Worth getting a second internal SSD

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SimonB
Posts: 2
Joined: Wed Dec 11, 2019 11:34 pm

Worth getting a second internal SSD

Post by SimonB »

I have a new PC on order which has a 256gb ssd and 2tb hdd. Would it be worth my while installing a second SSD in order to separate mixcraft, libraries and recordings? What’s the best place for VSTs?

I’m hoping to avoid having to freeze tracks as often as I do on my laptop.

Thanks for any help and advice you can offer.
Anorax
Posts: 1082
Joined: Mon Jul 18, 2011 7:58 pm

Re: Worth getting a second internal SSD

Post by Anorax »

I've heard that the general consensus is to use a solid state drive for your samples storage, so you aren't having to read from a hard disk: it's entirely possible for a sample-heavy project to load slower or have disk read speed issues when reading from a hard disk, especially if the files are spaced far apart on the disk's surface itself - until all the right samples get loaded into memory, you could have playback issues as your computer scrambles to stream the samples straight from the disk, and the further apart they are physically (talking about disk fragmentation), the longer the scramble time.

That being said, I use a hard disk for my music file storage - it's best to use a drive with 7200 rpm because if you were to try to record to a hard disk with 5400 RPM, you will run into issues, and some programs (like Pro Tools) will flat out refuse to record to the disk. With solid state, you don't theoretically have this problem, but I'm not sure if the price-per-gigabyte gap has closed between HDDs and SSDs yet.

And it's generally a good idea to have a drive dedicated just to the OS, so in the unlikely event of a system crash, all your important files will be on your HDD and Samples SSD so you can safely reinstall your OS to the OS SSD (as long as you don't accidentally try writing windows to your data disk - it's best to disconnect these if you ever have to reinstall :wink:).
SimonB
Posts: 2
Joined: Wed Dec 11, 2019 11:34 pm

Re: Worth getting a second internal SSD

Post by SimonB »

Thanks Anorax,

So I’m thinking put in a second SSD and have

First SSD. Windows
HDD. Mixcraft and recordings
Second SSD. Loops and vsts

Does this sound like a good way to do it?
Anorax
Posts: 1082
Joined: Mon Jul 18, 2011 7:58 pm

Re: Worth getting a second internal SSD

Post by Anorax »

SimonB wrote: Thu Dec 12, 2019 12:52 am Thanks Anorax,

So I’m thinking put in a second SSD and have

First SSD. Windows
HDD. Mixcraft and recordings
Second SSD. Loops and vsts

Does this sound like a good way to do it?
While you can definitely do so, there's no real reason to move Mixcraft out of the Program Files folder on your C:\ drive, only because if your OS went down and needed to be reinstalled you'd have to reinstall Mixcraft anyway - Mixcraft stores files in the %Programdata% and %appdata% directories anyway, and I don't think you can tell Mixcraft to store those files somewhere else.
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