# Super-fast sample drive



## synthetic (Jun 1, 2021)

Looking at one of these for my next build. Dual NVMe slots in a small Thunderbolt 3 chassis. Up to 2.9GB/s read times with RAID 0. Looks awesome for sample storage. 









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## FireGS (Jun 1, 2021)

synthetic said:


> Looking at one of these for my next build. Dual NVMe slots in a small Thunderbolt 3 chassis. Up to 2.9GB/s read times with RAID 0. Looks awesome for sample storage.
> 
> 
> 
> ...


Still wouldn't do RAID0 for a sample drive.


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## Trash Panda (Jun 1, 2021)

I’ve found the Samsung Evo 970 to be so fast that by the time I open Kontakt to check if the samples have loaded, they’re already done. Need to try a stress test to see how far that can be pushed through.


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## colony nofi (Jun 1, 2021)

I would seriously suggest that anyone looking at putting the extra $ into superfast drives looks to see the *REAL* speeds that kontakt reads samples in. Yes, there are some differences between NVME and SATA III drives, but certainly not anything close to the % speed differences (knowing SATA III top out around 550MB/s and NVME can be 3+GB/S under the right circumstaces!). You wont see even a 50% reduction in load times. 

Now saying that, I use an NVME drive for samples. But I did it going in eyes wide open - and did it for reasons other than speed. (8TB in an ultra small package)


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## storyteller (Jun 1, 2021)

If you consider the reality of the single nvme read speed over thunderbolt, the heat, potential sample-dropping performance issues, and cost... you may want to consider just standard SSDs. For example, an OWC mini enclosure can hold 4 SSDs. The 870 Evos have a read speed of 540MB/s. Dividing out orchestral sections over separate SSDs allow you to reach the same theoretical read capacities as the nvme, but without the heat and potential performance issues. Non raid gives you 1556MB/s per enclosure with the OWC mini. So optimally, you’d have 2 or 3 drives per enclosure to achieve optimal drive performance.

An SSD can achieve 6gbps per drive... or roughly 1500-2000 24bit/48k voices in the real world. so you’d need to consider how many voices you are simultaneously streaming.

Raid doesn’t theoretically add any better performance for audio samples. Raid performance is more ideal for large data chunks like video.

*EDIT:* _it looks like @colony nofi just said something similar above._


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## FireGS (Jun 1, 2021)

I just downloaded the demo of Synchron Imperial. With a full surround to stereo mix, I was hitting upwards of 900+ voices, and on a NAS in RAID10 via a 10gbit copper direction connection with ~ 400MB/s sustained read, I was having a lot of drop outs. Moving to a pcie gen 4 NVME right now... I dont think it'll have many issues.


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## FireGS (Jun 1, 2021)

Omg, its ridiculous. It loads those samples in the blink of an eye. It used to take about 2-3 minutes to load up nearly all of the mic positions. Handles about 2,000 voices without issue.


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## David Kudell (Jun 1, 2021)

I have the Glyph Atom Pro 8TB. 

Yes, it’s expensive, but pretty much the fastest option For Thunderbolt 3.


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## holywilly (Jun 2, 2021)

David Kudell said:


> I have the Glyph Atom Pro 8TB.
> 
> Yes, it’s expensive, but pretty much the fastest option For Thunderbolt 3.


David, are you running all your sample libraries on that single ssd? I’m thinking of downsizing my writing rig and have been searching for fast ssd options.


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## David Kudell (Jun 2, 2021)

holywilly said:


> David, are you running all your sample libraries on that single ssd? I’m thinking of downsizing my writing rig and have been searching for fast ssd options.


Yes, well, most of them. I have everything on that drive, currently using 5TB, plus 1 other 4TB SATA SSD that has all the Spitfire libraries on it.


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## David Kudell (Jun 2, 2021)

Also, they do go on sale sometimes...the 8TB one was $400 off recently.

Still a lot, but for me it was either buy a new Mac Pro or get a good Thunderbolt 3 storage option and keep using my iMac Pro for a couple more years.


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## holywilly (Jun 2, 2021)

David Kudell said:


> Yes, well, most of them. I have everything on that drive, currently using 5TB, plus 1 other 4TB SATA SSD that has all the Spitfire libraries on it.


Great, thanks David. However the sales of Glyph ssd to my region is prohibited, guess I have to find another solution for that.


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## holywilly (Jun 2, 2021)

David Kudell said:


> Also, they do go on sale sometimes...the 8TB one was $400 off recently.
> 
> Still a lot, but for me it was either buy a new Mac Pro or get a good Thunderbolt 3 storage option and keep using my iMac Pro for a couple more years.


I’m still on 2013 trash can Mac Pro, still waiting for the pro version of ARM iMac, now I’m having 8 SATA SSD via thunderbolt 2 and my system is struggling when doing large session.


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## Soundbed (Jun 2, 2021)

FireGS said:


> I just downloaded the demo of Synchron Imperial. With a full surround to stereo mix, I was hitting upwards of 900+ voices, and on a NAS in RAID10 via a 10gbit copper direction connection with ~ 400MB/s sustained read, I was having a lot of drop outs. Moving to a pcie gen 4 NVME right now... I dont think it'll have many issues.


Yes the VSL Pianos are the main reason I want a fast drive. But standard SATA speed limits at maximum USB 3.2 throughput was fine for me.


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## Soundbed (Jun 2, 2021)

synthetic said:


> Looking at one of these for my next build. Dual NVMe slots in a small Thunderbolt 3 chassis. Up to 2.9GB/s read times with RAID 0. Looks awesome for sample storage.
> 
> 
> 
> ...


Seems like overkill for only samples although newer sample players (not Kontakt 6 yet, which still seems limited to SATA speeds) seem to be availing themselves if nvme speeds.

I also do video editing and “only” got the single Sabrent for $26 recently. Nice to have no power supply needed
Sabrent USB 3.2 Type-C Tool-Free Enclosure for M.2 PCIe NVMe and SATA SSDs (EC-SNVE)​When I upgrade next I’ll get the OWC 4 M.2 enclosure.






OWC Express 4M2


Four M.2 SSD bays with pure adrenaline inducing Thunderbolt 3 performance.




www.owcdigital.com


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## David Kudell (Jun 2, 2021)

holywilly said:


> I’m still on 2013 trash can Mac Pro, still waiting for the pro version of ARM iMac, now I’m having 8 SATA SSD via thunderbolt 2 and my system is struggling when doing large session.


Ok yep, that Glyph only works over Thunderbolt 3 I believe. SATA SSDs should be ok, I think the issue could be RAM or the CPU. I have a trash can and had issues with large sessions myself, mainly I'd go over my 32GB of RAM very easily. My iMac has 128GB and works much better.


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## holywilly (Jun 2, 2021)

David Kudell said:


> Ok yep, that Glyph only works over Thunderbolt 3 I believe. SATA SSDs should be ok, I think the issue could be RAM or the CPU. I have a trash can and had issues with large sessions myself, mainly I'd go over my 32GB of RAM very easily. My iMac has 128GB and works much better.


My Mac Pro is maxed out, 12 core CPU and 128GB of ram. My system is struggling when playing back multi-mic samples such as VSL and Orchestral Tools. Ahhh……


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## colony nofi (Jun 2, 2021)

I have a Glyph Atom Raid 4TB (the version from a couple of years ago) which maxes out around 1000MB/s - but only runs as a USB drive on the mac pro trashcan (it is dual mode) so I get about 350MB/s from it. The new Glyphs are excellent. 

I have had good results hanging thunderbolt 3 drives off the back of a Caldigit TS3 which connects to the mac pro with a thunderbolt 2 to 3 convertor. Unfortunately my Glyph drops connection at times.

However, the Sabrent Rocket Q NVME 8TB drive I have, inside a simple NVME thunderbolt 3/USB enclosure (also by Sabrent) works a charm - and is cheaper than the Glyph by a decent margin. It is *not* as fast. I top out at 1400MB/s.

I have all my libraries on this drive, and it is at around 7TB used. 

Things do load quick, but not super quick. I've done some testing watching the actual read speeds when using a couple of pretty heavy test projects. When doing the INITIAL load, I never saw speeds above 250MB/s on any drive. That included the internal SSD (which is fast but not magically fast... 2300MB/s max from memory)

Kontakt has a quite archaic way of reading data... where it opens a file, reads a bit (114kB from memory) and then closes the file again. And does this many many times. Its kinda interesting how old methods remain over many many years with software such as Kontakt. (The stories that could be told about old code...)

Now I haven't looked into what kontakt is doing during playback. I suspect it isn't anything super efficient.


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## colony nofi (Jun 2, 2021)

FireGS said:


> I just downloaded the demo of Synchron Imperial. With a full surround to stereo mix, I was hitting upwards of 900+ voices, and on a NAS in RAID10 via a 10gbit copper direction connection with ~ 400MB/s sustained read, I was having a lot of drop outs. Moving to a pcie gen 4 NVME right now... I dont think it'll have many issues.


Running samples off of servers over 10GbE is difficult. There are many many reasons why it is slow. How kontakt does things contributes, but so does (MASSIVELY) the file system of the NAS.

We were recently testing / qualifying a 10GbE Nas using a bunch of different drives (NVME & SATA SSD's mainly) and the performance for Kontakt was abysmal out of the box. However, we did get reasonable results once we installed TrueNAS using the ZFS file system and spent a day experimenting and tuning things. But its nothing like what you get with a drive directly connected to your system.


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## FireGS (Jun 2, 2021)

colony nofi said:


> Running samples off of servers over 10GbE is difficult. There are many many reasons why it is slow. How kontakt does things contributes, but so does (MASSIVELY) the file system of the NAS.
> 
> We were recently testing / qualifying a 10GbE Nas using a bunch of different drives (NVME & SATA SSD's mainly) and the performance for Kontakt was abysmal out of the box. However, we did get reasonable results once we installed TrueNAS using the ZFS file system and spent a day experimenting and tuning things. But its nothing like what you get with a drive directly connected to your system.


SSD cache helps a lot. Especially if you have 500+GB of SSD Cache. Running a QNAP TS-932x, and for Kontakt, I can have over 100 Kontakt instances running with instruments, and I hit a CPU barrier before HDD becomes the issue. I mean, it works mostly fine for me. 

Synchron Pianos is just close to 100,000 samples loading up and streaming.


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## colony nofi (Jun 2, 2021)

FireGS said:


> SSD cache helps a lot. Especially if you have 500+GB of SSD Cache. Running a QNAP TS-932x, and for Kontakt, I can have over 100 Kontakt instances running with instruments, and I hit a CPU barrier before HDD becomes the issue. I mean, it works mostly fine for me.
> 
> Synchron Pianos is just close to 100,000 samples loading up and streaming.


It *works* but we could not get performance numbers close to what 10GbE is capable of. We are only running solid state drives - and even experimented with running only U2 NVME drives. The drives are not the bottle neck. Other aspects of networking and file systems come into play. Fun though, and to a point entirely usable.


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## synthetic (Jun 3, 2021)

Here’s my approach to building systems. There are three bottlenecks in a sampler:

1. Processor
2. RAM
3. Drive

That’s really all we can control. Which is most important? No one can really say, they all work together. So the only solution is to improve all three at once.

That Sabrent enclosure + 2x 2TB NVMe at RAID 0 will cost about $600. (+ or - depending on Chia miners or whatever.) That doesn’t seem like a lot to me for what it delivers. Is it overkill? Who cares, for $600 my sample drive is sorted. If I’m looking for more performance, it’s probably not the sample drive speed I need to focus on.

(I remember buying 2GB SCSI drives for $1000 so the system above seems like a steal.)


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## Buz (Jun 3, 2021)

Must it be portable? If performance is the goal surely it's easier just to run 7GB drives? They aren't terribly expensive.


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## jcrosby (Jun 3, 2021)

synthetic said:


> Here’s my approach to building systems. There are three bottlenecks in a sampler:
> 
> 1. Processor
> 2. RAM
> ...


Why RAID 0? Any gains I've seen in tests (and real-word experience doing this) were so small that it made more sense to have my samples spread across multiple drives. When I had an SSD RAID array one of the drives actually wound up failing even though I should have gotten years out of the array based on the MTBF. One of them went corrupt for unknown reasons....

IMO there's no real upside to RAIDing SSDs unless you explicitly need a volume size that exceeds the capacity of current drives..... And while solid state is theoretically more durable I've actually had three go wonky on me, two were from 2018-ish, and were the manufacturers 'best-in-class' non-enterprise drives... Still no idea why... But IME RAID 0's really not worth it these days unless you're in need of some serious space.


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## synthetic (Jun 4, 2021)

Buz said:


> Must it be portable? If performance is the goal surely it's easier just to run 7GB drives? They aren't terribly expensive.


I was trying to build the fastest streaming drive possible. I thought more people here would be into that. I'll need to name it something speedy like Countach. 

My current sample drive is the Intel 750 that @chimuelo used to talk about.


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## newbreednet (Jun 4, 2021)

synthetic said:


> I was trying to build the fastest streaming drive possible. I thought more people here would be into that. I'll need to name it something speedy like Countach.
> 
> My current sample drive is the Intel 750 that @chimuelo used to talk about.


afaik the fastest streaming "drive" you could build would be a PCIe 4.0 expansion card stuffed with four PCIe 4.0 NVMe drives in RAID 0; in theory it would net you around 15000Mb/s. But what sample player would take advantage of all that speed?


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## colony nofi (Jun 5, 2021)

newbreednet said:


> afaik the fastest streaming "drive" you could build would be a PCIe 4.0 expansion card stuffed with four PCIe 4.0 NVMe drives in RAID 0; in theory it would net you around 15000Mb/s. But what sample player would take advantage of all that speed?


There's even *faster* drive systems around than that. Honey Badger....


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## newbreednet (Jun 5, 2021)

colony nofi said:


> There's even *faster* drive systems around than that. Honey Badger....


Kontakt sez: nice Ferrari, amma let you drive it in 1st gear only lol


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## DrPete (Jun 5, 2021)

Hi everyone, I'm trying to distill this whole thread too, and make a decision about a more streamlined way to access my VIs. I'm hearing two things - one is how to make the fastest external drive, and then the other is the reality of the VI engine streaming speeds.
So, what's the best best solution given these two parameters mixed together?


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## jcrosby (Jun 5, 2021)

synthetic said:


> I was trying to build the fastest streaming drive possible. I thought more people here would be into that. I'll need to name it something speedy like Countach.
> 
> My current sample drive is the Intel 750 that @chimuelo used to talk about.


It's not a matter of "into it" so much as Kontakt can't take advantage of those speeds... So basically you'd be building a drive array that over-performs in theory, doesn't deliver any real benefit beyond what NVMe drives already offer, and comes with the added headache of vulnerability.

The vulnerability's obviously easily covered with a good backup scheme... But ultimately it seems kind of redundant to create a super fast drive that kontakt can't take advantage of, especially if it comes with an extra headache...


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## colony nofi (Jun 6, 2021)

jcrosby said:


> It's not a matter of "into it" so much as Kontakt can't take advantage of those speeds... So basically you'd be building a drive array that over-performs in theory, doesn't deliver any real benefit beyond what NVMe drives already offer, and comes with the added headache of vulnerability.
> 
> The vulnerability's obviously easily covered with a good backup scheme... But ultimately it seems kind of redundant to create a super fast drive that kontakt can't take advantage of, especially if it comes with an extra headache...


Most SSD's no matter the technology are MUCH more robust than spinning rust in regards to mean time between failure. Sample drives (and even DAW project drives) have incredibly low writing requirements for the drives, which tends to be the action that can cause issues over time.
Yes, you need to back up, but it is not necessary to run redundant raid systems. In many cases, this is a massive overcomplication. Keep a copy on spinning rust which you fire up once every 3 to 6 months, and have that backed up to cloud. Given *most* sample libs you can grab from vendors anyway, this is almost overkill for samples, but a very simple, effective and robust strategy for projects.


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## colony nofi (Jun 6, 2021)

DrPete said:


> Hi everyone, I'm trying to distill this whole thread too, and make a decision about a more streamlined way to access my VIs. I'm hearing two things - one is how to make the fastest external drive, and then the other is the reality of the VI engine streaming speeds.
> So, what's the best best solution given these two parameters mixed together?


SSD's are the way to go in some shape or form. My personal opinion is to get a SINGLE SSD that is large enough for all your samples, and hopefully with 40-50% spare for future purchases. Back this up (as mentioned above) to low cost spinning rust and also to the cloud if you are concerned about not being able to get the original libs from vendors in the future. No need for RAID. This drive is then fine to use either externally or internally as per your requirements. I find external is better - and many like internal. But it doesn't really matter. 

You can then choose if you think NVME is important over say SATA III. It *will* be quicker, but unless you are in a position where you need much faster load times, or you see yourself needing massive numbers of voices, then SATA III SSD's will be fast enough. You are more likely to see / feel performance benefits with voice numbers when going to NVME than you are to really notice massive speed ups for project loading.

Project drives - I personally cannot find the justification for using a DAW on an NVME drive unless you are looking at the technology for VERY specific purposes. The files are just not that large (save for MASSIVE 10000 track templates - but I'd call that a specific / outside the norm purpose)

Again, backup to spinning rust and definitely to the cloud. Internal / External comes down to your personal choices and prefs - performance differences will be very small and probably unnoticeable. Go for what feels right for you.

SSD's are excellent tech for us composers. Newer NVME tech is amazing, but a cost/benefit analysis may not make it worth while to you.

Do take a look at Rocket Q NVMe 2280 SSD's for value though... they had some VERY good prices 2 or 3 months back (unfortunately gone now) which had them around the same price as same sized QVO Sata III drives from Samsung. 4TB and 8TB sizes. You can't really go wrong with these. 

If you have a stretchable budget, and prefer Audi S5 to a Mazda, then grab a bunch of PCIE 4 NVME's, throw them into raid (but back them up!!!) and enjoy the ride. They do not yet have capacities of PCIE 3 drives or SATA III SSDs, but will someday soon for a performance premium. You'll have an amazing system that will be the latest and greatest for a little longer... youll have bragging rights. For 9 in 10 folk here, they're showy overkill.


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