Hard drives are an essential part of any digital audio workstation, whether it is Pro Tools, Studio One Logic Pro or any of the other DAWs available. In this updated Production Expert Buying Guide we are going to unpick the jargon, take you through the different options available and help you choose the best solution for your situation.
Boot Drive
The Boot drive is nearly always a drive inside your computer, often called an internal drive. This drive has your operating system, either Mac or Windows, as well as all your applications. It’s the drive that your computer starts up from or ‘boots’ from hence its name.
Media Drives
Most DAWs will allow you to put your projects and sessions on the same drive as your operating system and applications, but it is always better to use separate drives for your projects and sessions and leave the internal drive in your computer to handle the operating system (Mac or Windows) and all your applications. If you are using a lot of virtual instruments then you are likely to have significant sample libraries. If this is the case, we recommend that you have a separate drive, or drives, just for your sample libraries.
Types of Drives
Solid State Drives (SSDs) - SSDs are a relatively new technology, when compared to hard disk drives. However, SSDs have progressed rapidly in recent years, adding more storage capacity and the prices dropping. SSDs rely on electronic storage in what is called ‘non-volatile’ memory, which basically means that your data won’t disappear when the computer is turned off. NAND, the technology in most SSDs is a kind of flash memory. At the lowest level, floating gate transistors record a charge (or lack of a charge) to store the data. The gates are organised in a grid pattern, which is further organised into a block.
Updating data is more complex for SSDs than HHDs. With SSDs all the data in a block must be refreshed when any portion of it is updated. The data on the old block has to be copied to a different block, the block is erased, and the data is rewritten with the changes to a new block. Because the process of writing data involving a copy process the drives are made bigger than what is says on the cover, so that the drives have headroom to move and delete data without impacting on the overall storage capacity. When the drive is not doing anything, a process called Garbage Collection goes through the blocks and makes sure that data in any old block is erased so that the block is free to be used again.
There are now effectively two types of SSDs. Both what we call SSDs and NVMe (non-volatile memory express) drives are solid state drives, in that the data is stored on chips. The key difference isn’t the form factor but how they interface with your computer and it is this that gives NVME drives their improved performance.
However NVMe drives use a lot more power than SSDs and re more expensive than SSDs.
Notes
AHCI versions of these drives plug into the PCIe slot, but use the AHCI drivers
Some older versions of HHHL use proprietary drivers
NVMe versions typically use native OS drivers
In conclusion, SSDs are cost effective and convenient to use. NVMe drives are much faster but more involved to implement.
Hard Disk Drives (HDDs) - These drives are made up of spinning disks, called platters, coated with magnetic particles with a head for each platter that floats on a cushion of air as it moves around accessing and writing the data onto the magnetic coating. Mike often describes it “as like flying a jumbo jet a zero altitude trying to find a needle in a haystack”. The drive has a way of knowing where each piece of data is on the hard drive. However, each head can only be in one place at any one time, so to pull multiple files off the drives simultaneously, the heads have to dart around the platters very quickly and there is a limit to how fast they can do that and so that limits how data you can get off an HDD at the same time.
As the platters are usually made of glass, we all know what happens when you drop a glass, it smashes. Correspondingly, when you drop an HDD, the same thing happens and just as it isn’t possible to reassemble a glass once it has smashed the same thing applies to HDDs. The data is gone with no way of recovering it.
They don’t store well on the shelf not spinning. The bearing can become sticky and the drive may not spin up when you plug it back in to access it to retrieve an old project.
One way of improving the performance of an HDD is to spin the platters at a higher speed. This is what the RPM number in drive specs is referring to. You will typically see drives with a spin speed of either 5,400 RPM or 7,200 RPM with some high spec drives offering a spin speed of 10,000 RPM.
We recommend that if you are going to use rotational drives for pro audio applications then go for at least 7,200 RPM drives.
The reality is that these days HDDs are being relegated to archival and large capacity storage solutions, especially as the price of SSDs has come down.
Hybrid Drives - The most well known hybrid drive was the Apple Fusion Drive. These drives were intended as a cost-effective solution in the very early days of SSDs and were, as the name suggests, drives made up of an HDD and then a small SSD, all in the same case and so they do not look any different to a normal HDD. The design of a hybrid drive was about trying to give you the best of both worlds, by putting the files that the computer uses a lot on the faster SSD bit of the drive and leaving everything else on the slower HDD part of the drive. What this also means is that files are constantly being swapped between the SSD and HDD sections. For some users, this caused significant issues, especially with audio applications. In the days of Pro Tools 10 and 11, Avid used to make this statement in their Qualified Apple Computers Knowledge Base articles…
Avid is not currently qualifying iMac models with hybrid solid state / hard disk "Fusion" drives. According to some customer reports, these drives may have performance issues; this has not been verified by Avid.
But this was last updated on Jan 29th 2015. Current Avid compatibility articles do not make any mention of Apple Fusion drives.
Even so, we still recommend that you avoid Hybrid or Fusion drives, especially as the price of SSD drives has come down so much in the last couple of years.
These days you are likely to only ever come across Fusion drives in older Apple computers. If you do have one, then we recommend that you replace it with an SSD as this is a very cost-effective solution now.
SSD Or HDD - Which Is Better?
HDD Pros
Are a proven technology
Are less expensive - the bigger they are, the cheaper they are compared to SSDs
Available in larger storage sizes
HDD Cons
Use mechanical parts used to read and write data
Are slower to access data
Are easily damaged by shock or dropping
Consume more energy
Heavier than SSDs
Limited life span
SSD Pros
Deliver faster load times for the OS, Apps and media
Much less prone to shock and being dropped
Lighter than HDDs, which helps to keep portable devices lighter
Use less power than HDDs, which helps to keep things cool
Will last longer than HDDs
SSD Cons
Newer technology - we have less info about the long term reliability of SSDs
Larger capacity SSDs are hard to get
Larger SSDs are much more expensive
Summary - SSDs v HHDs
Drive | Cost | Performance | Durability | Max capacity | Energy Usage |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
HDD | Cheaper | Slower | Less Durable | 16TB | Uses More |
SSD | More Expensive | Faster | More Durable | 4TB | Uses Less |
There is no doubt that if you want to improve the performance of any computer, desktop or laptop, one of the best ways to do it is to change the boot drive from an HDD to an SSD. You will find that your computer boots up so much quickly and applications will load much quicker too.
We would recommend that you get at least a 512 GB drive as a new boot drive and if you can afford it a 1 TB drive. In our view a 256 GB drive is just too small, you will find yourself forever clearing stuff out to prevent the drive filling up.
We recommend that if you can afford it, that buying SSDs for your media and sample drives is a ‘no-brainer’. The improvements in performance, which translates to how many tracks you can play at once, when it comes to digital audio workstations like Pro Tools, Logic Pro and Studio One, are well worth the extra expense.
We recommend that you use small capacity drives for your sessions and projects, especially as they are relatively cheap to buy. This enables you to perhaps have a drive per client, and even be able to charge the client for it, like we did in the days of tape. See our article As A Pro Recording Studio Are You Using Hard Drives Like Tape? Perhaps You Should Start Doing It Now? for more on this.
Where HDDs still have a place is in your archive workflow. Check out Mike’s article What Type Of Storage Should I Use? to see how he uses high capacity 8 TB Archive HDDs in his archive and backup workflow. You will see that Mike no longer use drives kept on the shelf, his archive drives are kept spinning, which also makes it easier to access any old projects or media. However, consider having duplicate backups if you use this workflow as large capacity drives mean you have a lot of eggs in one basket.
We recommend using small SSDs as described above and then back them up to high capacity HDDs.
Since that article was written Mike has changed over all his ‘working’ drives from HDD to SSD even though his HDDs were Enterprise Class drives, which have a higher performance and a longer lifespan.
Long Term Reliability Of HDDs
Backblaze offer cloud storage for businesses and consumers alike and have 1,888,910,817,100,587,008 bytes of data storage on 181,464 drives spread across four data centres on two continents. Very helpfully for everyone, they also publish data every 3 months showing how reliable, or not, the hard drives they use are and for the first time this year, their data includes SSDs, which makes for some interesting reading.
Most of us are still using ‘spinning rust’ hard drives for archiving and larger storage requirements, although more and more of us are using SSDs for boot drives and media storage, more of which later in this article.
At the end of June 2021, Backblaze was monitoring 178,166 hard drives used to store data. In preparing the latest stats they declared that they removed 231 drives from the data because they were used for testing purposes or as drive models for which they did not have at least 60 drives. This leaves 177,935 hard drives for their Q2 2021 quarterly report, as shown below.
What this data shows is that there is all brands have reliability issues. Even when we look at the 3 drives that had no failures in this second quarter come from 3 different brands, Seagate, HGST and Western Digital. If you are interested you can study the full report. Click on the button below to go to the Backblaze blog article…
Predicting The Future?
SSD and HDD Lifetime AFR by Year
As this chart shows, from the start of 2018 the HDD boot drive failures accelerated. This continued in 2019 and 2020 even as the number of HDD boot drives started to decrease when failed HDD boot drives were replaced with SSD boot drives. As the average age of the HDD boot drive fleet increased, so did the failure rate. This makes sense and is borne out by the data, but rather than provide answers, this data raises a couple of questions…
Will the SSD drives begin failing at higher rates as they get older?
In the future, how will the SSD failure rates compare with what they have observed with the HDD boot drives?
Backblaze will continue to track and report on SSDs versus HDDs based on their extensive data.
Connection To My Computer
This is another area that is changing rapidly as computer and IT technology develops. Not so long ago computers tended to have Firewire and/or USB to connect to external peripherals like hard drive.
Firewire has pretty well died out now and been replaced by formats like USB3 and Thunderbolt. In this section we are going to look at each connection type.
USB3.1 & USB-C
Since USB 3 came out in the late 2000’s, we have seen further development in the format and now have USB3.1, which offers even better performance. Apple quickly adopted the Type-C connector, especially on the newer MacBook Pro laptop as well as other computers like the iMac but be aware you are likely to need adaptors as there are relatively few drives available with USB-C on them. Also you will need adaptors to be able to access older connection formats like USB 1 & 2, as well as Thunderbolt 1 & 2.
In March 2019 the USB Promoter Group announced the USB4 specification. Apart from the lack of a space between the B and the 4, the thing we noticed was a predictable and, given the history of USB we might even say inevitable, convergence between standards which looks like it will make things easier and simpler for all of us.
The direction of travel for the USB standard is of course upwards in terms of transfer speeds, and dramatically so. What started out as a replacement for parallel ports and PS/2 ports is now vastly faster but it still isn’t quite universal, which is a pity considering what the U in USB stands for. Firewire is pretty much consigned to history, but as USB is now so fast it offers an attractive alternative to Thunderbolt, with similar transfer rates at a lower cost. The case for convergence is obvious and USB-C connectors have offered a way of combining the two in a single hardware layer. However, you ay not be aware that not all USB-C cables carry Thunderbolt and users don’t want, and shouldn’t need to, have to work out the difference, they just want to be able to plug things together and get blistering performance. Can we get that?
What Is The Point Of USB4?
Brad Saunders, USB Promoter Group Chairman put it this way…
“The primary goal of USB is to deliver the best user experience combining data, display and power delivery over a user-friendly and robust cable and connector solution, The USB4 solution specifically tailors bus operation to further enhance this experience by optimizing the blend of data and display over a single connection and enabling the further doubling of performance.”
What this means in practice is that the the connection scales to the best mutual capability of the devices being connected. USB4 introduces Thunderbolt compatibility with existing USB 3.2, USB 2.0 and with the added simplicity it means that the available bandwidth can be deployed efficiently without breaking compatibility with USB or Thunderbolt devices.
Thunderbolt
Thunderbolt was developed by Intel to offer lightning fast connection for a whole host of computer peripherals from audio and video interfaces, to Ultra HD 4K monitors to external hard drives, Thunderbolt data transfer rates can be at least double those of USB, so if you need very high speed then Thunderbolt is well worth considering. Intel and Apple worked closely to make Thunderbolt a standard across the entire spectrum of Apple computers from 2012 onwards. That said there are a growing number of Windows based computers that come with Thunderbolt connectivity or you can add a Thunderbolt card if your Windows computer has PCI-e slots.
We have worked up from Thunderbolt 1 to Thunderbolt 2 and now Thunderbolt 3, which doubles again the transfer rates offered by Thunderbolt 2. With the introduction of Thunderbolt 3, Intel changed the connection by dropping the mini-displayport style 6-sided shape used on Thunderbolt 1 and 2 and adopting the USB Type-C reversible connector. This move takes us a step closer to having a universal connection for multiple technologies on both Windows and Macs, which is great news. The downside is that, is that it increases the number of adapters we need to keep legacy equipment connected to our new computers.
Thunderbolt 4 builds on the innovation of Thunderbolt 3 for a truly universal cable connectivity experience. Thunderbolt 4 always delivers 40 Gbps speeds and data, video and power over a single connection. It is the most comprehensive Thunderbolt specification yet with compliance across the broadest set of industry-standard specifications – including USB4, DisplayPort and PCI Express (PCIe) – and is fully compatible with prior generations of Thunderbolt and USB products. Thunderbolt 4 certification requirements include:
Double the minimum video and data requirements of Thunderbolt 3.
Video: Support for two 4K displays or one 8K display.
Data: PCIe at 32 Gbps for storage speeds up to 3,000 MBps.
Support for docks with up to four Thunderbolt 4 ports.
PC charging on at least one computer port2.
Wake your computer from sleep by touching the keyboard or mouse when connected to a Thunderbolt dock.
Required Intel VT-d-based direct memory access (DMA) protection that helps prevent physical DMA attacks. (Read more in the Thunderbolt Security Brief.)
How Do I Know If It Is Thunderbolt And/Or USB-C?
Because USB-C and Thunderbolt 3 share the same connector you have to be a little careful – Thunderbolt 3 ports can handle both Thunderbolt and USB devices, however, computers with USB-C only will not be compatible with Thunderbolt devices. To help, identify if your USB-C connector will support Thunderbolt and Thunderbolt-enabled ports should be identifiable by the Thunderbolt lightning bolt icon.
eSATA
SATA short for Serial Advanced Technology Attachment, or Serial ATA and is the connection type often used inside computers and there are 3 different types with 3 different speeds. SATA 1 is 1.5GB per second, SATA 2, which is what most older Macs like the Mac Pro cheese-grater use with a data rate of 3GB per second and the most recent SATA 3 which doubles again at 6GB per second.
eSATA (eternal SATA) is a variant of SATA intended for taking SATA outside of the computer. eSATA was a very useful format for high-speed connectivity outside your computer before the take up of USB3.1 and Thunderbolt.
To RAID Or Not RAID?
RAID (Redundant Array of Independent Disks) is simply a way of combining multiple hard drives to achieve a specific aim. For example, you can set up a RAID for added security or increased performance or both. Alternatively, you can set a RAID up to increase read and write speeds. RAID arrays require a minimum of two disks and you should always check the specs before buying a hardware RAID to ensure that certain RAID modes are possible. For a detailed look at the different RAID configurations and modes, check out our article Everything You Need To Know About RAID Drives.
For general audio work, we do not recommend that you use RAID drives. Some DAW software like Pro Tools does not support software RAID drive arrays. You can use hardware RAID arrays but with the performance of drives today there is little to be gained from using RAIDs.
We recommend using multiple drives if you have huge track counts rather than use a RAID array to get higher performing storage.
We recommend a robust backup and archiving workflow rather than using a redundant RAID array.
Bare Drives Or Drives In Enclosures?
You can either buy ‘bare’ or ‘internal’ SSD or HDD drives and then put them into enclosures yourself or you can buy them already on enclosures. If you aren’t too tech savvy then you are probably best sticking to drives that come already in enclosures. But it you feel competent enough to integrate the drives into enclosures yourself, you will find that you have a much wider range and you will be able to first choose the enclosure that best suits your needs and then populate it with the drives that best suit your requirements.
When you come to enclosures, the range becomes enormous and its not practical to provide specific recommendations.
We recommend that you first consider what you want the enclosure to do. Factors like how many drives do you want to go in it? What connection format, like USB3 eSATA, Thunderbolt, do you want to use? Then stick to reputable brands like MacSales or Icy Box, rather than buy cheap unknown brands that are likely to use sub-standard components.
Avid System Requirements For Audio Drives
Not all DAW manufacturers specify what drives are required to work well with their system. In fact Avid now say remarkably little, compared to days gone by, when they even specified what kind of Firewire chipset was qualified to go with Pro Tools. Here is what they now say in their System Requirements Pro Tools 2018, 2019, 2020 and 2021…
Audio Drive Requirements: One or more hard disk drives dedicated for audio record and playback. Audio drives should be formatted HFS+ Journaled for Mac or NTFS for Windows. When daisy-chaining a Thunderbolt drive and expansion chassis, the drive should be placed at the end of the chain. For more information on hard drive types & formats, see this article.
CAUTION: Case sensitive volume formatting and macOS FileVault are not supported.
When it comes to formatting the drives, SSD or HDD, this is what Avid have to say in their Knowledge Base article Hard Drive formatting for Pro Tools…
Audio Drive Requirements:
One or more hard disk drives, dedicated for audio record and playback.
Audio drives (any drives used with audio recording or playback or transfer) should be formatted HFS+ Journaled (not case-sensitive) for Mac, or NTFS for Windows
CAUTION
Case sensitive volume formatting is not supported
macOS FileVault encryption is not supported
What Drives Do You Recommend For Digital Audio Workstations?
As with most things you get what you pay for and we would strongly recommend that you stick with established brands. However, even with the established brands like Seagate, Western Digital and Hitachi, you will find that there is a wide range of opinions about which brand is best. This is probably due to the fact that most, if not all, the brands, at one point or another, have had some dud models, which have through the power of the internet ended up damaging their reputation out of all proportion. Check out the data from Backblaze further up this article for some reliable data or the drives they have used.
We recommend when selecting drives that you check the length of the warranty offered. Most consumer grade drives will tend to have a 1 or 2 year warranty, whereas the Enterprise grade drives will have a 3 or even 5 year warranty period, like those used by Backblaze.
This list is a starter. It isn’t practical to produce an exhaustive list not least because the models, specs and prices keep changing, especially when it comes to bare drives.
Portable Drives In Enclosures
Seagate 1 TB Expansion USB 3.0 Portable 2.5 Inch External Hard Drive
Seagate 2 TB Expansion USB 3.0 Portable 2.5 Inch External Hard Drive
LaCie 1 TB Rugged Mini USB 3.0 Portable 2.5 Inch Shock, Drop and Crush Resistant
LaCie 2 TB Rugged Mini USB 3.0 Portable 2.5 Inch Shock, Drop and Crush Resistant
LaCie 4 TB Rugged Mini USB 3.0 Portable 2.5 Inch Shock, Drop and Crush Resistant
LaCie 2 TB Rugged Thunderbolt + USB 3.0 Portable 2.5 Inch Shock, Drop and Crush Resistant
LaCie 2 TB Rugged Mini USB 3.1 (USB-C + USB 3.0) Portable 2.5 Inch Shock, Drop and Crush Resistant
Portable SSD Drives In Enclosures
LaCie Rugged SSD 250 GB Thunderbolt + USB 3.0, Portable, 2.5 inch External SSD
LaCie Rugged SSD 500 GB Thunderbolt + USB 3.0, Portable, 2.5 inch External SSD
Desktop Drives In Enclosures
Glyph Studio mini 1TB External Hard Drive USB 3, FW800 or eSATA)
Glyph Studio mini 4TB External Hard Drive, USB 3.0, SATA III, 2x FireWire 800
Bare SSD Drives
SSD Sleds to mount in 3.5” slots
We Hope This Helps
We hope this buying guide helps and if you have any additional recommendations or suggestions please do add them in the comments below.