2

So, I'm going away for a bit and want to take my laptop with me. Including my NI Komplete so that I can make music when/where I want to...

I've been looking at getting an OCZ Vertex 3 250GB and moving Komplete onto it and throwing out the DVD drive (I haven't burnt a disc of any kind in about 2 years)

I know that SSDs slow down with age(and a lot of writing and 'erasing' causes this slow down, etc, but I'm wondering whether I need to be concerned about this at all as the iea is to use this drive solely for my NI stuff, including the great instruments made by Tonehammer, Twisted Tools etc. So no writing/erasing taking place....only streaming from disk.

The forums I've looked seem to discuss the pros/cons of using an SSD as main drive, but there doesn't seem to be much out there in the way of music/sound specific tricks.

@joecavers @C3Sound @JayJennings

What do you know?

2 Answers 2

2

I have replaced the stock drive in my macbook with a 500 gb hard drive with 4gb flash memory. It automatically copies the most used files to the flash. Not nearly as fast as a real ssd though.

Wouldn't it be a better option to have a (perhaps smaller) ssd for your OS and applications, and put a normal 500gb or 750gb drive in place of the dvd drive for your samples? That way you have much more space, and if it's a fast drive you won't hit its limits very quickly when making music.

The downside is that power consumption will increase slightly.

ADDENDUM:

The degradation over time is caused by write operations, reading doesn't affect it. TRIM and garbage collection on the drive are invented to minimize this. If this is supported, the drive degradation will be much, much lower. TRIM is supported from OS X 10.6.8 onwards, but normally only on Apple-installed SSDs. Trim Enabler for Lion or Trim Enabler for Snow Leopard activates this for third-party non-Apple SSDs. (Disclaimer: Haven't tested it myself).

If you order your Macbook Pro with SSD right from Apple, this is not really an issue as three mechanisms ensure the degradation is only minimal: TRIM support, Aggressive garbage collection by the OS and a big chunk of over-provisioning for wear-leveling.

In third-party SSDs, these last two are handled by the drive itself. Avoid OCZ, as they have poor life expectancy.

And if you have a good backup strategy, wiping the drive and then restoring the data from the backup will bring it back to new-like condition. While this is annoying when you store your sounds on it, if it's just the OS and Software this is quite doable as that data changes much less (maybe a preference file here and there).

2
  • I Like this idea, but what happens is that SSDs slow down over time due to read/write operations...and there'll be plenty of these on a drive acting as the system drive.
    – Kurt Human
    Nov 23, 2011 at 8:39
  • In your last paragraph you have me slightly confused...but thanks for the answer! I intend on using the SSD for ONLY NI komplete content, so once all the sample content is written I will NEVER change(delete, copy, edit) it, so I won't need to worry all that much about performance degreadtion. Thanks for the tip on OCZ...didn't know that. Every Apple Reseller in my town seems to flogging the OCZ Vertex 3 at the moment
    – Kurt Human
    Nov 24, 2011 at 11:11
1

I have an SSD in my Macbook, love it.

However, be aware that the Komplete factory library takes up around 200GB, even with a lot of the Kontakt patches in their compressed states. That doesn't leave you much room for the OS or anything else. I store Komplete (and all other big libraries) on an external drive. No other choice really.

2
  • Thanks for the info, but what I mean is to keep my current HDD as the system drive, and pop in an SSD where the Superdrive is.
    – Kurt Human
    Nov 23, 2011 at 8:36
  • Btw, I've got ONLY the vanilla Komplete 8 and that clocks in at around 120GB
    – Kurt Human
    Nov 23, 2011 at 8:38

Your Answer

By clicking “Post Your Answer”, you agree to our terms of service and acknowledge you have read our privacy policy.

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged or ask your own question.