DAW on SSD in 2014?
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- microkorg
Looking to do a fresh Win8 install on my laptop.
At the moment I have a 256GB SSD in the laptop with external libraries on an external drive.
I'd like to not use an external drive as it's a pain as has to 'dangle' from laptop when laptop is on lap!I use AbletonLive, Komplete 9 & Maschine, some samples/audio in sets and a handful of VST instruments within a song.
If I just install a large high spec SSD (512GB/1TB) would that be OK to run everything at once?
Or do I really need an external drive to take the load off the SSD?
(I would probably buy a large Flash Drive plugged in USB slot so it sits plugged into computer and not dangling)There's a lot of conflicting information out there - the OLD school mechanical hard drive info that is on forums from the early 2000's says extra drives needed because mechanical drives can only do one thing at a time.
I've read statements from people saying that a single SSD works fine for them and a local store has said it would be OK too. Ableton themselves state ideally you should have seperate drives.
My laptop is a dual core 2.4 with 8gb ram.
Anyone offer up any advice?
Are you running from just a single SSD? Would love to hear how you get on.
Hopefully this thread will help other people in the future searching for more up to date answers.
- sem0
I have a Macbook Pro that I've removed the original hard drive from and put a 250gb SSD drive.
Then I took the DVD drive out and placed a second hard drive (1tb 72rpm)
So inside my laptop there are two drives just no DVD drive because no one uses them nowadays anyway and I have an external DVD if ever needed anyway.
From the 250gb drive I run OSX, Logic Pro, Ableton, Pro Tools, Reason, Photoshop etc and tons more. It would definitely be able to handle whatever you can fit on it. Make sure you get max RAM which would help when you have tons running also.
BUT when it comes to the Kontakt libraries I have them on a FW800 External HD because to have them on my 1tb internal would eat up about 70% of its space leaving me with nothing to use for general use of my laptop.
I would say get a 1tb SSD but they are still expensive, maybe look on eBay and see if there is a hard drive caddy that could replace your DVD drive? then you could have two internal 500gb SSD drives which would probably be cheaper than a single 1tb.
Final note, as much as people hate Mac's this is one of their advantages, getting things like a hard drive caddy is easy as each device has a pretty uniformed design.
- lessfloor0
Once you mac you never go back
- microkorg0
Cheers for the tuppence.
Unfortunately it's a tiny ThinkPad that I've got that doesn't have a CD drive.1tb SSD is £350 from crucial. 512GB £192
I'm trying to work out what the best way to go is before this weekend when there will be all the black friday / cyber monday deals ;)Integral (£226)& Patriot (£275) both do 512gb credit card sized external drives that could be velcro'd to laptop lid.
This option allows plenty of space and no "dangling big ext HD"Corsair GTX 256GB Flash Pen Drive is a superfast beast around £190 but only 256gb.
There's a Kingston HyperX 512GB USB Pen Drive but that's still up around £375. In tests its actually a LOT slower than the Corsair (but IS double the size capacity).
- Didn't realise 1tb SSD had dropped so much in price! might buy one also hahasem
- detritus0
Single SSD should be fine, especially if you have a load of RAM and encourage applications to use it as a drive, if you are able.
.
Give it another ten years and there'll be no distinction between storage and RAM...
- uan0
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we are closer than 10 years to this...for some tasks it's already present
