HDD vs SSD for recording & mixing

[dshreter]

But one thing to know, when a file is "deleted" off a HHD, a new file can be written on that same space right away (like milli-seconds).
When a file is deleted off an SSD, it takes the SSD time to fully "reset" the same space for a new file, so it might take up to a few minutes or up to an hour (rough guess) for a new file to take the same place (SSD features called Garbage and TRIM).

that might be technically true, but assuming there is free space on the disk all of this happens unnoticed on the background. You shouldn’t be seeing performance hits day to day, and certainly nothing that would perform worse than HDD.

 

[PortaStudio]

It will. One way you can slow that progress is to have a larger driver than you need, and not use the last few percentages of capacity. SSD file systems attempt to use the blocks more uniformly by spreading the usage across different blocks. The more room you have, the easier it is for it to find space to do that. In addition, as blocks go bad, others are used as substitute. So the more space you have, the less chance of this mechanism failing leading to hard errors.

Oh that's critical information. Thank you very much. I have a 1TB SSD in my computer for my system and software. Using the rest of the space for my projects can easily fill it up completely. I'm going to do my projects on my HDD for now, and maybe will go for a 4tb SSD later on if a price drop makes a reasonable choice for me.

On space issue, you can use multiple tiers. When I measure speakers, it is very data intensive so I put the file on SSD. Once done, the data gets save to HDD (and cloud storage for back up). You can even automate this so in the background the files get copied to larger but slower storage.

Can you recommend a tutorial for dummies (like me) for this automated process?

If you are moving data around a lot and doing processing of the tracks, you will be happier with SSD. Have you done an estimate of your actual data generation?

Besides performance, HDDs have a higher failure rate too.

I roughly estimate 500gb for the kind of project I want to do. (might be more). If the drive is big enough for me to do all the work on it until it is completed, I would only want to move it to multiple drives to have 3 backups once.

It will not degrade as fast as you might think, maybe degrade after a few years of audio/video production (best guess).
Never(?) heard there is a industry standard for recording and mixing (but I'm not the expert).
Assume most would rather use SSD, instead of HHD.
But one thing to know, when a file is "deleted" off a HHD, a new file can be written on that same space right away (like milli-seconds).
When a file is deleted off an SSD, it takes the SSD time to fully "reset" the same space for a new file, so it might take up to a few minutes or up to an hour (rough guess) for a new file to take the same place (SSD features called Garbage and TRIM).
So if your doing a long session of Audio/video work and the computer seems to slow the processing, you might have to run the TRIM command and wait a little while (several minutes) for the computer to free up space on the SSD.
But I'm not the expert, so double check everything I've said

Okay, I'm going to double check this.

 

[Berwhale]

Yes and no. HDDs still come in around 35% of the same sized SDD in the 1 tb or so range. Might add up if you wanted to do a Raid or NAS setup.

But the use case is adding a bit more storage to the existing 1TB SSD.

In the UK a new 1TB HDD is around £35 and I've seen 1TB SSDs on offer recently for under £50.

I don't see any reason to run RAID in a home setup in either a PC or a NAS these days (I have done both in the past).

 

[Blumlein 88]

But the use case is adding a bit more storage to the existing 1TB SSD.

In the UK a new 1TB HDD is around £35 and I've seen 1TB SSDs on offer recently for under £50.

I don't see any reason to run RAID in a home setup in either a PC or a NAS these days (I have done both in the past).

Prices in the USA seem more different although I do discount some very cheap SSDs as I've known them to not be reliable. I don't run RAID anymore either, but I'm more careful about backups or I probably still would.

 

[PortaStudio]

In the UK a new 1TB HDD is around £35 and I've seen 1TB SSDs on offer recently for under £50.

I already have enough HDD space in my system. The main benefit I see in the SSD is reliability. I might pick up a 4TB SSD if I see one for 200$

 

[Berwhale]

When a file is deleted off an SSD, it takes the SSD time to fully "reset" the same space for a new file, so it might take up to a few minutes or up to an hour (rough guess) for a new file to take the same place (SSD features called Garbage and TRIM).

I think it's unlikely that audio processing will generate enough IOPs to hit the 'write cliff' on a modern SSD.

If think you might hit the write cliff, then you just over-provision the drive so that NAND flash cells are reserved for write operations (reducing the apparent capacity of the drive by some percentage)

 

[Berwhale]

Prices in the USA seem more different although I do discount some very cheap SSDs as I've known them to not be reliable. I don't run RAID anymore either, but I'm more careful about backups or I probably still would.

RAID is an availability technology. It should never be mistaken for, or used in place of, a backup.

 

[Anonamemouse]

The SSD you need is a Western Digital Black. It was designed for gaming, it can handle lots of writing and is very fast.
It's not cheap though. Then again, if you want the best...

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www.westerndigital.com

 

[CD13]

Depending on the application, there should be no direct dependency on storage media while actively manipulating a file…should be all in RAM if the application is worth a damn. Recording would be direct to disk and any HDD will be more than fast enough.

Yes, an SSD will be faster generally speaking, but to the direct point of the original question, it should not matter.

Loading and saving would be your most noticeable gains depending on the file size.

If it’s on a hardware DAW, all bets are off.

 

[nerdstrike]

I think the collective is overstating the risks of SSD wear. You have to really pound on them, e.g. video editing is your job, in order to run into issues in a sensible time frame.

For example Samsung's 980 pro 2TB unit has an endurance of 1200 TB written, 600x complete drive writes before degradation becomes appreciable. It's an issue if you're the Slow Mo Guys, but in 7 years I've only written 100x the capacity of my system drive. It'll be completely obsolete by the time it fails on me.

 

[AnalogSteph]

I think the collective is overstating the risks of SSD wear. You have to really pound on them, e.g. video editing is your job, in order to run into issues in a sensible time frame.

Or run into a bad batch of flash. Samsung had one in the first half of 2021, apparently. But under normal circumstances, yeah.

These days, the largest contributor to drive writes for many people may in fact be their web browsers. Those are buffering streamed video and saving sessions quite regularly. Those using Firefox, for example, should consider going into about:config and adjusting browser.sessionstore.interval from the default of 15000 (ms = 15 s) to perhaps 60000 or even 90000. (No idea whether the same is possible in others.) My drive writes are down by a factor of 3 or so since I did that.

 

[AnalogSteph]

Some forms of RAID are used for back, like when a second HHD is used to back up the primary HHD.

Even a RAID 1 can only make sure that you still have access to the data if one of the two drives goes kapoof. (Availability.) If your computer gets infected with some ransomware that decides to encrypt all the data on your RAID volume, you'll still be screwed. Hence, not a backup.

 

[Matthias McCready]

HDD or SSD should be fine for your tasks.

HDD will obviously take more time to transfer files.

SSD is faster for moving files, but at a premium cost. I do a fair amount of tracking every-week (40-64 tracks, for 6-12+ hours per week), and the SSD I have is holding up just fine.

I have had drives fail, but not an SSD yet (knock on wood).

All hard drives will fail at some point, which is why if it is important multiple backups are important.

 

[PortaStudio]

HDD or SSD should be fine for your tasks.

HDD will obviously take more time to transfer files.

SSD is faster for moving files, but at a premium cost. I do a fair amount of tracking every-week (40-64 tracks, for 6-12+ hours per week), and the SSD I have is holding up just fine.

I have had drives fail, but not an SSD yet (knock on wood).

All hard drives will fail at some point, which is why if it is important multiple backups are important.

What my initial plan was, is to work on my project and when it is completed to make three copies on USB drives for archiving. Should I have a backup routine while working on the project. What is a viable way to do this?

 

[Berwhale]

What my initial plan was, is to work on my project and when it is completed to make three copies on USB drives for archiving. Should I have a backup routine while working on the project. What is a viable way to do this?

You should consider what types of data loss you are protecting against and how likely each one is to happen. You can then devise an approaches to address each type of failure as far as is practical or affordable.

For example, I would suggest that it's more likely that you loose a file through accidental deletion or overwrite, than it is through drive failure. So initially, I would focus on things like versioning of files (rather than repeatedly saving to the same file) and using what ever auto-save and backup file facilities exist within your DAW. I would then look at keeping a copy of your active files on two separate physical disks on your main PC (maybe using this: https://freefilesync.org/), then I would add an off-line backup to another drive (or NAS) which can be stored separately from your PC. After this, you could look at keeping another copy on Cloud storage.

 

[LTig]

What my initial plan was, is to work on my project and when it is completed to make three copies on USB drives for archiving. Should I have a backup routine while working on the project. What is a viable way to do this?

Using at least 2 backup media is the best idea. Keep one always stored at a different location, and exchange them regularly (optimum is immediately after a backup run).

 

[JayGilb]

A modern HDD is fast enough for audio editing. An SSD is very much faster. SSDs have a finite number of writes per "sector", so you need to keep an eye on this (not a risk with HDD).

It was something to worry about 10 years ago, but wear leveling algorithms have gotten much better and they will migrate heavily used sectors to unused areas automatically without user intervention.

 

[Berwhale]

It was something to worry about 10 years ago, but wear leveling algorithms have gotten much better and they will migrate heavily used sectors to unused areas automatically without user intervention.

This is also why it wasn't a good idea to use RAID on early SSDs. If you apply standard RAID algorithms to an array of SSDs, the disks all wear at the same rate which greatly increases the chance of a multi-drive failure when they wear out. Technologies like Synology's RAID F1 were designed to address this issue: https://global.download.synology.co.../Firmware/DSM/All/enu/Synology_RAID_F1_WP.pdf

 

[Sombreuil]

Between a HDD and an SSD (SATA or NVMe), I've seen a huge difference with Kontakt libraries, Omnisphere 2 and the like. For a mixing session, no difference at all since plug-ins depend on the CPU, RAM, etc, but have nothing to do with the drive you use.

Export time doesn't seem that different either.

 

[PortaStudio]

Using at least 2 backup media is the best idea. Keep one always stored at a different location,

Yes, I will go with 3 backups for archiving.

and exchange them regularly (optimum is immediately after a backup run).

Could you elaborate?

It was something to worry about 10 years ago, but wear leveling algorithms have gotten much better and they will migrate heavily used sectors to unused areas automatically without user intervention.

Good to know.

Between a HDD and an SSD (SATA or NVMe), I've seen a huge difference with Kontakt libraries, Omnisphere 2 and the like. For a mixing session, no difference at all since plug-ins depend on the CPU, RAM, etc, but have nothing to do with the drive you use.

Export time doesn't seem that different either.

Thanks for the information!