It is currently Fri Mar 29, 2024 6:30 am


Considering this SSD

Buying or building computers for Hauptwerk, recommendations, troubleshooting computer hardware issues.
  • Author
  • Message
Offline

murph

Member

  • Posts: 727
  • Joined: Fri Mar 02, 2012 5:45 pm

Re: Considering this SSD

PostWed Sep 23, 2015 6:56 pm

To add to the above,
I would recommend using 2 or 3 drives in raid 0. (Don't know if Mac can do that, but check???)
Use this array ONLY for the cache files (HW internal ... as Martin says)
The advantage is speed, but also, as only the cache files are involved, changing/increasing the spanned drive only involves re-building the cache, not re-specifing everything again. It's a pain when re-loading an organ the first time, but only endured once per addition/ change of drives.
The useful bit is that it requires only patience, when doing this, not intervention, (Thank you SO MUCH, Martin!!!!!)
Offline
User avatar

johnstump_organist

Member

  • Posts: 547
  • Joined: Wed Mar 25, 2009 1:15 pm
  • Location: San Antonio, Texas

Re: Considering this SSD

PostThu Sep 24, 2015 8:44 am

I've ordered an Mercury Accelsior PCI express SSD with 960 GB capacity. From what I've read and researched and people here have recommended, I think it will do the job. Once I get it home to Mexico and installed and the organs re-cached to it, I'll let you know if it was worth it.
John
Offline

Sylvaticus

Member

  • Posts: 45
  • Joined: Mon Dec 08, 2014 6:25 am
  • Location: Wisconsin, USA

Re: Considering this SSD

PostSat Sep 26, 2015 8:05 am

Nice to hear that others have had good luck with SSDs. I tried the MX-100 SSD drive as my main drive (Windows 7), and wound up sending it back. The boot speed was a lot better, and opening routine applications was almost instant, but the drive kept freezing, which made the improvement not seem worth it. I had intended to replace it with what I hoped would be a more reliable SSD, but after a good bit of research I became discouraged with what seemed to be a common feeling that they may have been put on the market prematurely, and none except the most expensive were likely to be free of these kinds of glitches. I know it was the drive because I tried it on a different computer with Linux and got the same delays. Crucial was really helpful with the return, BTW.

Since loading the organ is, for me, the most time-consuming part of booting up right now, maybe I'll become courageous enough to try an SSD again using phjo's method of loading just the sample sets on it. Meanwhile, I found that a dedicating a USB flash drive as a ReadyBoost cache sped things up noticeably.
Offline

Fokko

Member

  • Posts: 235
  • Joined: Sat Nov 11, 2006 6:48 am
  • Location: Zwolle Netherlands

Re: Considering this SSD

PostSat Sep 26, 2015 10:46 am

johnstump_organist wrote:I've ordered an Mercury Accelsior PCI express SSD with 960 GB capacity. From what I've read and researched and people here have recommended, I think it will do the job. Once I get it home to Mexico and installed and the organs re-cached to it, I'll let you know if it was worth it.
John


Dear John,
I am using this one for a year or so, and it works perfectly in my Mac Pro. Using for booting, office and mail, and so on and of course Hauptwerk working files (organ caches). However, to take maximum use of the read/write speed all parts of the equipment should be in tune :D

** EDIT ***
To show an example, loading Zwolle V2.5 full surround, 20 bit compressed. When uncompressed you will achieve again higher performance.
...
Organ ID: 001697.
Organ ver.: 2.51.
Organ min. Hauptwerk ver.: 4.0.0.000.
Mem.: total raw audio/trem. sample data mem. (excl. pre-proc. audio, images, or other data): 21694.09 MB.
Mem.: overall compression ratio for compressed ranks: 48.68 pct.
Total time: overall: 87.008 sec.
Total time: sample data: 82.968 sec.
…..
Sample loader: loaded from data cache: Y.
Sample loader: data cache total disk size: 22044.76 MB.
….
Sample loader: approx. avg. overall data read rate: 265.70 MB/s.
Sample loader: approx. avg. data read rate during disk reader activity: 2207.07 MB/s

Fokko
Fokko Horst
Offline
User avatar

johnstump_organist

Member

  • Posts: 547
  • Joined: Wed Mar 25, 2009 1:15 pm
  • Location: San Antonio, Texas

Re: Considering this SSD

PostThu Oct 08, 2015 10:00 pm

Ok, the PCIe SSD card is installed and working. Previous load time of Rotterdam main organ, all front samples, no rear samples, loaded at 24 bits, all releases, no truncation, no compression.
Previously, load time after rebooting was 400 - 430 seconds. Second load after loading a different organ, without rebooting was 300- 306 seconds.
New Load time after reboot is 100 - 106 seconds and second load is 90 - 96 seconds.
StAnnes with everything loaded at 24bits, no compression, is 10.5 seconds. Can't find a previous load time for it.
Remarkably, boot time doesn't seem to be much affected, but I never found the boot time to be too long and don't see much difference now.
The Prospectum Silbermann with both main and Ambience samples loaded at 24bits, loads in 36 seconds.
For me, I think it was worth it, I think I'll switch out organs more often now while practicing, but it came at a price.
John
Offline
User avatar

engrssc

Member

  • Posts: 7283
  • Joined: Mon Aug 22, 2005 10:12 pm
  • Location: Roscoe, IL, USA

Re: Considering this SSD

PostFri Oct 09, 2015 12:23 am

johnstump_organist wrote:I think I'll switch out organs more often now while practicing, but it came at a price.


But there is some real, tangible results.

Rgds,
Ed
Offline
User avatar

telemanr

Member

  • Posts: 1576
  • Joined: Sat Feb 18, 2006 4:18 pm
  • Location: Brampton, ON, Canada

Re: Considering this SSD

PostFri Oct 09, 2015 7:15 am

My SSD is running at half speed which puzzled me until I ran its software program and noticed it said I wasn't using SATA 3 so I wouldn't be getting full speed any time soon. I'm going to check but my motherboard probably doesn't support that so...
I want me one of those PCIe SSDs. I truly do.
Or a new computer.
Waiting for long load times discourages changing organs when I'd really like to.
Rob Enns
Previous

Return to Computer hardware / specs

Who is online

Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 1 guest