[SOLVED] QLC for my Music & Video Production System? (Win10)

[PANDA125]

Hey,

So, I'm a bit confused about what my Music & Video production system does regarding read/write onto a drive.

Ideally, I would like an SLC based drive but, I wouldn't mind sacrificing a little bit of performance to save some cash.

I'm looking to upgrade my laptop 250GB SSD's (1x M.2 NVMe and 2x 2.5") to 1TB ones' during the holiday sales.

Are there any suggestions on the drives or NANDs I should consider?

Best,
Panda

Some details:
Win 10 64 bit
M.2 = System drive (Win, Programs (Cubase, Davinci Resolve), Virtual Instruments...)
SSD 1 = Project files and Google Drive sync.
SSD 2 = Audio Sample Library
My backups are JBOD external HDD storage + Cloud backup

 

[tennis2]

Definitely not QLC (Intel 660p, Crucial P1, etc)

Stick to a TLC SSD like the Adata SX8200 Pro, Corsair MP510, etc

 

[PANDA125]

Thanks for the response!

out of curiosity...
Is there such a thing as "Real" MLC/TLC NANDS and "Fake" ones?
like how CPU's have virtual cores and physical cores, are there things I should watch out for as a consumer?

The reason why I ask is that the price differences between some of these drives are larger than I expected (about $50). The TLC M.2's you recommended is about $125~$150 but I also found some at $110 like this TLC Silicon Power - SU001TBP34A80M28AB. That's about a $10~$20 difference from a QLC drive. Value-wise it seems like a better option, no?

btw, I also found this 2.5" MLC Samsung SSD

 

[tennis2]

This is a question with a pretty long answer (and I'm on mobile right now)

There are many factors which determine price. Performance is usually a strong factor. There's also brand premiums (Samsung has always charged the most because they're Samsung).

There's also various controllers, DRAM caching (zero to multiple GB) and/or SLC caching (again in varying amounts starting at nonexistent). These things usually aren't readily displayed on a manufacturer's product page. Rather you have to read reviews to figure out what's inside.

Oftentimes images like the one here can say a lot about what's going on inside (QLC 660p and full MLC 970 Pro for comparison)

Of course, it's always important to discern between benchmark differences and real world differences, and what performance metrics are important for your usage case...

 

[PANDA125]

thanks, and no worries. As a pedant, I appreciate detailed info but I think I get it 😉

Ignoring marketing, you're saying there are different levels to it. A drive level, controller level, connection level, etc.

So, regarding performance, price doesn't necessarily dictate it but, ultimately depends on how the drive works with my environment/system.
...and regarding what to buy as a consumer in my profession, I should look at TLC or MLC NANDs and stay away from QLC.

Is that about right? 😀

 

[tennis2]

Here's my 2 cents.

QLC - okay for secondary storage or light use cheap systems. As you can see in the above graph, they're heavily reliant on caching to sustain acceptable write performance. They're still better than a HDD in terms of an OS drive. They're cheap because of their performance. Sure, QLC NAND is more dense so you need less chips, but there's still the PCB, the controller, packaging, shipping, etc etc that you're paying for with any drive. That's a fixed cost.

TLC - this is the majority of the SSD market these days. Depending on cache, they can perform very well to fair. Here you're spending $100-$180/TB.

MLC - Like the Samsung 970 Pro, these are now expensive "pro-sumer" tier drives. As you can see in the previous graph, they'll maintain their IOPS pretty much through an entire drive write (in a single event). Here's where you need to be careful about knowing whether spending 2x-4x the $/GB is worth it for your usage.

HDDs - For music/video production, I have to assume you'll need a lot of TBs to store old/archive files. When you need TBs (and for long term archiving), HDDs are unbeatable. Storing massive amounts of data on SSDs is cost prohibitive.