I’m about to install Cubase 9 Pro
I have two hard drives:
C: Drive - a 128GB SSD with 85GB of remaining space (after Windows 10 install)
F: Drive - a 3TB HDD with 2.7TB of remaining space
I want to limit what goes on the SSD so it won’t start slowing down (which will be at around 75% full).
What components of Cubase (if any) can I install on the larger SSD? Can I install all of Cubase and its plugins on the SSD?
I’ve attached a screenshot of the installation page and all of the programs Cubase wants to install - 15GB in total! Even at this early stage of the installation (having just opened the .Exe file) my C: drive (AppData, Program Files and Documents) has automatically been populated with loads of filepaths for the program files Cubase is about to copy over from the installation files.
This suggests I shouldn’t interfere and should just let Cubase install everything on the SSD. Will it create issues down the line if I tried to install and save the plugins on the HDD? Which of the packages in the attached screenshot are just files (not programs) which I could install on the HDD?
Further to this, I have other plugins that I want to install on this PC. Can I save them on the HDD or will Cubase have trouble finding them quickly?
I’m no computer expert but last year I purchased a new PC with a 220GB SSD and 3TB HDD. I installed Cubase itself to the SSD figuring it would work faster. I installed everything else to the HDD. I did this by just changing the drive letter in the path shown in the installer. All of my other 3rd party VSTs are installed on the HDD and all of my Cubase project files are stored on the HDD too.
Cubase is fast and I have not seen any issues at all with this setup.
I will say this… now, a year later, that 220GB SSD is 50% used. And that is installing most other stuff I’ve downloaded to the HDD. That is even using the disk cleanup (including unnecessary system files) every month.
My PC with Cubase is not used as a dedicated audio workstation. It is a typical home PC. Connected to the internet and such.
Bottom line… I think with the 128GB SSD you need to save as much space as possible on it. It gets filled pretty fast. Every few months we are getting major windows updates. These seem to be the culprit for filling up the SSD.
If I was upgrading my PC now, I would cough up a few more bucks and purchase a min 1TB SSD with the large HDD. Oh well.
BTW… Steinberg lists 18GB of free disk space is required for Cubase Pro & Artist.
Here’s what I have done and it works very very well.
When I built my new machine I used two 120GB SSDs and put them in a RAID1 array for the system drive. I put in two 1TB regular 3.5 HDD in another RAID1 array for data. Not only do I get good speed, I have redundancy in both system and data drives. Recently I started seeing the Intel Raid utility throwing up flags about a failing HDD. I pulled both drives from the array and tested them separately. Indeed, one of them had gone totally belly up but the RAID configuration kept me operational until I could address it. Big fan of RAID now!
When my current DAW was built it initially had a 128GB SSD system disk and a couple of larger HDD for everything else. After about a year and a half I got really tired of having to regularly monitor and clean up my C: drive to keep it from filling up. No main culprit here, Windows just likes to put lots of small stuff there which builds up over time. I ended up replacing it with a larger SSD and re-purposing the original to store my most used sample libraries. IMHO 128GB seems like it should be large enough for a system disk but it is actually too small.
Since then I’ve added another SSD for samples 'cause fast sample loads ends up being really nice.
