Should I use an SSD cache?

[Digby]

Obviously I have cherry picked those examples, some might consider SP to be a lesser brand to WD, but the point remains that at 2TB the technologies are roughly equal cost.

interesting and a no brainer if you only need 2TB, but how many of us need that little total storage these days. It does beg the question if you need 4TB of storage and are set on SSD, why not buy 2 x 2TB as opposed to 1 x 4TB?

 

[Berwhale]

interesting and a no brainer if you only need 2TB, but how many of us need that little total storage these days.

Well your original comment questioned the use of SSDs for all but NAS over 10TB

It does beg the question if you need 4TB of storage and are set on SSD, why not buy 2 x 2TB as opposed to 1 x 4TB?

2TB is certainly the sweet spot for SSDs at the moment, although the £/TB is only marginally lower than 1TB drives.

I expect 2TB NVMe drives to hit £50 within a month or two, so you will be able to buy and fully populate one of these for under £750 (although I would probably stick some more RAM in there as well)...

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Asustor-Flashstor-Pro-FS6712X-Enclosure/dp/B0BZCM22WD?th=1

 

[khensu]

interesting and a no brainer if you only need 2TB, but how many of us need that little total storage these days. It does beg the question if you need 4TB of storage and are set on SSD, why not buy 2 x 2TB as opposed to 1 x 4TB?

In my case, it wasn’t really an option. I have Roon running on a NUC. The only internal storage options are a 2.5” slot (boot) and an M.2 slot, both SATA only. All my music was on a 4TB external USB drive. Aside from the brief delay if the drive needs to spin up, that has been working fine for me, but I have been worried about the longevity of the drive. My library itself is right around 2TB, and I wanted to relocate it to an SSD, but there seems to be no such thing as a 4TB M.2 SATA SSDs. I ended up buying a 4TB external USB SSD. It was on sale for around $240. Yeah, kind of pricey compared to spinning rust, but I really, really didn’t want to lose it all if that HDD dies. It can now be my backup, though, and I was willing to pay the premium for the peace of mind (and no spin-up delay as a bonus).

 

[Prana Ferox]

interesting and a no brainer if you only need 2TB, but how many of us need that little total storage these days. It does beg the question if you need 4TB of storage and are set on SSD, why not buy 2 x 2TB as opposed to 1 x 4TB?

There are two related parts here.
- If you have that much stuff, and you care about it, it probably needs a means of backup and data protection. So you don't need 4TB of storage, you need 6TB or more, so if you lose a drive you don't lose all your data. It really really sucks losing terabytes of important, difficult or possibly impossible to replace stuff to a single failure.
- Once you start thinking about data protection, you again probably want dedicated hardware (and a dedicated client, or at least a VM) for that purpose. Trying to do it on whatever client box you use daily tends to be inefficient and reduces the protection.

Alternately, if your data is something you can just pull out of the cloud if the drive goes bad (like a game library or something) then you probably don't need many terabytes of local storage in the first place.

The major reason I wouldn't go with spindrives near point of use is because they're slow, unbearably slow for something like an everyday Windows box, once you get used to SSDs. For a data array it's a different matter. I've also had many, many HDDs go bad on me over the years, they're moving parts, it's a matter of time. SSD, if you buy a decent quality one, don't abuse it (which is pretty hard for a client drive) and pay minimum attention to cooling, it lasts nearly forever. On a more minor note, the average SSD consumes a lot less power and makes a lot less heat than an HDD.

 

[ThatM1key]

My library itself is right around 2TB, and I wanted to relocate it to an SSD, but there seems to be no such thing as a 4TB M.2 SATA SSDs.

M.2 SATA was such a silly standard. Takes up the space as a NVMe drive and costs the same as a NVMe drive. If you wanted any kind of SATA SSDs, most people would just get a 2.5 SATA SSD and stick anywhere in there PC with 3M.

I ended up buying a 4TB external USB SSD.

I think you should've "built your own". When you DIY, you get to choose the enclosure and the SSD you want versus relying on companies that could take short cuts (Ex: Cheaper NANDS, Controllers and even heat transfer materials).

SSD, if you buy a decent quality one, don't abuse it (which is pretty hard for a client drive) and pay minimum attention to cooling, it lasts nearly forever. On a more minor note, the average SSD consumes a lot less power and makes a lot less heat than an HDD.

I would argue that SSDs do produce more heat (Without any cooler). If you did use a cooler, you could be hurting the transfer speeds. People are still doing studies on if you should run your SSD with a cooler or not (Current studies say Gen 4 or lower don't need one but Gen 5 potentially).

Can't imagine going back to HDDs.

I still use HDDs from time to time but I know your feeling. Looking back at 2000s/below computing, we used to run the OS and videogames off the same HDD and I wonder how that was even possible.

 

[DavidShe]

A 4TB SSD costs around $150 and will store about 10,000 hours of stereo CD-quality FLAC audio. You can install four 8TB SSDs on some motherboards. Any SSDs will be more than adequate in terms of performance for audio data.

 

[ThatM1key]

A 4TB SSD costs around $150 and will store about 10,000 hours of stereo CD-quality FLAC audio. You can install four 8TB SSDs on some motherboards. Any SSDs will be more than adequate in terms of performance for audio data.

The 4TB SSD drives that cost $150 are garbo

 

[DavidShe]

The 4TB SSD drives that cost $150 are garbo

Did you find that the 4TB SSDs produced less-precise imaging or a more analytical sound?

 

[ThatM1key]

Did you find that the 4TB SSDs produced less-precise imaging or a more analytical sound?

Nothing like that at all. Usually cheap SSDs use: Cheaper NANDs, Controllers, Capacitors, etc.

 

[Prana Ferox]

I would argue that SSDs do produce more heat (Without any cooler). If you did use a cooler, you could be hurting the transfer speeds. People are still doing studies on if you should run your SSD with a cooler or not (Current studies say Gen 4 or lower don't need one but Gen 5 potentially).

If you're looking to replace HDDs you're presumably not jumping straight to Gen 4 or 5 drives. Those drives have very little benefit to consumers to begin with. SATA 2.5" SSD or even Gen 3 PCIE are very power efficient, and power used is heat out.

If you are doing something less mainstream like using used enterprise SSDs sure, those need some cooling, but you get other benefits from that (higher density, power loss capacitors) and also I don't think the OP is going that way.

 

[khensu]

I think you should've "built your own". When you DIY, you get to choose the enclosure and the SSD you want versus relying on companies that could take short cuts (Ex: Cheaper NANDS, Controllers and even heat transfer materials).

Sure, I could have, but I already had this NUC, so figured I might as well use it. The external SSD is working great, so I don’t reallh care that it was a bit more expensive than an internal.