# Anyone running samples and audio projects out of their external drive?



## gsilbers (Dec 24, 2019)

Im guessing if its possible it would be with a samsun t5 or 10gbs external drive equivalent. 

ive seen plenty of posts about external drive for samples , but not about both audio project and orchestral samples. 

im planning on a macbook pro and as usual, drives space is always an issue.


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## T-LeffoH (Dec 24, 2019)

My main setup is with Macbook Pro and I just run the samples off an external.

Years ago I used to also run the projects (at the advice of a lot of teachers I had, to avoid losing work) but I've found it less of a performance strain on the projects to run them off the internal drive. And to mitigate any risk of losing work, I have Time Machine running periodically and also have the comp synced to my Google Drive storage so it's always backing things up. I've never lost anything due to computer crashes, etc with that approach.


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## gsilbers (Dec 25, 2019)

T-LeffoH said:


> My main setup is with Macbook Pro and I just run the samples off an external.
> 
> Years ago I used to also run the projects (at the advice of a lot of teachers I had, to avoid losing work) but I've found it less of a performance strain on the projects to run them off the internal drive. And to mitigate any risk of losing work, I have Time Machine running periodically and also have the comp synced to my Google Drive storage so it's always backing things up. I've never lost anything due to computer crashes, etc with that approach.




dont you run out of space after a while? obvuously you can dump old projects to a backup drive, but still, my old macbook pro seems to always be running out of space on a 1tb drive.


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## T-LeffoH (Dec 25, 2019)

gsilbers said:


> dont you run out of space after a while? obvuously you can dump old projects to a backup drive, but still, my old macbook pro seems to always be running out of space on a 1tb drive.



I don't but like everyone's needs, mine may differ from the next person - and in my case I only have a 250 GB internal drive, so significantly less space.

The only project information I ever have hogging up space on my internal HD is when I'm dumping mixes to audio. Besides that each of my DAW project folders are considerably small as the samples are all running on an external drive or on my other VE-Pro PCs.

Along with the archiving habits I employ, I'm really only ever keeping a project on my internal drive for the duration of time I'm working on it. So for example, everything I worked on last week is already on my cloud storage. If I need to revisit a project, I'll just sync it to my internal HD and then back to the cloud.


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## river angler (Dec 25, 2019)

Hi gsilbers!

(relief to discuss something different for a change- as much as I'm really glad you started the "Discovery" thread I'm keen to set up a new thread focussing on unionisation which will hopefully negate having to deal with the one contradictory character that is currently vexing many other composers at the moment!)

I too have been using a 2012 MacBook Pro with 16GB of RAM, 2 internal SSD drives (replaced the DVD drive with a second SSD) and 2 external Lacie rugged SSD drives.

On this system I work quite happily running for example many simultaneous instances of Orchestral Tools, Spitfire and other synth based instruments along side Logics own VSTs.

I have all of Logics instrument content stored on the second internal SSD which also houses all my Orchestral libraries. Kontakt Full version plus other Native Instruments VSTs like Noire and Absynth.

The first External Lacie Rugged SSD runs off the one Thunderbolt 1 port which I use as my audio/Logic project scratch drive. The second Lacie Rugged SSD contains all my other VST library content including things like Heavyocity Ascend and Auddict PercX.

Actually what I find can sometimes clog up cpu power is too many instances of Waves audio plugins.
Certainly as far as VSTs are concerned I never run into
any "Disk too slow" errors etc.

If you are running a modern MacBook things can only be more efficient especially if you can shove more RAM into it!

I have been using these Lacie drives for 7 years and the second internal for 2 years with no problems whatsoever!

setup summary:

Macbook internal main drive: Crucial 128GB (Logic Pro X on High Sierra 10.13.6)
Macbook internal 2nd drive: Crucial 274GB (NI, OT, SF + all Logic library content)

External Lacie drive A: 128GB off Thunderbolt 1 port (audio + Logic project scratch drive)
External Lacie drive B: 128GB off USB3 port (Auddict, Sample Logic and Heavyocity library content)

As you can see I don't own anywhere near the arsenal of libraries some people seem to hoard!
and I think this is not only an advantage space/efficiency wise but it also forces a composer to make the best out of fewer tools!

Hope this helps you!

Merry Christmas!


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## gsilbers (Dec 25, 2019)

river angler said:


> Hi gsilbers!
> 
> (relief to discuss something different for a change- as much as I'm really glad you started the "Discovery" thread I'm keen to set up a new thread focussing on unionisation which will hopefully negate having to deal with the one contradictory character that is currently vexing many other composers at the moment!)
> 
> ...



lol, yep there is always one. this time around i think its good to argue w him so we get all the basics out. i think its more of a philosophical thing with some basic but big mindset issues. 
a unionization thread would be great. there are some old threads about it and some history there but with such a massive response i think it could be very possitive. 
to me, having a centralized place where ot get all the info about union. rates , terms and contracts for different situations would be great. so slowly we can move somewhere positive. 


anyways, interesting setup. ive always done all in my mac pro and my old mbp sucks even w a 4 vst and its usb2 so looking at your setup is good to know. 

so usb3 and thunderbolt1 are both 10gbs transfer rate, correcT? and you can several libraries at once? how many?


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## gsilbers (Dec 25, 2019)

T-LeffoH said:


> I don't but like everyone's needs, mine may differ from the next person - and in my case I only have a 250 GB internal drive, so significantly less space.
> 
> The only project information I ever have hogging up space on my internal HD is when I'm dumping mixes to audio. Besides that each of my DAW project folders are considerably small as the samples are all running on an external drive or on my other VE-Pro PCs.
> 
> Along with the archiving habits I employ, I'm really only ever keeping a project on my internal drive for the duration of time I'm working on it. So for example, everything I worked on last week is already on my cloud storage. If I need to revisit a project, I'll just sync it to my internal HD and then back to the cloud.




true, each case is different. i used to be able to do music backups and forget about it. now as a sample developer too, it has been a huge issue. my detonator rage library was like 97gb total while making it and it was like 2yrs. although for that i dont need large streaming capacity since its sound design mostly. 


i used to keep all logic songs as the backup, but apple did it to me again and some older LP9 are not opening up so now im doing that of exporting stems and saving that. 
the cloud storage sounds interesting. for song files and stems i think it could work for me as well.


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## river angler (Dec 25, 2019)

composers union !
...actually there's very little difference in speed between Thunderbolt 1 and USB 3 probably more like 380mbs transfer rate. I've always been rather confused about what actual rates take place with Thunderbolt! However I don't worry about it as my system works fine as is!

Re how many plugins... on the full orchestral concerto for alto sax and cello I wrote earlier this year I had at least 80 instances of OT Berlin Orchestra Inspire 1 &b 2 plus 5 Spitfire Evo libraries in tow, one instance of Absynth and all running through Logics ancillary plugins, reverb sends etc.


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## river angler (Dec 25, 2019)

...here's the piece to give you an idea of the complexity of the arrangement...


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## river angler (Dec 25, 2019)

...and bear in mind also I never needed to freeze any tracks nor render any VST to audio right up to the point of mastering the piece!


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## gsilbers (Dec 25, 2019)

very cool pieace! 

and nice it can do so many tracks.


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## river angler (Dec 25, 2019)

gsilbers said:


> very cool pieace!
> 
> and nice it can do so many tracks.


Thanks!... just occurred to me that OT BOI series is much less resourceful than OTs main Berlin series of course: less RRs and velocity layers to the samples which could mean I can get away with running more instances of BOI than I could with a full pallet of the main Berlin library VSTs...?


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