Getting New Computer with 500GB ss drive
Kev914
Posts: 1,108
in The Commons
Just wondering how you set things up, if you have such a drive. Do you install programs to the SS drive or do the programs go to the regular drive? Like where would you put Daz Studio? Your anti-virus? Etc.
Thanks.
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I guess it depends on how much stuff you have. I installed Windows and all my software apps on the SSD, and then the content and documents and videos and so on, which probably won't fit on the 500GB SSD, on a regular SATA drive.
Simple answer: I put as much as I can afford on SSD.
I have Studio and my library,all my apps and games on SSD. I can't compare Studio to standard HDD as I've never had it installed there.
Looking at M2 storage for next build very soon as it's much faster than SATA attached SSD.
Well, yeah, but whether NVME vs SATA makes a practical difference in your usage depends on your usage. IF the loading of a Studio scene for example isn't bottlenecked by storage then it may not make any difference. I was recently watching a comparison of both while loading gaming scenes, and both drives loaded them in exactly the same time (29 seconds). And that was because the drives weren't the bottleneck. I suppose you could look at the total size of your scene contents and see if that is significant in terms of storage loading capacity.
And they do cost twice as much...
Not twice as much, they have come down quite a bit. But they are more expensive. Gotta pay to play.
Amazon right now:
Samsung 960 EVO Series - 1TB PCIe NVMe - M.2 Internal SSD $430
Samsung 850 EVO 1TB 2.5-Inch SATA III Internal SSD $300
Samsung 850 PRO - 1TB - 2.5-Inch SATA III Internal SSD $421
You can get an 850 EVO for much less, but that's not really an honest comparison. The 850 PRO is about the same price - but with the SATA interface, the difference in performance of the PRO over the EVO isn't worth the price difference to me. But yeah you can get SSD for less. It may not help Studio much more, but I'll also use the 1 TB as a boot drive and for Office apps, Photoshop, etc.
When I have to reboot because the GoZ bridge craps out it should be really fast.
I have a 500 gig solid state drive. It gets eaten up pretty fast. I don't have studio on it because it's just too small. Photoshop installed itself there much to my chagrin.
My 480GB SSD C Drive is only half full. Thats with Win10 installed, several games, including Skyrim, and all my software. What is NOT installed on it is my Daz Studio content library. Its remained on E Drive for over 10 years so that I could reinstall my OS if I needed to. Your SSD boots a lot faster then a standard HDD so installing everything on it makes sense.
By the way, anyone have a feel for a typical storage size for a large Studio scene, including all the stuff that is loaded?
I seem to recall that an NVME SSD can read like gigabytes per second or something like that? Which means if a 500MB scene isn't read by an SSD in a second or less, then clearly the storage isn't the limiting bottleneck. When you see games scenes taking 27 seconds with an NVME SSD, seems pretty clear that the SSD isn't slowing things down. And NVME vs. SATA becomes a non-issue.
Though FWIW I did hear that the big performance gain is in stuff like video editing and production stuff like that.
Thanks for the replies and the help.
My content directory is never on the OS drive.
Programs themselves? Yes.
My rule of thumb - if it scribbles in the registry then it goes on the OS drive. If it does NOT scribble in the registry it does NOT belong on the OS drive. I make an exception for the DAZ software - its easy enough to reinstall with DIM that I run Studio off my D: drive, not my OS drive.
I do have my CMS database and my Windows swap space on the OS drive, since its an SSD; currently using about half my 512 GB drive.
I tend to only put programs that I use often and that are not likely to keep update often on the SSD. For example, I use Photoshop CS4. The only "updates" that I might install are new plugins, but that is rare. I don't keep any Poser or DS content on the SSD.
If you are running Windows 10, it is fairly easy to move the user profiles to another drive. A lot of programs like to install folders in "My Documents" and this ensures that general rubbish isn't constantly being written to the SSD. Although it's not good practice, I tend to use the Desktop as a temporary store for things I am working on, such as spreadsheets etc and moving the user profiles means that the desktop is also stored on a HD instead of the SSD.
I have to say though that an SSD is one of the best upgrades that you can make to a computer, so I'm sure you're going to be pleased with it. My old machine is an i7 2600 with 16GB of RAM. Still a good machine for using Office, Internet browsing etc, and my girlfriend uses it regularly to check her emails (I can't bring myself to allow even her on my render machine). The problem with the old machine is that it takes about 5-10 minutes from switching on to actually being ready to use. A couple of weeks ago, I cloned the drive to an SSD and installed it as the new C: drive. It is now ready to use about 30 seconds after switching on - it's like having a new machine again.
So you can safely re-locate the library folders(Documents, Downloads, Music, Pictures) to the second drive? I read that you just go to properties, selection the location tab and update the path.
But I read that you shouldn't relocate program files, program data or user data or windows would no longer be able to update? (I don't think I was going to try to move those anyway.) But Documents etc might be go since programs add a lot of stuff to documents. Not to mention the stuff I add.
I have just done some research on Google and would like to offer my apologies - it's not as easy as I remember. Looking at my system, it seems that when the pc first arrived, I didn't move the Users folder - instead, I changed the default location for new User folders, then created a new account for myself that I have used since then. This was under Windows 7, before I upgraded to Windows 10. This method is explained in "Option 2" , about halfway down this page: https://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/87555-user-profile-change-default-location.html This did not move Program Files, Program Data etc.
If you're not happy messing with the registry, then what you mentioned above is possible a better solution - change the location of My Documents, Downloads etc from the Properties > Location menu.
I just set up my own folders manually and choose where to save stuff everytime.
I just opened the Dell support app...I was looking for how to make that recovery stick...and the first thing I noticed was the message----You harddrive has 16 bad sectors. Since this is a new pc, it doesn't necessarily mean that the hard drive it bad. etc.
So then I ran their hardware checker and the harddrive failed their smart test. It said I should back it up because failure was immentent. I then called Dell and they remoted in my pc and did various things like updated CMOS and their app and some drivers, but it still failed, so they are going to replace the drive. They said it might not be bad, because the diagnotics before the pc booted didn't find any problems. But they wanted me to be happy. I suppose it could be a false positive. Dsik Management also said it was happy. But what if it is not....
Anyway...question is...if I copy my library to an external drive and then copy it back to the new drive, is Connect going to recognize my stuff or am I going to have to re-install it all again. I just spent the past week installing it all, because even through I copied the entrie My Daz connect library over from my old pc, DS didn't see anything as being installed. If connect isn't going to recognize the library as being installed, then it seems like DIM is a better way to install. DS recognized the DIM library I copied over just fine. I guess I saved some time with the Connect library because it didn't need to download the items, but it still went through the install for each item. About 3000 of them.
That sounds like what they call a predictive failure with SMART - after a certain number of sectors go bad, there's a much higher chance the drive is going to suffer more or totally up and fail.
I recommend DIM. I had to re-install Windows on my render box, and discovered a very nice feature - export to CSV, and importing CSV. So you can easily have a list of items installed, delete, then import that list for items to install.
Dell replaced my failing drive and I restored my files and folders from the backup I had made using Macrium Reflect. (Love that program. Easy to use. And smaller and less intrusive that Ghost or that other one I can't remember the name of.) When I opened Daz studio, it said that the PC would have to be re-authorized to use the connect content. (Or something like that.) I logged into my account and all my libraries were there and ready to use. So glad I won't have to re-install.