SSD with Live

[Bagatell]

I was thinking of keeping my samples ON the SSD, as that's the point. Faster loading of (sample heavy) sets and faster running.

I don't use many samples these days so I have what I do use on the boot ssd. Loading a BFD kit is now almost instantaneous compared to the tea break loading from hdd. Definitely leave Lives library on the ssd.

[sirvoice]

Thank you all my friends!

Any tips on makes/models of SD etc? Any to absolutely avoid?

p.s for a mac if that makes any diff

[salatspinatra]

I haven't ultimately decided on the capacity I'm going for in a SSD, but I am also going to swap out the optical drive with a SSD kit. Put the system folder on 1, and either my Home Folder on the other- if that's feasible-or use it for my media and/or sessions. Then record gigs with a thumb drive off the side port, and use the same card as a Collect ALL back-up of that night's set if something goes amuk (and simply stop recording for that night.)

With all that in mind, I don't know if it's really necessary to break the bank and go for the largest capacity SSD in either location. Either I'll streamline what I carry around as far as my library and music goes, but probably won't need to. And the drive won't get bogged down passed the half-filled mark the way a spinnable drive would. If you have similar usage as me, having two drives and pairing back capacity are my suggestions to your search.

[R-DUB]

I only run OWC drives and memory, they update there products and are extremely reliable. I currently run 250 and 480 GB ssd in my MacBook. OWC ssd drive run about a dollar, (us), per GB, and are worth every penny.

[IP]

with an SSD you win a-lot in performance / you lose a-lot in reliability!
If you choose to go performance, also consider a better (minimum daily) backup solution.

[tintala]

you'll be wondering why you ever waited so long to do it...might even get a nother one fer backup.

[poonti]

with an SSD you win a-lot in performance / you lose a-lot in reliability!
If you choose to go performance, also consider a better (minimum daily) backup solution.

Don't get me wrong, I don't necessarily doubt what you say, but why are these things without moving parts less reliable than HDD's? Just wondering, because I'm looking into adding an SSD to my Lenovo laptop (but don't want any reliability issues).

[fishmonkey]

with an SSD you win a-lot in performance / you lose a-lot in reliability!
If you choose to go performance, also consider a better (minimum daily) backup solution.

Don't get me wrong, I don't necessarily doubt what you say, but why are these things without moving parts less reliable than HDD's? Just wondering, because I'm looking into adding an SSD to my Lenovo laptop (but don't want any reliability issues).

SSDs have a couple of major weaknesses.

firstly, more and more, smaller and smaller, transistors are being packed into the silicon. also, there are a number of different technologies used for this, and the cheaper technologies are more prone to failure, and wear out quicker (look up SLC/MLC/TLC). if reliability is very important then you should consider the NAND type and size used in different SSDs.

secondly, SSDs are heavily reliant on their controllers and firmware, which are much more complex than what is required for a hard drive. this is partly because the controller needs to jump through lots of hoops to minimise wear on the NAND cells. controller and firmware issues can cause data loss and bricked drives. firmware updates are not uncommon, so it's worth looking into how easy it is to apply updates from your system.

so no matter which SSD you go for, good backups are essential...

[poonti]

Thanks for the info fishmonkey! Didn't know all that about SSDs - this will help with my choice.

[granted]

Please consider purchasing the Samsung 840 Pro instead of the plain 840. It is a much faster drive. And worth every penny.
I'm currently running Live 9.0.5 on my Dell XPS with a 512GB Samsung 841 mSATA drive. It does not seem as fast as the 840 Pro that I have in my graphics rig. I believe it is because of the mSATA format. Live 9 runs fine with on the XPS 12 (Haswell model).

[Donnie]

Please consider purchasing the Samsung 840 Pro instead of the plain 840. It is a much faster drive. And worth every penny.
I'm currently running Live 9.0.5 on my Dell XPS with a 512GB Samsung 841 mSATA drive. It does not seem as fast as the 840 Pro that I have in my graphics rig. I believe it is because of the mSATA format. Live 9 runs fine with on the XPS 12 (Haswell model).

Perhaps the mSATA is SATA2 and not SATA3? Ive been seeing that a lot given that mSATA is still a relatively new format, the main drives will be SATA3 but the mSATA is SATA2.

[mikb]

I haven't actually installed it yet, but I just got the "Seagate 1TB Solid State Hybrid Drive ST1000LM014" that "fuses solid state storage with a traditional hard drive to deliver the best of both worlds".

I choosed this as I can't seem to be able to fit a second audio HD in my optic drive space in my old Macbook Pro nor do I want an external audio drive. Pure SSD is too small and/or too expensive for my needs.

I'll install this drive after I have made a full image of the current main drive and I will run tests to see if there is an improvement. I have some Live 9 tests — the tracks with reverb instances test— made and published elsewhere here already. I also have some drivefocused tests made with the Mac app "Blackmagic Disk Speed Test" https://www.macupdate.com/app/mac/38019 ... speed-testthat I'll repeat.

Any suggestions for other Live-focused tests? Maybe try playback of several large files from disk?

[fishmonkey]

the BlackMagic DiskSpeedTest is more or less a test of sequential access performance, which is a primary need in video production.

most drives can stream quite a lot of audio tracks simultaneously, as audio is pretty low bandwidth compared to video.

in music production, where drives will crap out most is when streaming large multisample libraries from disk, where a lot of smallish files are required with low latency. SSDs do a lot better in this regard as they usually have both lower access times and faster transfer speeds.

[mikb]

in music production, where drives will crap out most is when streaming large multisample libraries from disk, where a lot of smallish files are required with low latency.

Any suggestions for such a library among the Live 9 Suite? Maybe "Session Drums Multimic"? I have access to an older Kompakt library too.

I'm not sure what you mean with streaming here, unless this refers to reading in new samples in a quick succesion.

If not, I'd simply call it "loading" or "reading in". Hmm, maybe if I could find or set up a test project that keeps loading many samples for some specific duration.

[mikb]

I just got the "Seagate 1TB Solid State Hybrid Drive ST1000LM014"

OK, it took a couple of days, including 7 x 2 hours just for copying data back and forth.

Preliminary tests show that reads are on average 40% percent faster and writes on average 43% faster. I think this is a decent improvement.
Ableton Live 9 takes only 8 seconds from the open command to be ready to go (with 42 third party plug-ins), which is about 2-3 times as fast compared to the older Samsung. Both these drives spin at 5400 rpm.

Granted, a pure SSD solution would likely be even faster. But the "OWC 960GB Mercury Electra™ MAX 3G" I had considered is at least $1.049, which is about 7.5 times as much as the $138 price tag this Seagate has.

As my machine only has a 2.2 ghz Core2Duo Merom processor with 6gb max ram, I'd be better advised to get a new Mac than getting a pure SSD solution at that price level. If you're in a similar situation a hybrid solution may be a more appropriate solution.

I'll let you know if I notice something significant with working with Live. The drive is supposed to learn what files you use the most, so I'll make sure Live starts up and is in use every day.

EDIT: I corrected my average calculation