Hello again!! I’ve been using Cubase Elements 7 for a few days now on a standard spinning hard drive but I’m considering getting a Solid State Hard Drive (i.e. one that has no moving parts)… I’m looking at a 240 GB drive… but before I buy I wanted to see what others think.
Have any of you used an SSD with Cubase Elements 7, as well as all the included software (Halion Sonic SE, etc.) ? How did it work, or is it still working, or do the SSD’s suck more than I’ve heard?
Also, in my copy of Elements 7, one of the discs had a tape saturation effect… I think it was based on one of Yamaha’s old tape machines… but I tried to run it & had to delete it b/c it said that the trial had expired… and I just got my Cubase Elements 7 just a few days ago! Don’t see why I’m complaining about it, though… the simulated tube amp warms things up nice by itself.
‘why not internal’? This machine’s only 6 months old, but still it’s so new that I wouldn’t trust the best repair tech out there to swap the HDD out for a SSD… and then there’s the fact of having to put Windows 8.1 back on the SSD. a headache, if you ask me, for the internal drives, that is.
So that we may be able to help you better, perhaps list your equipment, preferably in your signature.
SSDs trounce HDDs in all performance categories, plus are silent and cool. In practice though, the huge advantages of SSDs are not as pronounced just because of the way the OS and programs need to use drives.
There are ways to transfer OS stuff from HDD to SSD. Samsung even boast about their transfer utility.
While the System Backup utility in Win 8.1 is not as assessable as it was in previous versions, I have used it to transfer the OS and programs to new drives several times. In fact, it is wise to do the backups periodically, just in case a drive fails, as has happened to us. I have had a new SSD fully operational from a system backup within an hour of getting it.
If you must use an external drive, does your hardware have an eSATA connector? Some laptops have a combined eSATA/USB connector. eSATA is EXACTLY the same as running an internal drive, with the same performance. If you have a desktop without an eSATA connector, you can get a cheap SATA to eSATA cable and run that from an internal SATA connector to an external powered drive.
Besides all that, Pat, I have always been under the impression Cubase (or any DAW) needs to be installed on the system/OS drive? The original poster seems to be saying he wants to run Cubase from a separate, non system, USB drive.
I recently upgraded my system. One major improvement on Mac OSX is when you use the build in audio the VST performance
Is fantastic. You’ll also notice improvements when loading presets, samples and overall cubase will be faster. Cubase starts in about 8-10 seconds on SSD vs 12 seconds on HDD not a big difference. My SSD is internal I don’t know about USB external set up though I think it would make a difference.
For the record I have for the past 18 months used SSD drives on both my main studio machine(Cubase 7.5.2) and my “office” machine ( Cubase Elements 7.07) and I would NOT consider going back to normal spinning drives on either machine for the “program” drive. That is not to say that there haven’t been problems on the SSD’s, 2 have gone down, (and been replaced under warrranty though) but overall there is a significant increase in performance.
