S2E23 – Different Hard Drive Types

Updated: Jun 9, 2024

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In this podcast episode of Music Production Made Simple, I discuss hard drives with you for your music production computer.

Here’s more details on my music computer:

• [PODCAST] – Building a Computer for Music Production
• [VIDEO] – View my CUSTOM Music Production Computer

There’s two main hard drives we use for our music production computers..

That is Mechanical Hard Drives (HDD), and Solid State Hard Drives (SDD). There are also what’s called a “hybrid hard drive” where there’s a small amount of SSD built into a Hard Drive to help it run a little faster by “caching” common files for faster loading.

Mechanical Hard Drives

A mechanical hard drive is more affordable, and is able to be purchased with LOTS of storage space.

You simply provide a power cable from your computer’s power supply (PSU), and a SATA cable plugs into the HDD and motherboard for the data connections.

As I said in this episode, I liked the 5400RPM hard drive, as the noise was not audible in my acoustic computer case to help keep things quiet.. the 7200RPM can be hard audibly.

Solid State Hard Drives:

An SSD is what music producers want, and SSDs are becoming more affordable.

At the time of making my music production computer build video, 250GB was like $200-300!!! Now you can get 1TB-2TB for that same price.. (about 5-6 years later..)

SSDs are awesome because they are QUIET and FAST. The only problem at the moment is you can’t buy them in LARGER sizes like 4TB or 8TB (maybe in the old card-type SSDs).. but they are still pricey.

Conclusion.. Hard Drives for Music Producers

So I hope the gives you insight to buying hard drives as a music producer.

Currently we use an SSD for our main C:\ drive which is where we install our operating system (Windows for example), and our most important programs and files like FL Studio, Drum Kits, and our main VSTs.

For our LARGER files (like my FL Studio courses), we store these on a HDD (Hard Drive) because it’s more affordable.

Hopefully in the coming years we will be able to just use one hard drive again, but this time on a fast SSD that is affordable, with a reasonable capacity to keep up with all our digital assets nowadays..

By the way, you can checkout my FL Studio Books if you’d like to become a better producer!

About Author: GratuiTous

GratuiTous manages his Beatmaker Training Platform, authors Beatmaking Books, and hosts the "Music Production Made Simple Podcast". Introduced to FL Studio by his good friend in 2009.. he began FL Studio tutorials in 2011, eventually leading to his 35+ Courses in the platform. Fun Fact: He was an electrician for 10 Years!

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