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Recommended external SSDs for sample libraries

We use the Samsung 8TB QVO for samples and Samsung 4TB EVO for projects / recordings.

Both sit in a OWC Elite Pro Dual Mini (or whatever they call it) connected to SATA inside and USB-C on the computer side.

Theoretically (looking just at the number of the interfaces) this is a rather slow solution, but we have zero problems with it, and it's fairly cheap.
 
Phazma said:
Another reason would be noise. Spinning hard drives would eliminate the benefit of the Mac Studio being very quiet.

But maybe it makes sense to get one with a long cable and place it as far as possible from the working space.

While I try to keep the setup as portable as possible, with as few and short cables as possible, such a backup drive makes most sense to stay at my main location anyway when I bring the computer to other locations for restricted periods of time.
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When I upgraded my macbook pro, I kept the old one, put it in a different room and used it as a time machine server. This has worked out really well because, as others have posted, speed isn’t really a critical issue here.
 
mbishop said:
When I upgraded my macbook pro, I kept the old one, put it in a different room and used it as a time machine server. This has worked out really well because, as others have posted, speed isn’t really a critical issue here.
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Hmm never heard about that approach. How does that work technically? Does it transfer data over wifi from the new computer to the old one? Do you have drives attached to your old machine where the backups end up (as I suppose the internal drive will be to small)?

I will also keep my old MBP. Primarly to be safe when I find a file missing on my new machine (as I will install only what I need, without migration assistent). I also thought about using it as secondary screen, but given that if runs pretty hot and loud at idle I guess I am going to get a dedicated screen. And of course I will use it for leisure or light office work on the go.
 
Phazma said:
Hmm never heard about that approach. How does that work technically? Does it transfer data over wifi from the new computer to the old one? Do you have drives attached to your old machine where the backups end up (as I suppose the internal drive will be to small)?
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Yep, that’s exactly right. I have a large spinning disk drive hooked up to the old notebook and the notebook shares the drive as a time
machine disk. Then on the new computer, I can mount it as my time machine volume and it incrementally backs up over the course of the day. It’s really nice and keeps my music room very quiet.
Phazma said:
I will also keep my old MBP. Primarly to be safe when I find a file missing on my new machine (as I will install only what I need, without migration assistent). I also thought about using it as secondary screen, but given that if runs pretty hot and loud at idle I guess I am going to get a dedicated screen. And of course I will use it for leisure or light office work on the go.
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I use it mainly as a server that I sometimes screenshare into when I need to do maintenance or long, ongoing downloads.
 
I have a Crucial P3 Plus 4 TB SSD + Acacias TB3 (?) enclosure plugged into my Mac mini 2018. I honestly don't think it's great. I still see the loading window for many sample library loads in Kontakt. I think this may be because these drives are good at sequential reads/writes but not random. They might have a slower/smaller cache.

Samples still load the same as they did with my SATA multidock. In fact the multipack seemed to be faster. I'd recommend a used black magic multidock which has been trouble free for me. Unfortunately the return window closed or I'd have returned it and stuck with the black magic.
 
Phazma said:
EDIT:

Also curious if people have made good experiences with cloud backups? The benefits seem to be:
- always far away (so fires and stuff aren’t an issue)
- accessible from everywhere with wifi
- no drive needed and no possibility for it to be lost, stolen, broken, misplaced etc..
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I run Backblaze in addition to Time Machine.
 
HCMarkus said:
I run Backblaze in addition to Time Machine.
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Yes, a Cloud backup on top of a local backup is the way to go. Since my upload speeds are a fraction of my download speeds, I use Cloud backups for irreplaceable files. It protects against fire, theft, etc. Local backups can back up more (though I personally tend not to back up Applications/, as I'd just reinstall after a computer failure).
 
keyman_sam said:
I have a Crucial P3 Plus 4 TB SSD + Acacias TB3 (?) enclosure plugged into my Mac mini 2018. I honestly don't think it's great. I still see the loading window for many sample library loads in Kontakt. I think this may be because these drives are good at sequential reads/writes but not random. They might have a slower/smaller cache.
Click to expand...
Interesting. The Crucial P3 Plus 4TB + Acasis TBU405 is the combo I am considering.

And one thing I hope to achieve is having the Kontakt loading window disappear. To be fair, loading most libraries from the Samsung T5 I currently use connected to the 5Gbps USB3 port on my 2015 MBP takes only a couple of seconds and loading a Reaper track-template with 3-4 tracks using one or more Kontakt instances, including multis, and FX chains may take something like 20sec.

But the more snappy and instantaneous everything is, the better. I don’t want to go the big template route and instantaneous Kontakt loading along with a well organized track-template folder structure would support the practicality of my planned approach.

But as said previously, maybe the bottleneck is not the SSD drive but rather computer specs, including things like CPU speed, memory bandwidth etc?

Perhaps using the same SSD on an Apple Silicon machine gives a different experience?

Would be interesting to hear if Kontakt patches load instantaneously, just like apps apparently open super fast?

Anyone using the P3 Plus and Acasis combo on an Apple Silicon machine who can report? Maybe even compare loading times and sample streaming with a simple external USB 3.2 Gen 2 SSD (or similar) or with a SATA SSD?
 
Phazma said:
Interesting. The Crucial P3 Plus 4TB + Acasis TBU405 is the combo I am considering.

And one thing I hope to achieve is having the Kontakt loading window disappear. To be fair, loading most libraries from the Samsung T5 I currently use connected to the 5Gbps USB3 port on my 2015 MBP takes only a couple of seconds and loading a Reaper track-template with 3-4 tracks using one or more Kontakt instances, including multis, and FX chains may take something like 20sec.

But the more snappy and instantaneous everything is, the better. I don’t want to go the big template route and instantaneous Kontakt loading along with a well organized track-template folder structure would support the practicality of my planned approach.

But as said previously, maybe the bottleneck is not the SSD drive but rather computer specs, including things like CPU speed, memory bandwidth etc?

Perhaps using the same SSD on an Apple Silicon machine gives a different experience?

Would be interesting to hear if Kontakt patches load instantaneously, just like apps apparently open super fast?

Anyone using the P3 Plus and Acasis combo on an Apple Silicon machine who can report? Maybe even compare loading times and sample streaming with a simple external USB 3.2 Gen 2 SSD (or similar) or with a SATA SSD?
Click to expand...
The reason I think it's the drive and not the machine is because the speeds just drop when I transfer large files. I saw the transfer rate go down drastically, which hints at a cache issue.

Contrast this with my Samsung X5 SSD where the load times are really fast. My Omnisphere is off this drive and it loads patches instantly. I was hoping to replicate the X5 performance but at a cheaper price point and I was disappointed.

Run the benchmarks though and they'll tell a different story - I see the Crucial drives nearly match the speed of X5 in theory. In practice it's just much slower.
 
I'll try comparing the performance of a large sample lib load and post the differences between the 3 drives (X5 vs. P3 plus vs. Blackmagic SATA).
 
Phazma said:
EDIT:

Also curious if people have made good experiences with cloud backups? The benefits seem to be:
- always far away (so fires and stuff aren’t an issue)
- accessible from everywhere with wifi
- no drive needed and no possibility for it to be lost, stolen, broken, misplaced etc..
Click to expand...
Disadvantages:
- regular subscription fee
- very slow to back up and restore when you are talking TBs of data
- data is open to hacking

I use cloud services to manage some backup, which also has the advantage of allowing me access in all my devices. But I don’t back up everything there, and my main regime is still rotating Time Machine and clone backups on hard drives.
 
HCMarkus said:
Actually, as reported by @Virtuoso here on VI-Control, RAID for VI sample streaming is not a good idea. Seems JBOD is the best way to go for sample streaming.

Mac Studio (New Hardware Mac Computer)!!!!

. The rest can slum it in the SATA+NVME condominiums down the street at the end of a TB cable. The fact that I understand this and find it funny is proof I need to get a life and or stick with my 2013 trash can.
vi-control.net vi-control.net
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That changes nothing I wrote. I was specifically referring to claimed speeds that are not possible if four m.2 blades are set up JBOD over TB3/4 in a single enclosure. You want those speeds? Each must be in its own TB3 enclosure connected via a TB4 hub to a TB4 port (unless one really wants to use 4 ports).

The fastest streaming on a Studio is from an 8TB internal drive. The largest Studio uses two 4 x6 NAND modules set up in a modified RAID 0 array making it nearly twice as fast as the smaller studios that use only one.

The problem with streaming from RAID 0 is that, if one module glitches, you lose everything. I’m not a fan of various ‘soft RAID’ solutions as they can glitch when Apple releases OS updates.

I stream my VIs from SATA III drives sitting in a TB2 dock through the Apple TB3-2 adapter. It’s plenty fast enough for streaming VIs to my iMac Pro. It’s way, way too slow for AV.
 
keyman_sam said:
I have a Crucial P3 Plus 4 TB SSD + Acacias TB3 (?) enclosure plugged into my Mac mini 2018. I honestly don't think it's great. I still see the loading window for many sample library loads in Kontakt. I think this may be because these drives are good at sequential reads/writes but not random. They might have a slower/smaller cache.

Samples still load the same as they did with my SATA multidock. In fact the multipack seemed to be faster. I'd recommend a used black magic multidock which has been trouble free for me. Unfortunately the return window closed or I'd have returned it and stuck with the black magic.
Click to expand...
Sequential R/W does not apply to SSDs — ever — that’s not how they work. Since it appears that you don’t know if your enclosure is really TB3, that may be your bottleneck. In addition, there are 2 Lane and 4 Lane TB3 enclosures. It can also be the cable. USB-C is a port not a protocol. Always read the specs. There are USB-C cables that only support USB 2 (480KB/s) or USB 3 (5000MB/s) or USB 3.2 Gen2 (10000MB/s) and so on.
 
I think I’ll make it simple, save some money and just get a couple of Samsung T7 then. Those are reliable, don’t have to worry about them getting too hot or gamble about a good nvme and enclosure combo and I would still get double the r/w speed of 10Gbps over my current 5Gbps T5+USB3.0 setup. Even if it may be a bit of a waste of the 40Gbps ports.
 
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