# Using sounds on external drive with USB ?



## Michelob (Jun 19, 2018)

Hi,

I'm building a nomad configuration to work in a camper on solar energy (great adventure !).

I'm planning to use a new portable DELL XPS-15 with my kontakt libraries on an external HDD. I'm working on about 60 tracks/instances projects, with no problem on my current PC (i7-4770k, SATA3 - Barracuda's internal HDD).

Do you think it's ok using USB 3.0 and/or 3.1 ? Any latency issue in sight... ?

Thanks a lot,

Michel, Belgium


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## ptram (Jun 19, 2018)

It depends on the type of solar panel you have. If it's the standard 100/120 Watt panel, and you don't have all LED lights onboard, power might not be enough.

You can try to calculate how much power you will need, and how much you will receive from your panels as average.

https://www.altestore.com/blog/2016/09/what-can-i-power-100w-solar-panel/

I've not yet direct experience, since, like you, I’ll do my tests this summer. Compared to the situation described in the article, we should enjoy a lot more sun, and more hours of work.

Paolo


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## Michelob (Jun 20, 2018)

Hello Paolo,

Actually my question was about the load speed of samples from an external USB drive 

Thanks for you answer anyway. Yes I made a lot of Google Sheets to get an acceptable approximation (I'll be fully autonomous 9 months a year), but maybe I could tell you more about this in some appropriate section of the forum.

So, I guess there's no big slowdown to use an external drive.(and I should'nt have used the word latency, as we're not anymore in ancient Direct-From-Disc times 

Michel


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## Replicant (Jun 20, 2018)

I use an external SSD, USB 3.0

No problems

No Latency


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## Michel Simons (Jun 20, 2018)

Replicant said:


> I use an external SSD, USB 3.0
> 
> No problems
> 
> No Latency



I have used such a setup as well before I moved to my new laptop (and I might need to do that again in the not so distant future at the rate I am buying new libraries) and I also didn't have any problems. I believe that I even didn't have an USB 3.0 connection on my old machine.


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## ptram (Jun 20, 2018)

Ops — sorry, Michel, I was probably overlapping my own concerns with yours!

In the studio, I use USB 3.0/7200rpm drives, and they are for sure much slower than USB 3.0 SSDs. And much slower from loading from the internal SSD (but I've since the initial tests moved all my sound libraries to external drives).

Still, I'm mostly worried by how much current mechanical drives can drain. If I'm not wrong, SSDs consume a lot less. And yes, please let us know about your findings about current consumption in another thread!

Paolo


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