New PC Set up: Storage question
Scavenger
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in The Commons
Tomorrow my new rendering pc should be arriving. It'll have a 500 GB SSD and I'll be adding a 4tb HDD for storage.
The plan is to just have OS and programs on the SDD.....so my question is about my Daz library....will it make a major performance difference to have it on the HDD, or should it go on the SDD as well?
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It really only matters when you load an asset or scene... Besides my dad directory is Terabytes not Gigabytes so for me it has to reside on the regular hdd.I
I actually load my programs there too, so only Windows and a swap file is on the ssd. YMMV doing that but consider a couple years down the road.
The critical issue is how much content do you have and how much is that likely to grow over the next few years? I've been a DAZ user for six or seven years and my content would completely swamp a 500GB SSD.
Cheers,
Alex.
Well, I don't keep all assets loaded at all times, but a fair point, as my current active library is 145 gb. I was leaning towards the HDD, but good to get back up thoughts :)
Put the content on the 4 TB drive - it shouldn't slow loads that much. If you use smart content, put the CMS on the SSD. And put aside a few bucks a week to buy an external 4 TB usb drive for backups.
This, this, this! Not the part about smart content or CMS, etc. I couldn't care about that. I don't care if you store your library on a magnetic drum, animal skins, or have some Flintstones' prehistoric woodpecker carve it into stone tablets.
What I'm hot about is backups. Allocate funding for it now. You shouldn't be treating yourself to anything sweet or pizzaey until you have actually implemented your backup strategy. No more money on cigars, bourbon, candy, ice cream, cappucino, or fancy steak dinners until you've done your research and implemented your backup strategy.
Look up "3-2-1 Backups" and do it right. Until you do, it's PB (no J). And only on Saltine crackers (not bread; you can't afford that yet) until that's done. No butter, Nutella, Vegamite, or Jenamite either; I will know. I mean it. And I WILL say "I told you so" if you lose your sh..stuff and come here and lose your sh.. I mean start crying to us.
We just had one person here lose all his stuff. That's demoralizing and devastating. So don't be the next one, we might not be so kind.
Oh yeah, and once you have implemented your backup strategy, you'll need to upgrade your SSD. Really, a half-TB isn't enough for what it sounds like you're going to be doing (spending a lot of money on DAZ assets).
As Subtropic Pixel said, look to backing up your content as your highest priority. And 500 Gb? Sorry, but my monthly, incremental backups are more than that, and growing. I install new content on a dedicated 3 Tb HDD, and my backups go to a 12Tb NAS.
Backup now (or yesterday) because you will lose your whole runtime/s sooner or later. Replacing that without a backup will be very painful.
As to your original question, I'd put as little as possible on the SSD (which means it lasts longer, as too much content makes SSD's fail sooner) and the rest on secondary HDD's. Which does give slightly slower performance in navigating content, but does not affect manipulation or render times.
On the subject of SSD life, this video explains that in great detail.
If your whole Daz install is kept under 145mb I don't see a reason not to go ahead and use the SSD. The load times will be faster. And it may seem small, but that can add up depending on how you use Daz. If my 4TB external sits for a number of minutes it will need to spin up again before saving/loading anything again. That can get a little annoying sometimes because I do this a LOT. I can't wait for 4TB SSDs to become a common thing, LOL.
You can still use external storage for backup, like has been said, backup your stuff. Kyotokid recently had a major failure and did not have a backup.
I would not care too much about fussing around with file placement in an attempt to make an SSD last longer. You can put anything you want to on modern SSDs without worrying at all about wear-leveling and write endurance, because in normal and even heavy usage, you won't be able to wear out an SSD before you run out of capacity anyway. It's not likely you could wear one out even if you tried to by doing 3D artwork day and night for years.
If you doubt me, please read this article from The Techreport's 18 month endurance test, which ended in 2015.
And get more backup drives. This will allow you to keep multiple generations/copies of backups on each drive, have more backup drives in rotation, and (hint hint) maybe even allow you to store one or a couple at an offsite location, such as a locked office desk or your mom's house. Just be sure to encrypt them.
If you're looking for a backup program, I highly recommend Macrium:Reflect. It's reliable, has saved my butt at least 3 times in the last 10 years, once while I was on travel. And yes...even when I travel, I throw a backup drive into my checked or carry on luggage, containing backed up and encrypted content from my workstation AND laptop computers. If I come home from a trip to find a burned down house, I'll still have my data. I don't need to live in California to take a lesson in fire.
I'm not affiliated with them, but Macrium does have what I see as possibly the BEST methodology ever devised for protecting your backup files from being encrypted by ransomware. Finally, there used to be a discount available over at Techreport, so you might check to see if that option still exists.
And then there's cloud backup, such as iDrive, Carbonite, and others. But your DAZ library will likely grow to a size unmanagable by most of these options within any reasonable amount of time. I don't use it, because it would take more than a week for me to back up my DAZ and other art and music content libraries. That's just unworkable. But if you use cloud backup, you might want to restrict it to your data files only; that could be workable. And it could save your butt one day.