I am curious if anyone has tried to use flash cards since they supposedly are like an SDD and would provide faster speeds than an external HDD? With larger storage capacities we could store our most utilized samples on a single card with a capacity of 256GB which is what I see possible from PNY and its on sale for $89. Should I snag that?

 

i bilieve not , as far as i know flash cards have speeds of about 50mb/s at best , they are like ssd's but not as fast....
they are probably slower than todays fastest hdd's

 

OPS..
First witch connection you will use? usb 2, 3, firewire or thunderbolt? You know that they have different speeds and cpu consumptions right?

Flash drives usually have lower data flow, the best its class 10 is the best and each manufacturer have different speeds (10=10mb/sec)
Soooooo
class 10 10meg/sec
HD at 7200= 100 mb/sec
a good sdd 500mb/sec
Just remembering that usb uses cpu much more than pcis, firewires and thunderbolts...

Thats why flash sticks are cheaper and no one use flash drives instead hds

GIYF Pleeeeeaaaassseee?!

OF course if your samples are veeeeeeeeeery light you can use flash drives but its stupid

 

If it reads and writes fast enough, whats the difference?

SD cards larger than 32gb are SDXC, not all devices can read them so make sure your SD card reader supports SDXC cards. (If youre laptop doesnt have USB 3 ports its most likely too old to support it.)

And also make sure the card has adequate read/write speeds, with SDXC Class 10 is no longer the fastest.

 

Nobody mentioned that a 256GB SDXC card, aside from being the slowest media you can buy, costs like 2-3 SSDs? So what's the point, unless you have absolutely no other choice? I've never heard of 256GB SDXC card, actually. Isn't 128GB the biggest there is? In this shop I buy from the biggest SDXC you can buy is 64GB and it costs 100 Euro, the SanDisk one. So I suppose a 128GB one would cost ~200 euro. For that kinda money you can buy a fabulous Intel or Samsung 256GB SSD with 550/520MB/s R/W speed.

According to this pricing, a 256GB PNY SDXC card for $89 is a steal, though. But something seems fishy about it to me... the size, and the price, something must be wrong, or maybe it's a SSD, or a hybrid 2.5" HD.

 

yeah, WAY to slow, go with a cheap SSD (check sites like slickdeals or lifehacker for sales!)

 

So then SSD and usb 3.0 which then leaves me with a lot fewer USB ports to connect to for my audio interface and keys. I was looking at $89 and 256gb and thinking that it would be fast enough because they are solid state in that they have no moving parts like a HDD has. Guess that doesn't translate into faster than a HDD and they have slower speeds Oh well.

I will probably have to get a dedicated midi interface and connect my controllers up to the computer over a MOTU midi interface then because when I hook up an SSD and an audio interface that just leaves me enough usb ports to play 2 keyboards when I am playing live.

Thanks for the input guys I appreciate it.