Small Internal SSD w/ external HD vs. Large Internal SSD

[aronf13]

I always hear that when producing music, it's a good idea to keep your system stuff and applications on your internal drive, and your sample library on an external. But if all you have is a firewire input (no sata, no thunderbolt) is it really gonna be faster than simply loading the samples from your internal hard drive?

I'm about to upgrade my internal HD to a solid-state one. What I'm wondering is whether it would be better to buy a larger internal SSD and just run everything on it... or whether that extra money would be better spent buying a smaller internal SSD and a large external firewire HD for the samples.

Which purchase and hard drive choice will optimize my speed and the health of my computer and drive(s)?

[hacktheplanet]

Just get the largest SSD you can afford that is larger than 200gigs. Repurpose your existing spinner as external storage with a FireWire case.

FireWire is indeed slower than the internal SATA interface used by your SSD, but unless you're streaming a billion tracks simultaneously, the performance will be more than adequate. Recording artists have been using FireWire drives for years.

[Stromkraft]

Which purchase and hard drive choice will optimize my speed and the health of my computer and drive(s)?

That primarily comes down to how many tracks you need to record (and play back) at once and at what quality you record. If the internal isn't fast enough to write your recordings to disk, then you need to split the work. Both S-ATA and Firewire should be sufficient for many tracks, but you need to calculate your recordings vs the write speed you can expect form the drive.

I can imagine SSD-only, which is what I use (960gb), SSD internally and SSD externally as well as a fast external drive (Your current internal may not cut it externally if your internal SSD isn't fast enough for your requirements).

The idea to split the work came in an era when small internal 5.400 rpm drives weren't fast enough, then bigger drives with more data per area made 5.400 viable and now you have SSD.

With SSDs you have to make sure it will stay fast, due the possible lack of internal Trim and the possible lack of support for your drive in Yosemite if you're on OS X. Note that bigger SSDs normally are faster. Check the stats for different sizes of the drives you're interested in.

Remember to weigh in how many tracks that need to play back from disk. I have never run into an issue with play back from SSDs with about 50 concurrent tracks, but I also record few tracks at the same time and only use 24bit/44.1Khz quality. With higher quality and more tracks it could become a factor.

I manage with internal SSD only at the moment, but I can buy any fast drive and pop into my external Firewire bay should I need it.