Two hard disks or one large?

mucnoise
mucnoise Member Posts: 1 Newcomer
in Tech Talks

Hello, I am a beginner (Germany) and want to work with NI Komplete and a DAW in the medium term and produce sounds (more as a hobby). I will buy my own music PC for this purpose.

Question: Is it better to take a 2TB SSD or two hard drives with 1 TB each?

With one large hard drive, I would partition it into programmes and data. With single hard drives, one would be for programmes and the other for data. It's probably a question of speed...

Comments

  • Wendllandtyrell
    Wendllandtyrell Member Posts: 2 Newcomer

    As a beginner planning to work with NI Komplete and a DAW for music production as a hobby, both options can work, but it depends on your priorities.

    If you opt for a single 2TB SSD, you'll have the advantage of faster read/write speeds, which can significantly improve the overall performance of your system and reduce loading times for your music software and projects. The SSD will also provide a smoother experience when working with large sample libraries and virtual instruments.

  • Sunborn
    Sunborn Member Posts: 1,187 Expert
    https://community.native-instruments.com/discussion/15388/two-hard-disks-or-one-large

    Two hard drives always gives you much more flexibility than one hard drive!

    Plus that partitioning is not recommended for SSD drives.

    Since SSD uses memories for storing data with no moveable component, its transfer rate of memory chips is the same. Data does not remain confined to one physical region. So, if you want to enjoy an outstanding performance from your SSD, you can keep it as it is, as partitioning has no impact on its operation.

  • JesterMgee
    JesterMgee Member Posts: 2,132 Expert

    Basically what Sunborn says but in terms of if 2 drives are better than 1, makes no actual performance difference for the application.

    No need to do any partitioning since it makes no difference, just adds another drive letter and makes a single volume a set size, makes far greater sense to have a single 2TB space which you just install everything to.

    Having a single drive will mean less hardware to install, slightly less power required, less cables but having 2 drives means you have a little bit of "protection" since if you did have a failure, it would likely only be 1 drive that is affected.

    Personally I would shoot for the largest SSD I can afford over 2 x smaller ones since moving forward you can then choose next to install another large one.

  • PoorFellow
    PoorFellow Member Posts: 421 Pro
    edited July 27
    https://community.native-instruments.com/discussion/15388/two-hard-disks-or-one-large

    If you are buying / assembling a new PC the notice that quality drives of the new M.2 PCI Express 4.0 (NVMe) attached storage is up to ten times faster than SATA attached drives.

    As for the discussion about two drives , one for 'programmes' and the other for 'data' (sounds ? ) then it would serve you much better to have your OS and all your software on it's own drive so that you can easily backup and swap the drive if necessary. Same goes for 'Data' , you would want that you are able to easily swap or upgrade the drive. Especially if you consider using a 'data drive' of only 1TB. 1TB sounds of a lot but will not get you very far these days. The KOMPLETE 14 STANDARD Sample library (uncompressed) is +350 GB , but should you one day upgrade to KOMPLETE 14 COLLECTOR’S EDITION then that's a whopping +1.5 TB . To that you can add if you buy software with sample libraries of other makes !

    SSD drive(s) you will want for a system drive (OS) and probably for sound samples ('data') for programs where you want to browse sounds fast. But for general storage you can use an internal mechanical drive. Just remember , for all types of drives to take backups of things that you do not want to loose ! (real men don't take backups they cry instead over lost data) !

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