Windows 8.1
180 GB SSD
Is it possible or a good idea/or not to install the OS and Cubase on the same SSD?
Yes.
You can install on same drive, but I would use a different drive for the projects.
The fact that there’s no seek time delays for fragmented access to SSDs - there’s no reason (other than space) why you cannot run everything off a single SSD. The bandwidth of one SATA II (let alone III) port will easily handle the IO demands of a pretty large project plus the OS and sample library access.
Of course don’t forget to turn automatic de-fragmentation off for your SSD - defraging SSDs just burns up life expectancy with no benefits.
Well said. The good old recommendation for keeping your projects on seperate disk has always been more about disk access latency (seek time) than bandwith. And now that SSDs has multiplied bandwidth and vitually eliminated seek time there’s no need to have multiple drives in SSD world … unless:
- One large SSD is more expensive than multiple small SSDs.
or - Your DAW project is just so gigantic that it uses the whole bandwith of one SSD.
(In my current setup the reason for 2 SSDs was reason #1)
To clarify what I wrote, I agree with the other comments in this thread. But a 180Gb SSD is going to fill up quickly, when also used for projects. That’s why I recommend a second HD 7200rpm or a second SSD. If your on a laptop you might have to go for a bigger internal SSD instead.
Pretty well once all the DAW programs, VST(i)s and samples are loaded, the OS/program drive is not used by them any more.
That means that if project files and samples are on separate drives to the OS/programs, whatever incidentally happens on the latter will likely not affect DAW data transfer rates at all.
Just make sure that there are no libraries loaded on the OS drive. For example, the full default install of Cubase 8 Pro puts 11GB of samples on it.