Grettings fellow ASers!

So, big news. Buying an SSD. Yes, still on a hdd.

Been using an old PC for music for the last decade(?) and it has suit me fine. Well, mostly.
With the prices of SSDs coming down and this PC only accepting a SATA III max, I decided to buy one SSD.

So, I did some searching and seems the Crucial MX500 and the Samsung EVo 860 are what people prefer. Can buy either in 1TB version at around 130$. Which one would you prefer? Or do you have another one you'd like to put forward? Money is not really a problem, but I'm always short so... Are these worth the price tag?

I'd prefer to be using it with Win7, but if need be might upgrade. Is Win7 acceptable for these drives? Should I go to 8 or 10?

What are the things to look out in contrast to HDDs? Practical tips, please. Been away from all this hardware stuff for nearly a decade so your help would be much appreciated. Feel a bit like an Amish at CERN... Look out! (Al Pacino voice) :D

PC got an i7 processor, around 8GB RAM.
The plan is to partition the SSD like 300GB for OS (maybe dual boot with another Win version or Linux), and the rest for Samples and stuff leaving around 50GB(?) free. Bad idea? Good? Why?
Also, will keep a 500GB HDD as a second drive maybe for page file, audio recording, and scratch disk stuff. Yay or nay?

Thank you for helping out gents! Let me know what you suggest.

 

pick the cheaper of the two

not much difference between 860 evo and newer 870 evo


learn differenc between cells
tlc

slc
qlc

combination of memory + ram

software package

generally Samsung leader (especially software wise)
but Crucial is very good to!

 

Last edited: Mar 23, 2021

you can buy the2tb version of the crucial mx500 for only a little bit more: https://www.newegg.com/crucial-bx500-2tb/p/N82E16820156232?Description=2tb ssd&cm_re=2tb_ssd-_-20-156-232-_-Product

sorry, that's the bx500. still a great deal.

 

you may be an organized and streamlined fellow, if so great, otherways sit down and really think through what you need and what the future may hold for your needs when it comes to libraries/samples installs of programs etc. i would use a pencil and paper and sit somewhere else than in the studio.

i have an evo (and 5 other drives) for system drive in my windows machine that now serves as studio computer. my goal is to soon have two ssds only! A for OS and B for everything else to make the system fly, not having to wait for spinning drives and then have an external drive to backup the B ssd, (the OS i dont care about, if it fails then im sure i will not want to just copy it back in place)

BUT, im in the process to go through all my projects and make sure that my future super streamlined setup is not going to cause a lot of problems with missing vsts/kontakt libraries and other shit that has been lying around for ages.

 

always a good idea!

Test suggest there isnt much of a performance uplift(yet)

some People suggest if its a computer going online to better step up to 10/ since 7 is out of SUpport
"hackers" suggest it will end up like XP, a script kiddie trap.

Not bad per se, but ssd need, really need at least 10-15% of empty space. To shuffle around the bits
to "healthier spaces", faster places and so on. The little cpu on those things is working "constantly"

Keep the pagefile on the ssd, its 5Xfaster. If there is a page load you dont want to restrict your system!
If you go above 8GB you can manually restrict the size to 8GB wich is still sensible
IF you dont surfe for weeks with 100 Tabs on Chrome!
Scratch disk only for Heavy Video Graphic stuff

and get yourself an 8Tb hdd for around 100 bucks
the white label (sometimes)refurbished ones), are new drives that get sold to OEM for
stuff like this

And DIY yourself this fun project

 

can you give the specs of your build?? because if it's not that old (i mean, if you have some second gen intel core iX), you can make a mod to the bios and make it see the nvme ssd (i did it, and it worked pretty good)

also, as someone told you, pick a tlc or better type of ssd. this is because of the reliability reliability and lower latency compared to qlc

SLC - Single Level Cell: 1 bit per cell, it's latency is the lowest one

MLC - Multi Level Cell: 2 bits per cell

TLC - Triple Level Cell: 3 bits per cell

QLC - Quad(?) Level Cell: 4 bits per cell, the less reliable one compared to the others. it's useful for cheap builds and things but if you will have a constant (kind of) write/read day, it's not worthy

 

Last edited: Mar 9, 2021

Well i would not buy 8 tb for 100 -way to cheap. Way to much risk for such amount of data

Quite the oppossite

 

price has nothing to do with it
you of course, should always run a test like Bad Blocks on Linux
or other tools on win

Meaning?

 

Nope. Sorry but you are wrong. The QLC models from Samsung are called QVO not EVO.
The Samsung 870 EVO is a Samsung V-Nand 3bit MLC drive and in fact it's the most capable successor to the 860 model and the best SATA ssd in terms of price vs performance, although tbh it doesn't bring much new to the table. The SATA interface is the deciding limiting factor here not the drive itself which is excellent and comes with 5 years of warranty.
https://www.anandtech.com/show/16480/the-samsung-870-evo-ssd-1tb-4tb-review
https://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/samsung-870-evo-sata-ssd-review-the-best-just-got-better
PS: As a slightly lower priced alternative, the Crucial MX500 still stands strong although it's an aging model by today's standards. Still, it does come with an almost equal to the Samsung 860 Evo performance, 5 yrs warranty and very good maintenance software from Crucial.
Cheers

 

oh you are right!
i accidentally read the 860 pro model numbers (while searching for myself)
https://www.anandtech.com/show/12347/samsung-announces-860-pro-and-860-evo-sata-ssds

either way, since both evo&qvo do "slc cash-ing" on sata there isnt much difference
i would not call them excellent.
although the 5years warranty for the EVOs is!
still better than 3years for the (my)mistaken QVCs.

cheers for pointing it out though ;)

 

Hehehe, they don't bro. These are different ssds. The new QVO uses a combination of slc and a small portion of system installed ram to cache data. It's a smart solution i must admit, although it does cut corners, i won't get into details, info is out there.
The 870 Evo though uses DDR4 for caching:
The 250 & 500 gb have 512mb of DDR4. The 1tb model has 1gb DDR4. The 2tb model has 2gb of DDR4 and the 4tb has 4gb of ram.
In a nutshell we 're talking small computers in a 2.5" enclosure here (ssd controller=task oriented cpu + ram + storage). It's hard for other manufacturers to top these drives, theoretically only Crucial can do so because they are the only other ones with enough experience in ssd design and self produced ram as well. The other contender should be SK Hynix as they are also ram manufacturers and we 've seen a good nvme drive by them, their Gold model, but they are relatively new to ssd designing and manufacturing and they don't have an "in-house" designed controller afaik.
Surely, there are ways to leverage existing tech to design ssds that exceed speed boundaries without being a manufacturer of either ssd controllers or flash and we 've seen this a lot of times in the past and in the present with Liqid ssds for instance for the enterprise/datacenter:
https://www.liqid.com/products/liqid-elements/element-lqd4500-pcie-aic-ssd
These solutions though cost literally an arm and a leg, we 're talking tens of thousands dlrs and are far from what an average consumer or even prosumer can afford.
Cheers

 

i´m not sure what you are on about. Since samsungs own material talks about it
and anadtech shows it.
they use their tlc (mlc) nand AS "SLC" cache (i tried to be snarky over this marketing crap hence Cash-ing =katshing) from 20-88gb depending on drive size
its about 530Mb/s then drops it to 300Mbs after(on 860/870 evo)

sooooo...................?

 

Errr @dondada What i am on about. Right. Is this where i do my Al Pacino part, "you talking to me" lol?
How about the 870 EVO SPECIFICATIONS.
(Hint: if you still don't get it, look under Cache Memory):

 

its Bobby DENIRO FIRST OF ALL
I SAW THE RAM BECAUSE IT IS IN THE SAME DATASHEET

Hint: if you still don't get it I MARKED IT

You are funny dude

 

 

Last edited: Mar 23, 2021

I use a 1TB 860 EVO SSD for my OS & applications drive, and a 2TB MX500 SSD for sample libraries & project backups. I think it is the best of both worlds, and the Crucial was cheaper than the Samsung while having double the capacity.

 

Last edited: Mar 23, 2021

Thanks Luv u 2

And? What you mark is NOT caching memory. Memory cache is used constantly all the time, that "write cache" is used only in write situations and is additional to the memory cache.
And next time, if you mention a review, you better read the whole thing before quoting it like with anandtech's review. I will copy/paste the last important part from the conclusion of the very same review:
"Our testing didn't reveal any serious performance regressions, though several signs point to the 870 EVO's SLC caching being a bit less effective. Since this only shows up on tests that are deliberately more strenuous than any common consumer workload, we're not concerned by these results. Otherwise, the 870 EVO continues to be just about as fast as possible for a SATA SSD, and is a fine replacement for the 860 EVO. "

So ... Unless you run the most unrealistic synthetic benchmark, you'd be hard pressed to find a faster consumer SATA drive. And because i already installed two of these puppies (2gb) in client pcs doing library duties, i can vouch in person that transferring a 700gb Kontakt folder from a 970 EVO to the 870 EVO, never dropped beyond 470mb/sec with an average of 490-500mb/sec.
Now you know.

 

you seem a bit dens here. we are not talking about the same thing.
copy anything bigger then the SLC CACHE and the performance drops
i said nothing more. While YOU go on and on about Ram.
Not what i was talking about.
NOT what i was Talking about.
I used the terminology Displayed in the Article.
SLC WRITE CACHE
SLC CACHE

Right........ as its written in the Article 1tb-4tb = 2TB no loss of performance
Quote:
"The 250GB and 500GB models still have significantly lower sequential write speed
after the SLC cache runs out"

 

Sure. So you think Samsung would release a 500gb EVO drive (most popular model in most countries) that would drop to QLC speeds because it has 22gb of write cache. I pressed like to your post because you seem not able to distinguish between a synthetic benchmark vs real world performance, which was the article's conclusion i pointed out. If the 250 & 500 gb drives were flawed, it wouldn't get recommended.
My point being, what you and anand point out is a theoretical scenario. And as always with ssds, the smaller drives always exhibit lower performance than their larger siblings. The only "small" ssd with performance almost identical to the larger models is the Intel Optane 900p and 905p, soon to be discontinued as Intel is selling out their whole consumer ssd department, but that's another story.
So to not be mistaken, i understood from the get go what you implied, still i don't think it's important or as catastrophic as you point out because it doesn't apply in most real world scenarios. The most important feature of any ssd (because it represents about 75% of everyday operation) is random read and write mate and these drives are top notch here.
Anyway, you can have your opinion, i respect that, even when you want to present me as dense[sic], anyone who's read my posts can form their own opinion about it
Cheers.

 

Greetings gents!

So, had a few hiccups with the plan, mainly was a bit high and messed up the boot :D All fine now.

Ended up with the Evo 860. Got the Samsung Magician installed and it's all good.

For now, did the over provisioning with 10% of the drive assigned for that.

Windows is super fast now, even after updates, which is unheard of.

What other tweaks (any?) do I need to perform?

Found these articles:

https://www.diskpart.com/kb/tips-ssd-optimization-windows7-1.html
https://www.diskpart.com/kb/tips-ssd-optimization-windows7-2.html
https://www.diskpart.com/kb/tips-ssd-optimization-windows7-3.html

The only ones I didn't do were:

Disable Paging Files
Deactivate Prefetch and Superfetch
Disable GUI Boot

Should I?

Also, haven't yet partitioned the SSD.
Did some math taking into account my last install and I'm thinking I'll use the 831GB left after over provisioning like:

Partition 1 (120GB) - My last install was 90GB and it was packed with also non audio stuff so since I'm starting fresh I thought I'd slim it down a bit and focus only on DAW. Right now, vanilla Windows after updates got around 48GB.

Partition 2 (711GB) - Everything sample based. Kontakt, SD3, etc. Everything that's got a library goes in there. Will do some symlinking and everything I tested until now is good with that. The idea is if windows blows up by some reason, no need to install all samples again. Of course, if the drive goes... yeah, let's hope not. For now, I have to work with what I've got.

Any insights, advice otherwise?

Cheers

btw, thanks for the previous input