Need drive advice

[Max Arwood]

I have 2 mb slots open.
I need 2gig drive for

pcie2.0 x1_1 slot

or

PCIE 2.OX 16_3 slot compatible with PCIE x1 and pcie x 4  devices

BaseBoard Manufacturer
ASUSTeK Computer INC.

BaseBoard Product
P8Z68-V PRO GEN3

BaseBoard Version
Rev 1.xx
 

or should I just get another sata ssd?

[Amberwolf]

Just to be sure, is that really only 2gig, or 2terabyte?  

 

[mettelus]

Another SSD would be simpler, BUT.... IIRC that MB will only support 2 drives running at SATA 3 speeds, so extras would run at SATA 2 only. Some of the PCI slots also share bandwidth with others, so the more you plug in, the less throughput you get. Is replacing an existing SATA 3 drive with a bigger one an option?

[Max Arwood]

sorry 2tb
I already have 3 drives. 3 2tb drives. I don’t notice one being slower than the other 2?? I was gifted three 8DIO libraries for Christmas by one of my clients. I already have the flute from one of those and it is 3 gig! I can’t even imagine the total bytes in 3 full libraries!! I was thinking a sata 3 ssd or an nmve. I guess the drives are not reading data at the same time??? It would be a 4th drive to move libraries from a spinner to a faster drive. Now I don’t know what to do?? 
I could pull a 2 and replace with a 4 would that be better?

[Chaps]

One option I have considered to expand my internal drive capacity, which is close to being maxed out with SATA connectors on my MB, is to get a PCIE adapter expansion card that can hold an NVMe M.2 drive, though with PCIE X1  I don't think you could take full advantage of its speed.. One of the reasons I replaced my old MB was so I could use NVMe M.2 drives. My MB only has slots for two NVMe M.2 drives but with a free PCIE X16 slot free I can put in an adapter that can hold four NVMe M.2 drives. Upgrading the motherboard (and RAM) is an option that can have many benefits. You can also get USB adapters that can hold an NVMe M.2 drive. I used one to clone my OS from a 500 GB NVMe M.2 to a 2 TB NVMe M.2 drive. Now I can use the USB NVMe M.2 adapter as external storage If I want to.

[Max Arwood]

I'm not sure what shared truly means? Does it completely reduce the speeds of all drives connected to these ports to 3g/s? or if only one drive is being accessed can it use the full 6g/s

[Max Arwood]

I was thinking about SABRENT NVMe M.2 SSD to PCIe X16/X8/X4 Card with Aluminum Heat Sink (EC-PCIE),

and adding 1-2tb drive to it. Maybe the 4tb is the way to go. The only problem I have with this is that my backups are all 2tb drives (6).

Amberwolf lol old age error lol

mettelus Thanks, still have questions about shared bandwidth stuff.

chaps I was think for the future. I thought buying nmve drives would be a better long range investment

Edited January 1 by Max Arwood

[Chaps]

2 hours ago, Max Arwood said:

chaps I was think for the future. I thought buying nmve drives would be a better long range investment

I think so, too. Until something better comes along their transfer speeds are pretty hard to beat, and every generation gets faster... as long as you have a motherboard that properly supports them. If I can I would like to upgrade everything in a few years. Motherboard, RAM, and drives. Maybe switch to liquid cooling and upgrade my processor. Hell, might as well get a new case while I'm at it. My modular 850W PSU is a keeper, though.

[Sock Monkey]

Just today I ran the Samsung Magician to see how my 4 drives are doing.  All are Samsung brand new Nov 2023 .   This is  when I built this new machine . Two are 1 TB Me and the others 2 are 500 GB  regular SATA SSD  900 series.

 The ME drives are my C and D drives. D is all my audio projects. Those 2 clock in at over 3400 MBPS ? transfer speeds and the 2 SSD drives at 500 MBPS?? speeds  so defiantly there is a huge difference.    

 

 

[Max Arwood]

I didn’t know how that stuff works. I read a bunch about it, but I still don’t understand all the details.  

[kitekrazy1]

On 1/3/2025 at 9:44 PM, Max Arwood said:

I didn’t know how that stuff works. I read a bunch about it, but I still don’t understand all the details.  

too much of a rocket science for me. That's why I still use SATA. 

[Chaps]

1 hour ago, kitekrazy1 said:

too much of a rocket science for me. That's why I still use SATA. 

Bottom line is, they are all just drives that store information. You put them where they are supposed to go, format them, put on the operating system if needed, then you're off and running. I was in my late 60's when I installed my first M2 SSD (I installed Windows 10 from a CD). I read my motherboard manual, watched a couple of YouTube videos, and it was pretty easy. Cloning my original 500 GB M2 drive  to a new 2 TB M2 drive using a USB M2 enclosure  ($20 at Amazon) was also pretty simple using Samsung Magician software, included with my Samsung M2 drive. If you have ever installed an internal HDD then installing an M2 drive won't seem much different. In some ways they are easier because you don't have to mess with SATA cables because the motherboard handles power and data transfer. I suggest anyone hesitant about using an M2 drive watch some YouTube videos to see how they are installed before deciding the process is too difficult. I am far from being an expert on this technology but learning how to use them was not much of a trick for this old dog.

[kitekrazy1]

15 hours ago, Chaps said:

Bottom line is, they are all just drives that store information. You put them where they are supposed to go, format them, put on the operating system if needed, then you're off and running. I was in my late 60's when I installed my first M2 SSD (I installed Windows 10 from a CD). I read my motherboard manual, watched a couple of YouTube videos, and it was pretty easy. Cloning my original 500 GB M2 drive  to a new 2 TB M2 drive using a USB M2 enclosure  ($20 at Amazon) was also pretty simple using Samsung Magician software, included with my Samsung M2 drive. If you have ever installed an internal HDD then installing an M2 drive won't seem much different. In some ways they are easier because you don't have to mess with SATA cables because the motherboard handles power and data transfer. I suggest anyone hesitant about using an M2 drive watch some YouTube videos to see how they are installed before deciding the process is too difficult. I am far from being an expert on this technology but learning how to use them was not much of a trick for this old dog.

Not sure how cables are somehow an issue these days.  There's a greater chance of ruining a board installing an nvme.  It has happened before.  Plus you have to research which ones will work on boards 10 years old.   Not so with SATA.  I prefer SATA only for more ports.  I like less eggs in a basket.  Having an 8gb nvme go bad seems pricey than losing a f 2GB SATAs.  The reality is how often do we open a system case any way.

[MusicMan]

On 1/9/2025 at 1:07 AM, kitekrazy1 said:

Not sure how cables are somehow an issue these days.  There's a greater chance of ruining a board installing an nvme.  It has happened before.  Plus you have to research which ones will work on boards 10 years old.   Not so with SATA.  I prefer SATA only for more ports.  I like less eggs in a basket.  Having an 8gb nvme go bad seems pricey than losing a f 2GB SATAs.  The reality is how often do we open a system case any way.

The performance of SATA is so much worse though.

I'd recommend NVMe instead of SATA these days every single time, as long as the machine can accept it and then simply back it up to a SATA if required and worried about losing the 8TB. Ideally that should be backed up elsewhere as well. The easiest option of SATA definitely isn't the best in this particular situation.

[kitekrazy1]

4 hours ago, MusicMan said:

The performance of SATA is so much worse though.

I'd recommend NVMe instead of SATA these days every single time, as long as the machine can accept it and then simply back it up to a SATA if required and worried about losing the 8TB. Ideally that should be backed up elsewhere as well. The easiest option of SATA definitely isn't the best in this particular situation.

An overkill statement. "So much worse"? 

Losing an 8TB drive doesn't matter what format it is, you lost 8TB of storage instead of a  2TB out of 8.   Plus that is expensive having to replace the 8TB instead of a smaller drive.

Sometimes I prefer practical over performance

 

Edited January 24 by kitekrazy1

[MusicMan]

8 hours ago, kitekrazy1 said:

An overkill statement. "So much worse"? 

Losing an 8TB drive doesn't matter what format it is, you lost 8TB of storage instead of a  2TB out of 8.   Plus that is expensive having to replace the 8TB instead of a smaller drive.

Sometimes I prefer practical over performance

Actually it's really not.

The performance difference between them is not trivial. It's a massive and noticeable difference in a system. Apart from benchmarks, you can feel the performance difference and during large compressed file extractions, backups, copies, or moves, the tasks are completed much sooner.

The 2TB / 8TB  is somewhat moot, as you're not excluded from using 2TB instead if you choose, regardless of format.

I get the practically and there's nothing wrong with opting for that, but it would be a disservice to anyone reading this thread not to call out what they would be losing by not spending a little more time to work out what is compatible with their system, or even adding a card to extend that compatibility.

[kitekrazy1]

My externals are nvme.   I'm hopefully done messing with drives.  It would make more sense to delete for space instead of hoarding every rompler library or loops.

[msmcleod]

On 1/24/2025 at 11:04 PM, MusicMan said:

Actually it's really not.

The performance difference between them is not trivial. It's a massive and noticeable difference in a system. Apart from benchmarks, you can feel the performance difference and during large compressed file extractions, backups, copies, or moves, the tasks are completed much sooner.

The 2TB / 8TB  is somewhat moot, as you're not excluded from using 2TB instead if you choose, regardless of format.

I get the practically and there's nothing wrong with opting for that, but it would be a disservice to anyone reading this thread not to call out what they would be losing by not spending a little more time to work out what is compatible with their system, or even adding a card to extend that compatibility.

Although this is technically true, it's worth putting things in perspective.

In any system you're going to have a bottleneck somewhere.  In a DAW, you've got disk access speed, memory access speed and CPU speed.  

If you're using plugins, by far the biggest bottleneck is the CPU.  Memory comes in next if you've got 100's of tracks (especially with samples).

Disk speed only becomes an issue when you're using a large amount of sample libraries that are streaming from disk, or a VERY high track/clip count streaming from disk.

Streaming 32 tracks of recorded audio data with a handful of clips per track isn't going to be an issue for any disk drive.  I was doing that on a P166 with IDE drives back in the 90's, and modern portastudios are streaming 24+ tracks from SD cards which are way slower than any hard-disk drive, never mind SSD's.

FWIW I'm currently using SSD drives via SATA 2 and have zero issues.  A large Omnisphere patch takes around 30-45 seconds to load on a 5400rpm hard-disk drive - on my SSD drives it's around 2 seconds.

Would NVMe be quicker still?  Absolutely.  But does it warrant the extra cost?  That's for the OP to decide.
 

[MusicMan]

41 minutes ago, msmcleod said:

Although this is technically true, it's worth putting things in perspective.

In any system you're going to have a bottleneck somewhere.  In a DAW, you've got disk access speed, memory access speed and CPU speed.  

If you're using plugins, by far the biggest bottleneck is the CPU.  Memory comes in next if you've got 100's of tracks (especially with samples).

Disk speed only becomes an issue when you're using a large amount of sample libraries that are streaming from disk, or a VERY high track/clip count streaming from disk.

Streaming 32 tracks of recorded audio data with a handful of clips per track isn't going to be an issue for any disk drive.  I was doing that on a P166 with IDE drives back in the 90's, and modern portastudios are streaming 24+ tracks from SD cards which are way slower than any hard-disk drive, never mind SSD's.

FWIW I'm currently using SSD drives via SATA 2 and have zero issues.  A large Omnisphere patch takes around 30-45 seconds to load on a 5400rpm hard-disk drive - on my SSD drives it's around 2 seconds.

Would NVMe be quicker still?  Absolutely.  But does it warrant the extra cost?  That's for the OP to decide.
 

If you dig into that though, it's also not always so clear cut.

A lot of what you've mentioned makes some sense for your content drives, but the system drive is what the whole computer runs off and that being faster, allows the OS and everything, including the DAW to run faster as a result as well. Apart from that, it's often just more responsive to use for all other applications and general use too. If the swap file is used, that will also be more performant as well. There really isn't any reason not to use them (apart from cost).

CPU is definitely the king in most cases, although as you mentioned RAM at times can be important as well. But often you're more limited with CPU. Changing a hard drive for something better is trivial and normally simple to do. If you use large Kontakt libraries, especially orchestral, using a faster drive just makes sense, so both system and content where possible is preferred.

All instruments are only going to get more demanding and larger, so it's often better to just simply do it once and do it right to save doing it all again.

Personally I know I'd rather get faster drives and pay a little more. Over the lifetime of a well spec'd DAW, it's worth it to me and I won't remember the spend, but I will appreciate it every time I'm working with large files, or libraries.

Cost is a consideration though, so I get the point.