i will have 2 SSD's - 1 is 60gb, 1 is 120gb. i have about 80gb of samples.

is it better to put as many as possible on the smaller one, and put the rest and the OS on the larger 1?

or put the OS on the smaller 1 and put all samples on the bigger 1? the problem with this 1 i guess is with the OS installed on the smaller 1, that doesn't leave a ton of space for other applications.

does having samples on the same drive as the OS lower performance like it can with HDD's?

thanks.

Put the OS and program files on the smaller SSD disk. Do not put large chunks of data there. You might need the extra space in the future.
And you accumulated that in how many years? In half that time the rest of the 120GB drive will be maxxed out! Maybe even in less time, since the libraries get bigger and bigger.

I'd actually put large sample libs on a 1TB drive. Maybe copy the most used ones or the ones you use in the current project only to SSD.
What makes HDDs slow is head movements. If they have to go back and forth from one section to the other, that slows it down. So keeping one drive busy with OS and programs and another with data only makes them more efficient.

SDD does not have a physical moving read/write head. That's why they are bleeing fast. Still there is a benefit in separating data and programs. First: it's nice and tidy. Second: each drive can benefit from the maximum bandwidth. Separate and balance the work, two can do more than one, work in parallel.

thanks.

1 drawback with that method is i will have only 20-25gb left on the smaller SSD if i put Windows 7 on it.

also, why is it a problem to have a large chunk of data on the OS SSD if it is read only? just that it takes up space?

thanks.

That indeed.

You should have more space left - Win 7 Pro 64bit is about 17GB. Add another 10 GB for programs and you still have more than 30GB free. Move your 'My Documents' folder to another drive tho. And disable hibernate to save space.

Taking up space and possible access conflicts - the OS needs to access the drive to read/write at the same moment you're playing your best performance from your sample library and you just need to load one more sample and artistic nirvana will be achieved, but there's this small delay and the moment collapses into frustration and you kick your computer and it tips over and all the music falls out and goes splat on the floor. Do you really want to take that chance? Not likely to be that dramatic, but there is a possible compromise. Splitting OS/Programs and Data is optimum for performance. You receive the benefit of two dedicated disks and controllers. You paid for that performance, why bottleneck it unnecessarily?

it turns out my small SSD is slower than my big SSD. when loading samples, is it better for the samples SSD be faster, or the SSD with the OS and my DAW?

thanks.

Maybe you should put the OS on the faster&bigger one. You could do benchmarks on what actually performs best in your situation.

The idea of multiple disks is to spread the workload, keeping them both busy with seperate dedicated tasks. Keep that in mind and you can figure out yourself what should be best in your situation.

NB: these are luxury petty problems. Go make music!!