HDD recommendations?
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- KVRian
- Topic Starter
- 574 posts since 16 Jun, 2003
I'm building a new system and whilst I'll have an SSD for the boot drive, the amount of storage needed for my sample libraries really dictates the use of a traditional HDD.
Looking around, 4Tb+ HDDs seem more expensive that I anticipated and spindle speeds appear to be 5400rpm more often than the older 7200rpm that I used to use.
Does anyone have any recommendations for reliable but inexpensive storage of 4Tb or more?
Looking around, 4Tb+ HDDs seem more expensive that I anticipated and spindle speeds appear to be 5400rpm more often than the older 7200rpm that I used to use.
Does anyone have any recommendations for reliable but inexpensive storage of 4Tb or more?
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- KVRAF
- 2677 posts since 20 Jun, 2012
Sample libraries need fast read access so don't get the 5400 RPM drives. They are garbage for anything other than very static storage like backup. Get at least a 7200 RPM drive with plenty of cache - at least 128 or 256 MB. Either Western Digital Black or Gold or Segate Exos series. None of them are particularly expensive.
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- KVRian
- Topic Starter
- 574 posts since 16 Jun, 2003
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- KVRian
- 1021 posts since 3 Oct, 2011 from Christchurch, New Zealand
seagate ironhawk pro line are decently priced (compared to the enterprise exos line) and deliver decent sustained read speeds ( around 200mb/s depending on the size of the drive).
trouble is even 200mb/s is slow if you’re dealing with projects with LOTS of kontakt instances - you can get 2tb m.2 nvme drives (which will give about a 10 fold thruput increase) for about the same price as an 8tb ironhawk pro, so could be worth putting your most heavily used libs on ssd if you can stretch that far. Otherwise it could be worth going to RAID and 2-3 drives to get the read speed up
trouble is even 200mb/s is slow if you’re dealing with projects with LOTS of kontakt instances - you can get 2tb m.2 nvme drives (which will give about a 10 fold thruput increase) for about the same price as an 8tb ironhawk pro, so could be worth putting your most heavily used libs on ssd if you can stretch that far. Otherwise it could be worth going to RAID and 2-3 drives to get the read speed up
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- KVRAF
- 2677 posts since 20 Jun, 2012
I think you're mixing up two lines here: IronWolf and SkyHawk. The first is a NAS drive, again, optimized more for static storage, and the second one, SkyHawk is meant for video surveillance eg for 24h video stream recording.jdnz wrote: ↑Wed Feb 19, 2020 6:52 pm seagate ironhawk pro line are decently priced (compared to the enterprise exos line) and deliver decent sustained read speeds ( around 200mb/s depending on the size of the drive).
trouble is even 200mb/s is slow if you’re dealing with projects with LOTS of kontakt instances - you can get 2tb m.2 nvme drives (which will give about a 10 fold thruput increase) for about the same price as an 8tb ironhawk pro, so could be worth putting your most heavily used libs on ssd if you can stretch that far. Otherwise it could be worth going to RAID and 2-3 drives to get the read speed up
This does not mean that they can't be used as general everyday use HDD's. They can, but there are better options.
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- KVRian
- 1021 posts since 3 Oct, 2011 from Christchurch, New Zealand
I absolutely meant the ironwolf pro line (just typing badly - there's no such thing as a 'pro' line for the skyhawk) - the ironwolf pro is meant for higher workloads than the stock ironwolf and has a decent sustained read speed.robotmonkey wrote: ↑Wed Feb 19, 2020 7:11 pm I think you're mixing up two lines here: IronWolf and SkyHawk. The first is a NAS drive, again, optimized more for static storage, and the second one, SkyHawk is meant for video surveillance eg for 24h video stream recording.
This does not mean that they can't be used as general everyday use HDD's. They can, but there are better options.
I'd never think of using a skyhawk in a data storage application, they're just not optimised for that, as they're all about sustained WRITE speed
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- KVRian
- 740 posts since 25 Aug, 2019
7200rpm doesn't improve the random access by a lot, this is the same slow mechanical technology.andrew71 wrote: ↑Wed Feb 19, 2020 1:49 pm I'm building a new system and whilst I'll have an SSD for the boot drive, the amount of storage needed for my sample libraries really dictates the use of a traditional HDD.
Looking around, 4Tb+ HDDs seem more expensive that I anticipated and spindle speeds appear to be 5400rpm more often than the older 7200rpm that I used to use.
Does anyone have any recommendations for reliable but inexpensive storage of 4Tb or more?
As well as the reliability is not very different between regular consumer hard drives.
If you want reliability, buy two drives and connect them into raid 1, or get a backup drive.
In case you have enough memory, you can load samples into memory at the project load, and/or store your projects on the ssd in a 'self contained' mode.