Samsung EVO or PRO drives, closely followed by the Crucual MX500 Series.
The rest are not on par with them but obviously still many times faster than a spinning drive.
If you get a SSD that is produced completely inhouse (memory chips, controller etc.) then chances are that if there is a firmware issue.
It will get fixed faster than if you get a SSD from a brand that put together their SSD’s using what is available to them.
Samsung and Intel produce all the components themselves.
Ssd’s like it warm and toasty, don’t keep them cool, even room temp. of 20C will half the number of data that can be written to the drive in its lifetime.
Normally only a problem if you put them next to HDD’s that are fan cooled.
That is probably the worst BS i have heard in a long time.
I use Crucial because that is what my DAW maker used for my first SSD. Since then I seem to have developed a steady habit acquiring more SSDs.
It’s a vicious cycle - Sound Library, Sound Library, SSD, Sound Library, Sound Library, Sound Library, SSD, Sound Library, SSD, Sound Library, Sound Library, SSD…
Interestingly I don’t see any benefit when putting my Projects on an SSD so I use an HDD for Cubase Projects. Suspect if my Projects had higher track counts an SSD might matter.
I’ve basically only had Crucial, Intel and the past 6 years or so only Samsung SSD’s and never had issues. All Samsung drives I bought are still working and are used every day intensively. 840, 850 and now M.2 960 Pro and Evo. Apart from the dreaded 840 Evo issue with slow reading speeds after a while that was fixed with a firmware update I had 0 issues. So I’m inclined to say “go with Samsung” because they generally deliver the best and fastest drives and they have excelent firmware support. It’s not really worth your time and energy to go look for better and much cheaper drives? Samsung drives are a no brainer and will deliver the best performance overall and have excelent firmware support. And they have the least compatibility issue with most used motherboard chipsets. You can read it in reviews and now you heard it from me also. 
I use a Samsung evo 850 as project drive, a 256Gb SSD . There is really no benefit doing this, any 7200rpm drive could do that job. I like the small size of the drive, it forces me to think about backups and finishing ongoing projects
The real lifetime of SSD”s are a lot longer than advertised, google did a study from use in their servers and Samsung’s where failing around 1 PETA byte written to the drive (256Gb SSD) .
With the amount of data I write to My 850 evo it should last me at least 10 years into the future.
Most benefit from a SSD is clearly as a boot drive, 250Gb is workable but I would prefer a bigger size.
If you use a lot of samples or sample based instruments, find out the size, will it fit on the boot drive, is it easy to have this sound library on another drive?
I see very noticeable improvements using my Samsung SSDs over my previous 7200 drives on projects with a lot of audio, without a doubt. But on projects with mostly MIDI, there’s no speed improvement… but regardless, SSDs are noise-free, reliable, tiny, and instant. On my sample drives, the SSDs also make a very noticeable difference in the amount of audio that can be streamed from them without issue.
Hi Peakae. I also use a conventional 7200rpm drive for audio, samples and projects. See my sig “Audio/Archive drive 10TB Seagate Ironwolf”. And you’re right! There is no benefit in using a SSD for this. Most benefit is indeed using an SSD as a bootdrive, But also for loading large Kontakt libraries and BFD3 presets, of which I have a lot! I have 4 SSD 1TB drives containing Kontakt5, BFD3 and other data consuming instruments.
It’s actually not a good idea to put Instrument files on your boot drive? Unless you’re using M.2 drives? But it won’t fail either? It will just degrade your overall system performance.
In contrary to your approach where you want to limit yourself and force yourself to commit and do not want to keep a history. I want to have complete freedom in what I save and what i keep and for how long! So that explains the 10 Tb drive? On numerous occasions I was able to restore some things I tough was gone. And this saved me a lot of time! the downside of this is that you might end up with too much stuff. On the other side I’d rather have to much than to little?
The most important thing of all that data is backups! And I can’t stress this enough. MAKE BACKUPS! It’s very simple actually? Ask yourself if you can or can’t live without certain data? If not …MAKE A BACKUP! DO IT NOW! It’s not a matter of drives will fail but when they will fail! So be save and backup your work!
Like this text? When you press the send button and you get a login prompt? So your account has auto logged out! It happened before so I’m prepared! But it still sucks!! Steinberg should show you a notifier that it will log off in so many minutes…, but that’s another story.
Yes Backup data, and use a disk image program to make a system backup. It’s amazing how fast it is to make a disk image from a SSD.
I wonder if Intel optane memory would benefit a DAW, my guess is Not Really.
It could, but Steinberg would need to implement it? Frankly, i don’t see a world of difference using the 960 M’2 drive (3500mbs read) in Cubase? Only in windows copying files etc…Steinberg is still not the most innovative company when it comes to implementing new Windows and system developments in their software?
Running Cubase projects from SSD vs HDD, most people will never see any difference. That is until the track counts get high enough, and I’m talking Audio tracks here, then you will find that the read speed of random workload is not quite high enough from a spinning drive.
Steinberg do not need to implement anything regarding to Intel Optane, either you have the large one and use it as SSD drive or you have the small ones and use it as cache and Cubase wont even know it is there.
I have a 1 TB NVME SSD for booting/OS/programs/cache, a 1 TB SATA SSD for samples, and a 1.2 TB SATA JBOD(SSD’s) for data. And backups with offsite copies.
Works great. I was an early SSD adopter, the only SSD that ever died on me was the notorious OCZ series that was a plain failure.
The difference between a SSD and a pile of spinning rust is stunning.
For recording audio and saving projects, a HD is fine(unless you need 100’s of tracks). But for samples I highly recommend SSD’s. Loading a Kontakt instrument from an SSD is about as fast as loading an ordinary software synth.