I want to upgrade my 2 old hdd's with sound libraries to ssd/ My question is, would it be ok with me to go for just a single 2tb ssd and put all those libraries in there? Will its stress the ssd too much if all my samples are being read from there? Or will it be better to get 2x 1tb ssd's and split the libraries among different drives to "lessen the load" so to speak like with hard drives? Or does that not happen?

Would like to know if having seperate is even necessary with ssd's.

 

In short: no.

Not going to go into details too much, but you're better off getting a single one that suits your requirements.

For speed or redundancy reasons you'd have to go into RAID and then you would lose half the space. Just get one that works for you and if you're worried invest in a separate backup drive, can be a cheap external or something fancier, but just have something if you can.

 

that's a great topic for discussion!

I've recently got rid of ALL my HDDs, so my workstation is now fully SSD-equipped (and now I use 1TB SSD for MacOS+sw, 1TB SSD for libraries/instruments, and 500GB SSD for Windows+games/sw),
few things to consider regarding your question:
1) if price is no concern, you should go for highest capacity you can afford (and make use of), for libraries you can go for cheapest SSDs, there won't be any noticeable performance drop,
for example 4TB Samsung 870 QVO will be cheaper than pair of 2TB WD Blue SSDs and you'll save yourself hassle of organizing content across multiple locations
2) if cost efficiency is concern, you should probably start by checking which of those libraries you actually use, and which can be completely removed, or stored on far cheaper HDD for occasional use - there's handful of utilities to tell you which data you haven't touched in a long time - and such data is probably waste of space (and money)
3) using multiple SSDs to evenly split load across multiple disks is valid point, but you need to ask yourself how big your projects are, and if you are using that many different things to notice any worthy performance improvement (for me, it makes sense to have libraries on different disk than system+daw so there's no chance for overloading system drive by loading libraries - but again it's not something which should happen anyway)
4) reliability of SSD still is a concern - if you have some valuable "hard to find" libraries or some you made on your own, definitely keep your old HDDs as some sort of backup, unplugged in shelf or whatever; I learned the hard way when one of my 500GB 860 EVOs just died all of sudden, no chance of saving any data from the drive

 

Multiple SSDs... RAID implemented in SSDs for drum/percussion sample Libraries & Kontakt actually has a negative effect on speed. Plus RAID depends on the quality of your controller which you would be wasting a bunch of bucks on little to no benefit that should have been directed to more storage... If you were a video editor then RAID would be the choice. Dont take my word for it, just go to VI-Control & read what they have to say. Hell, Kontakt isn't even coded to use up the SSD bandwidth properly. It only uses queue depth of 1, which is how old rust spinners work. Even on the VSL forums I continually read people testing both RAID & single drives & they stay with multiple singles...

 

Just keep 15-20% free, eh.
You didn't say how big your HDDs are, and how full they were.

 

In general you are right but not in max speed, if i may add a little detail. I 've tested raid 0,1 and 5 extensively with sata and nvme ssds. Max speed is about double when implementing RAID 0 with two drives or raid 1-0 with 4 drives as it should normally be. For huge video files montage/editing (6k/8k raw) this can be very useful for example.
But,
The takeaway of all this for us here, is the latency is increased due to RAID's overhead. This is more apparent when implementing RAID 5 but it is accountable and present even with a simple two drive RAID 0 and/or RAID 1. Advanced server database software (for example) is made to take advantage of max iops in reads and writes and doesn't "care" much about higher latency, but as you said, Kontakt doesn't take advantage of max iops at high q depths and is -sort of- sensitive to drive latency.
So yes, single ssd drives is better for libraries

 

Last edited: Mar 31, 2021

imo if you can afford the difference, get the 2 smaller ones. fill one and use the other for a full backup of the other. I'd worry more about getting a defective drive with 3 or 4 tb on it before I find out, rather than gaining a .01 ms difference access speeds or something more technical like that. you will be more likely to backup smaller drive just because its less time consuming.

 

That s a Super Topic Cause I am into that right now I wanted to get the Blackmagic Design MultiDock 10G
is it a good thing ? There s also the QNAP TR-004U which is a little cheaper
but which one to get black magic is super expensive https://www.thomann.de/gb/blackmagi...iZ2IiLCJjdXJyZW5jeSI6NCwibGFuZ3VhZ2UiOiJlbiJ9

video for QNAP

 

Last edited: Apr 3, 2021

I don't know what to think about those USB 3.0 docks, I mean, it's still only 5Gbit, which is even less than single ancient SATAIII 6Gbit,
I think it's really Thunderbolt or PCIe when it comes to access speeds...

if you need direct storage, then something like Sonnet PCIx16 with 4 NVME slots will be fastest drive array:
https://www.sonnetstore.com/collections/computer-cards/products/sonnet-m2-4x4-pcie-card-silent

 

Generally 4/5 drive NAS machines with 10gbE ports are more expensive than the simpler 1gbps ones. I 'd never pick the Blackmagic machine, if only for its sleek, slim 1U design. Other than that it doesn't offer anything substantial. NAS machines vary a lot and this is because they are essentially pcs (with proper cpu and ram) running proprietary NAS OS software. The more widely used are Synology, Qnap and Asustor (usually selected for budget solutions). Some newer, more expensive models can use nvme ssd storage for cache making them extremely snappy.
Arguably Synology has the best NAS OS software of all NAS regardless spec and is the most highly regarded of all with second in line being Qnap. This, https://www.storagereview.com/review/qnap-ts-453d-nas-review can be expanded with a 10gbE card, should cost around 550 dlrs US.
A useful page apart from storagereview.com (which is excellent) is here (see below) and can help a lot. Pick your poison
https://nascompares.com/the-best-and-the-cheapest-10gbe-nas/
Cheers

 

ssd and m.2

 

The Blackmagic unit is actually 10Gbit, as suggested by "10G" in the name. It's USB 3.1 Gen 2 (10Gbps) - I hate the naming, but if your motherboard has a 10Gbps port, you can do it. Still, this means you're limited to 1 and 2/3 of the speed of a single SSD. It's not designed for using all the drives at once.

It's not quite that simple. If you have a GPU, and are not using a Xeon/Threadripper, you probably don't have 16 PCIe lanes spare to get the full bandwidth. And even with PCIe 3.0 x16, you have 15.754 GB/s shared among 4 drives. Thats 1.96 GB/s per drive, so it isn't quite four times as fast as a single NVMe.

You don't know what you're looking at. You see shiny things and think it'll be faster, but it won't. It's just a pretty box that converts fast SSD to not-really-that-fast USB. It's for people who are forced to work on a macbook and have just a USB-C port. If you have a proper desktop PC and available SATA ports, it'll be way faster than the super expensive things you're looking at.

None of these are NAS machines, and none of them have Ethernet ports. At least go through the effort of clicking at the links people posted.

Keep in mind accessing a buttload of small sample files over a network means a lot of network requests, and even wired, the access latency will not be as good as a SATA port directly on your motherboard. It will also take up a significant amount of CPU processing (in your PC, not just on the NAS) to deal with all the network requests coming in and out.

10 GbE card in your NAS does not help anything until you also get a 10 GbE card in your PC, and connect them to a 10 GbE network switch using a cable that's capable of running at 10 GbE speeds.

 

You prove unable to read between the lines, can you... Kinda monolithic like Intel cpus lol. For space and time purposes i ommit what is OBVIOUS man.
He IS likely looking for a NAS device, he just doesn't know it... It should be obvious, even to you, since the Qnap device he posted is actually an expansion to existing Qnap NAS devices. Your comment on this is pointless and almost insulting, i read/click every-fkn-thing, and also many -if not most- NAS devices that come with 10gbE have some kind of USB 3.x. connectivity too, so they can be connected to virtually any pc.

Err of course, and B comes after A.
Btw, you can always connect any (configurable) Ethernet capable NAS (10gbE or whatever it makes no difference) straight to your pc's Lan port Ad-hoc without a switch.

It could surely pose a problem in the Pentium 4/Athlon 3000 days. The access latency and local cpu network load should be considered insignificant by modern standards, as it won't be more than 1 to 5% max on a modern i5/Ryzen 5 cpu, measured by yours truly by loading 16 Kontakt libraries (Spitfire, Sonokinetic, Orchestral Tools) off of a Synology NAS (in RAID 5 mode with 5 modest WD RED 4gb drives) over 10gbE. The difference in loading times compared to internal/local five drive raid 5 array with same hdds (Intel i5 9600K/32gb ram because sadly Ryzen cpus don't do raid5) was a mere 12 secs for all 16 libraries. Given that the whole thing took 2 mins & 15 secs to load on the local array, anyone sane enough should consider 12 more secs insignificant. More over, after loading, playback over 10gbE was flawless. No cpu spikes no nothing. Tested with Cubase Pro, Samplitude and Cakewalk with more or less similar results, although Cubase Pro (v.10.5) had a slightly higher cpu load (~1% more).

And because you like to nitpick, making (pointless) corrections, the 10gbps USB is now called USB 3.2 Gen 2. Gotcha

 

Last edited: Apr 1, 2021

I would NOT restrict the size due to cost in order to get two and use one as backup.
I think it is considered better, cost-wise, to backup to less expensive (although slower and more fragile) HDDs, and use the cost difference in order to afford larger SSD.
I am pretty sure that if someone knows the importance of backing things up, the time difference will be no barrier to doing it. It should be an overnight thing anyway, so even backing up to 5400 RPM external drives as I do takes 2 minutes of my time.

I began ruminating on my methods, so to save space & TLDR:

Spoiler

Even now, with an OS disk using 130 Gig and using 'EASEUS TODO backup Home' it takes only 1/2 hour to back up if i care to run it while I am browsing the internet or doing other light work. (Maybe less time, as it is so unintrusive I don't even notice). That is using default compression and CPU load.

If I am using "Free File Sync" to mirror my DAW library the speed is much faster because there is no compression involved (and no point in trying to compress some libraries as they are already as compressed as they can get).
Same is true of course, when mirroring my archive folders. (Already compressed)

So far I have an 8t 7200 for downloading and archiving (7.5 T used).
I mirror that to an external 5400 RPM drive.

I have been backing up my OS drive, my "personal SSD" (500G with all my personal info, files and work), and a media library drive to a 5T 5400 external.
I am going to need more backup space...

I have Daw content archived but for anything that i've installed 3rd party content, it's that 'customized' folder i need to back up.
Others that are "stock" or "Factory-only" such as Kontakt, Nexus, Sampletank,etc that are not 'customized' that way, may take awhile, but the result will be right.

I keep any customized (even if small) libraries or content in my "DAW Library" drives and symlink them from there. (I mostly use symlinks even if the path can be set within the plugin, because that way everything is installed "standard". The exceptions to that for me are Kontakt, Sampletank, and Toontrack... maybe something else.

Anyway... If money is not a concern at all, of course one should have nothing but SSD, the largest available, and as many as the machine will hold, plus a bunch in external USB3 cases.

 

Last edited: Apr 1, 2021

oh yeah no worries with that, i was not gonna backup to another ssd in buying 2 ssds. im just going for 1 large one. i regularly backup everything, so i have multiple drives dating all the way back to 2011. Along with that i do offsite copies as well. So yeah going with the 1 large ssd option as I already backup regularly anyway to multiple sources

 

This is not an advice, but a tip. I work with Synology and Qnap NAS-es and I found using NAS OS software like FreeNAS or OpenMediaVault which I personally use [and it's free] better, faster, less bloated, and even looking more professional. What is of great importance also is the difference in price, because for the price of a NAS+HDs+SSD you can buy a killer computer, so I wonder how much it's really worth it forking out that much money for a "Pro" NAS with some cheap ARM CPU and electronics, which needs 5 minutes to boot up and 3 to shut down [approx]. :/ My OMV based NAS boots within 30 seconds and shuts down in about 15-20 sec.

All you really need to do is to buy a good motherboard with 6 or more SATA connectors, which is pretty much every 100 euro mbo you can find, add about 8GB of RAM, and any CPU with graphics in it. Some Intel with any HD graphics will do great, or some AMD with onboard graphics. For about 1/3 of the price of NAS, you can make a killer NAS yourself.

AMD motherboards support ECC memory btw. so if you want to have a really stable NAS with ECC memory, I would buy an AMD motherboard, AMD 2400G CPU, 8GB ECC RAM [even 4GB is enough for running OMV! FreeNAS needs 8GB], and some hard disks and SSDs for the rest of the money. Quite cheap and most of the mbos support RAID 0,1, 2, 5, some even 10.

If going RAID route, I do recommend RAID 5, for which you need at least 3 disks. It is a great compromise between speed and safety. If one HDD/SDD fails, it can be rebuilt from others, so your data is as safe as it can be. I would also use ZFS file system which is the best journaling FS for NAS-es.

Cheers!

 

Last edited: Apr 1, 2021

Fantastic explanation

 

As it has been said, usage of a single 2TB is the best you can do in this case.
If you want to be more flexible, get two 1TB drives spread libs on the two drives.
And use symbolic links to make the operating system think that all libs are on the same disk.
Using RAID to accomplish the same is overkill and less flexible.

 

Last edited: Apr 2, 2021

I use NVME for VERY fast drives.

You can use RAM disk cache, too. Like Primo Cache.
And Vienna Ensemble Pro for VERY big Kontakt libraries.
They are kept loaded.

No more load time problems

About OP : no problem READING on SSD. Only writing.
You can even buy TWO SSD and do a RAID 1 if you want to push your controller
And always backup them.