SSD vs. HDD external drives for recording

Joe Shirey

Member
Hey guys,

So I've been recording directly to my built-in SSD for years now, and I'm aware that this is not really considered kosher. Well, the ol' gal is finally out of space, so it looks like I have to make the jump to recording to an external drive anyways.

I was wondering if anyone here has any experience/expertise as far as benefits vs. costs of sinking the extra money into an external SSD as opposed to external HDD when it comes to recording? I'm on a macbook pro, so ideally I'll get a thunderbolt compatible drive. I'd like to use the drive to record to, as well as store/play my sample libraries (Superior Drummer, Kontakt, etc.)

Any recommendations/advice/info would be greatly appreciated!!
 
Hi,
using an SSD makes a difference only when copying a lot of data or loading sound libraries, not during recording.

SD loads waaaay faster when samples are stored on an SSD tho.
 
I only use external hard drives for archiving. And I do not trust USB drives much at all. Only use an external on a laptop if I have to.
 
Hybrid for the best blend of space, speed and cost
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If you can find one Seagate made a 7200 RPM 650GB buss powered Firewire 800 drive called GoFlex that just screams. Super handy. Good for backup, external libraries or just straight recording to. Literally faster than most internal laptop drives and no power adaptor. Like a jump drive on steroids. Maybe they have one in Thunderbolt interface.
 
The way I rationalise it is that 96k/24 audio will consume roughly 0.3 MB/s of bandwidth per track. Assuming that audio recording is a sequential write, a 7200RPM HDD should be able to do about 100 MB/s, so I don't think the payback is really there when using SSDs to record. Where an SSD will really shine is loading bunch of disparate files (such as a sample library), as it doesn't have to physically move the read head to get to each one. If you can afford the SSD space to hold all your uncompressed audio recordings then go for it, but I'd tend toward a 2-drive solution.
 
Something like a Superior kit will load quicker, but then it's just a one-time thing when you open the project. After that, it's loaded into RAM and whether it's SSD or not won't matter. Well, unless you're using some kind of sampling program which actually streams from the disk rather than loading into RAM, but I'm pretty sure there isn't much of that around these days. In terms of recording to it and the speeds required SSD is overkill.

But if you want to spend the money for quicker sample loading times, go for it. There's nothing wrong with it other than the extra cost. But if you're talking about storing large sample libraries as well as all your projects, that's gonna be a pretty big and expensive SSD.
 
Hybrid for the best blend of space, speed and cost
thumbsup.gif

Just to ad here, I was asking the same around recently and got an advice from an expert to have a SSD for programs, they load and work faster and to have a HD for saving the data. My next laptop will have 250 GB SSD and an external HD with a bunch of TB.
 
Why not get a ext. drive and back-up some of the things you don't use all the time, then continue using the internal drive for recording?
 
ssd's aren't great for situations where you have many many read/writes (even with trim enabled). better to use an hdd for that. ssd's actually crap out pretty quickly under those conditions. better for running apps and archiving or storing large amounts of data you want to retrieve quickly
 
ssd's aren't great for situations where you have many many read/writes (even with trim enabled). better to use an hdd for that. ssd's actually crap out pretty quickly under those conditions. better for running apps and archiving or storing large amounts of data you want to retrieve quickly
That's been my experience...^^^
I like the Glyph HDD.
 
ssd's aren't great for situations where you have many many read/writes (even with trim enabled). better to use an hdd for that. ssd's actually crap out pretty quickly under those conditions. better for running apps and archiving or storing large amounts of data you want to retrieve quickly

It's mostly the writes... I'm not aware of issues related to reads... It's the rewriting that causes "wear".
 
ssd's aren't great for situations where you have many many read/writes (even with trim enabled). better to use an hdd for that. ssd's actually crap out pretty quickly under those conditions. better for running apps and archiving or storing large amounts of data you want to retrieve quickly
This is wrong, actually.

Modern SSDs are as reliable as HDDs. The myth that SSDs are more "vulnerable" to damage than HDDs stems from the fact that capacitors are sensitive to quick drops and peaks in temperature, which can happen frequently in Data centers and server farms. And even there the number of SSDs used has increased a lot over the last years, mostly because of technical advancements.

For private applications, SSDs are more (or at least as) reliable than HDDs, as they have no moving mechanical parts, so are less vulnerable to extreme temperatures and mechanical stress.

Also, most HDD manufacturers pretty much lie about the reliability of HDDs (taken from here):
So are SSDS more or less reliable than HDDs? It’s hard to say with certainty since HDD and SSD manufacturers may overstate reliability. (There’s a newsflash.) Take HDD vendors and reported disk failure rates. Understandably, HDD vendors are sensitive to disk failure numbers. When they share failure rates at all, they report the lowest possible numbers as the AFR, annualized (verifiable) failure rates. This number is based on the vendor’s verification of failures: i.e., attributable to the disk itself. Not environmental factors, not application interface problems, not controller errors: only the disk drive. Fair enough in a limited sort of way, although IT is only going to care that their drive isn’t working; verified or not. General AFR rates for disk-only failures run between .55% and .90%.

However, what the HDD manufacturers do not report is the number of under-warranty disk replacements each year, or ARR – annualized rates of return. If you substitute these numbers for reported drive failures, you get a different story. We don’t need to know why these warrantied drives failed, only that they did. These rates range much, much higher from about 0.5% to as high as 13.5%.
 
i stand corrected.....and that's good to know. :)

i'm operating about 3-4 years behind the curve on anything tech based, so i should probably keep my antiquated opinions to myself, eh!
 
i stand corrected.....and that's good to know. :)

i'm operating about 3-4 years behind the curve on anything tech based, so i should probably keep my antiquated opinions to myself, eh!
Don't get me wrong; reliability IS a problem, but pretty much only for large-scale I/O on server farms. Most of the early adopter issues with SSDs have been fixed already.
I wouldn't buy cheap noname drives, though; but I wouldn't do that with HDDs either.

The potential damage done by mechanical wear in any private consumer situation far outweights the occasional damaged bit.

The biggest reason to get a HDD is size-per-dollar.

We are talking uncompressed audio files here. It's not unusual to get hundreds of Gigs of .wav or flac.
Get that 1TB HDD external drive for storage and use the SSD for working on your projects.
 
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