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  4. Sizes of Libraries on Disk

  • Sizes of Libraries on Disk

    P
    P

    Hi,

    I'm trying to calculate the ideal sized SSD to hold additional libraries if I purchase them now, and what the possible disk-space requirements may be for additional libraries in the future. As SSD's are still relatively expensive, it would be good to try and optimize the size and cost to my current requirements.

    Would anyone who owns any of the following libraries please have a look at the files on your disk and tell me how much space the samples take up (on disk).

    • Any of the SE Orchestra Volumes
    • Dimension Strings
    • Dimension Brass
    • Orchestral Strings I
    • Orchestral Striungs II
    • Solo Strings I
    • Solo Strings II
    • Woodwinds I
    • Woodwinds II
    • Brass I
    • Brass II

    The VSL website does list download sizes as well as hard-disk requirements, for example:

    • Dimension Strings: 85.5 GB download; 147 GB on disk.
    • Special Edition Volume 1 Bundle: 20.8 download; 57.8 GB on disk.

    This would suggest that @ 204.8 GB total, these 2 libraries would fit quite nicely onto a 240 GB SSD with about 30GB free [ EDIT: actually, probably more like only 10-20GB free as I'm guessing that after formatting the disk will be ~ 220GB ], but I'm not sure how accurate the figures quoted under System Requirements on the website are.

    For example, I have the Vienna Imperial which is listed as:

    • a 46.8 GB download
    • requiring 58 GB free hard drive space (in "System Requirements")

    However, on my disk, I've found that it's 3 DAT files only require 46.7 GB of diskspace. (50,206,216,192 bytes to be exact), rather than the 58 GB quoted on the website.

    Does anyone know if it's necessary to have 10-20% spare capacity with an SSD, as is best practice with a normal disc. (This is to avoid fragmentation and corruption on a spinning disc, but as that is not applicable to SSD's, I'm assuming they can be filled pretty much to capacity.)

    It would be good to know what peoples actual experience is.

    Thanks in advance.
  • C
    C

    From what I understand, the .dat files are compressed.  Once they're unpacked and installed I'd imagine the amount listed on the site is the real answer.
  • PaulP
    VSL Team
    PaulP
    last edited
    last edited

    Hi,

    This is how the download and installation works:

    1) You download highly compressed *.cab files (the download size, optimized for fast downloads)

    2) During installation, these *.cab files are extracted to *.dat files (which are compressed as well)

    These *dat files are a little less than one third smaller than the actual 24-bit sample content which we show in the System Reuirements of each product (in the case of Solo Strings I, 82 GB).

    We have decided to keep the original data size in the System Requirements to give a headroom on the HDs (you usually have too little HD space, right?).

    => The actual data size of the compressed sample content of Solo Strings I is 60 GB (roughly 82 GB x 0,73).

    Hope that helps with your calculations!

    Best,

    Paul

    Paul Kopf Head of Product Marketing, Social Media and Support
  • P
    P

    Thanks for that Paul.

    That will help a lot I think.

    If I understand correctly, the **actual** size on disc of any library will always be approximately 0,73 x the quoted value in "System Requirements".

    So to utilize all the space on an SSD we can assume the DAT files (once un-packed) are no larger than the 0,73 value

    Alternately, allowing for the quoted values from the website will ensure there's always at least 25% free space (in the case where the libraries are installed on a spinning drive rather than an SSD).

    I'm assuming there's no issues with filling an SSD almost to it's full capacity (given that sample libraries are essentially Read-Only, there'll be little or no WRITES to the SSD in normal operations).

    Cheers!
  • cmC
    VSL Team
    cmC
    last edited
    last edited

    @Phil Bach said:

    I'm assuming there's no issues with filling an SSD almost to it's full capacity (given that sample libraries are essentially Read-Only, there'll be little or no WRITES to the SSD in normal operations).

    correct - once installed there are just READ operations (on the library files) and filling an SSD to it's full capacity does not hurt.

     

    the graph below indicates that the last 33 - 25% of a harddisk can only provide down to 60% of the transfer rate you read on the data sheet ... so accessing these sectors can cause clicks with sample streaming.

     

     

     

    and remember: only a CRAY can run an endless loop in just three seconds.
  • cmC
    VSL Team
    cmC

    for our SSD users - here is a quick overview of installed sizes per collection.

    be aware hard drive manufacturers count 1.000.000.000 Byte as 1 GByte

     

    and remember: only a CRAY can run an endless loop in just three seconds.
  • P
    P

    Thanks Christian,

    FWIW, I did a few quick calcs for the libraries I listed earlier, based on the information supplied by Paul, and came up with the following estimates based on the listed System Requirements:


    		 System Requirement x 0.73
    SE Vol. 1 Bundle 57.8 42
    SE Vol. 2 Bundle 53.6 39
    VIENNA DIMENSION STRINGS 147 107
    SOLO STRINGS I 82 60
    SOLO STRINGS II 46.5 34
    ORCHESTRAL STRINGS I 34 25
    ORCHESTRAL STRINGS II 28 20
    WOODWINDS I 59 43
    WOODWINDS II 63 46
    VIENNA DIMENSION BRASS 19 14
    BRASS I 80 58
    BRASS II 55 40
    VIENNA IMPERIAL 58 47

    These estimates (right-hand column) all seem to agree pretty closely with your actual figures (which is comforting), with the sole exception of Vienna Dimension Strings, which you have at 147GB (which is the same as the value in System Requirements on the Webpage).

    If it is in fact 147 GB on the disc, then I guess the System Requirements page for DS should probably  recommend 201 GB for hard-disks.
  • cmC
    VSL Team
    cmC

    probably the amount has not been updated after the release of the violas and/or basses ... i'll look into that

    and remember: only a CRAY can run an endless loop in just three seconds.
  • P
    P
    last edited
    last edited

    Thanks for all this detailed information Christian.

    I think it's very helpful to know the actual size-on-disk figures, when planning how to distribute libraries across SSD's to utilize the space efficiently.

    Of course for those with unlimited budgets, it's not such an issue, yet there are still limits to the number of SATA-6 interfaces on most motherboards! [;)]

    @cm said:

    be aware hard drive manufacturers count 1.000.000.000 Byte as 1 GByte

    .. and also be aware that when formatted / partitioned before use in Windows, you lose about 10% of the stated capacity to system use.(I don't know what the proportion is on OS-X, but if formatted to NTFS it's probably the same.

    [EDIT: In fact, I may be wrong about this last point. The sizes in bytes of all my hard-drives are un-cannily close to the #bytes you would expect if the drive size is counted in GB (units of 1,000,000,000 Bytes). The **apparent** loss after formating is probably just an illusion due to the fact that WINDOWS confusingly reports diskspace in gibibytes (GiB) - units of 1,073,741,824 bytes, but continues to use the "GB" notation instead of "GiB".

    Hence, in WINDOWS: [8-)]

    • a 120 GB drive is reported as 111 GB - meaning 111 GiB ( = 120 GB)
    • a 1 TB drive is reported as 931 GB - meaning 931 GiB ( = 1000 GB)

    I believe this confusion won't arise in OS-X because it apparently displays diskspace using the ISO definitition of GB in line with the manufacturer's convention, so a 120 GB drive will be reported as 120 GB.

    (If you weren't confused before, you probably are now [;)] )

    To break it down though....I believe that:

    On OS-X, Dimension Strings will use ~ 157.5 GB.

    On WINDOWS, it will be reported as using 147 GiB (which is in fact 157.5 GB) because Windows uses the binary definition of a GB.

    At the end of the day, just take cm's "bytes" column, divide by 1,000,000,000 and compare this directly to the hard-drive size claimed by the manufacturer. (This calculation should work for both platforms)