Hi

I recently purchased a VST plugin Galaxy ll and Vintage D from "Best Service" the requirements suggested i install the the plugin on to a fast Hard Drive as the pianos will be streamed directly from the HD. I checked my Macbook 5.1 specs and the HD was only 5400 rpm, i then went to the store and bought the WD My Book Essential External Hard Drive 7200 rpm 1TB. Prior to doing no research on this new external Drive i was wondering if anyone could add any comments as to wether it will serve me justice, assuming others may have one ?

Thanks.
Last edited by musicworld on Wed May 23, 2012 2:43 pm; edited 2 times in total

7200 RPM will do it (that's typically the max) and WD are a good brand (I did just have one fail, but it was over 12 years old). Of course, you need the drive on a bus that can take advantage of these speeds.

Too late, but you might also want to look at solid state drives, which have had faster sustained read and write rates than even the fastest hard disks for about a year now.

SSDs also aren't prone to mechanical failure, they're completely silent, and their access times are essentially instantaneous. The only remaining point on which HDs are still superior is price. But even that I don't think is going to be the case for much longer.

This is a response i got from another user.

Thats got me very confused now, which Drive should i be installing the plugin on ? I assumed the External Drive as this is the fast HD where the samples will be streamed from. For if the plugin is installed on the system Drive, How then can the samples come from the new fast Drive ?

Many plug-ins will let you locate their data file(s) in a location different from the plug-in .dll.

The plug-in .dll is just computer code, loaded once when the plug-in is first instantiated. The sound data it reads is too big to fit in RAM, so it pulls it off a hard drive in a just-in-time fashion. (Typically the heads of samples will be held in RAM, allowing the drive just enough time to find and stream the remainder of that sample before it's needed. This is usually called "direct from disk".)

But not knowing your plug-in offhand, I don't know whether it allows you to change that location or not.

This is all new knowledge to me as it's my first ever plugin install.

Bottom line is which Hard Drive should i install the plugin on,

Mac internal HD or the New fast external HD ???

The fast external. Then (presumably) it will put the data on that same drive. But really we only care where the data goes. (I didn't even know you could put plug-ins on alternate drives on the Mac. Thought they had to go in the system or user Library folder? Though I suppose you could make a symbolic link.)

Check the manual for installation of your plugins - or you can just see how it goes when you install. It's normal (trust us )to put your plugin in one place (like where all the other plugins are) and your samples in another (the external drive).

If you get it wrong, you can always uninstall the plugin and reinstall where you want it to go. Don't uninstall/reinstall the samples, as that may take a while (depending how big the sample sets are). Mind you if you've installed the samples to the wrong place - just uninstall and reinstall. It's not a big deal

The bottom line is - just watch when you're installing, and be sure to pay attention to where it wants to install the plugin, and then the samples.

Why is this ? why not install the whole package on to the one Drive inside the Mac ? Is it because locating the Library to a 7200rpm External Drive means the samples will be streamed faster ?

Exactly! That's why you bought it.

But some people like to have all their plugins in one place (just the plugins, not the samples etc). I use a PC, not a Mac, and maybe it's not so important on the Mac (as they tend to hide things like folder locations from the user) - but I like to have all my plugins in one place ie "c:\vst plugins", with fodelrs under this for each one. Then my DAW software (SONAR) only has to look in the one place for plugins.
Last edited by jbraner on Thu May 24, 2012 5:03 am; edited 1 time in total

WD are really good. Avoid Seagate externals....

When you install the AU version of your plugin, the installer will/should automatically put it into Macintosh HD (or whatever your boot disk is called)/Library/Audio/Plug-ins/Components.

That's where correctly programmed Mac DAWs and other audio programs will normally look for your AU plug-ins. Same thing with the VST version, if you install that also - they go into Macintosh HD/Library/Audio/Plug-ins/Components

You should NOT try to install the plug-in itself on an external disk or in some arbitrary folder. That will only lead to confusion.

Probably, if the plug-in has a large sample library, you will have the option during the install process to put that sample library on your external Western Digital hard disk.

Please note, as AdmiralQuality pointed out, you need to have your external HD connected to a fast bus - in other words to FireWire or Thunderbolt or, if your MB Pro has an Express Card/34 slot (and your 1TB drive has eSATA), to an eSATA card that connects directly to the PCI bus in the laptop. A USB connection will probably be too slow to work satisfactorily (currently, Macs only offer USB2 ports).

So, to recap, basically, the AU and VST plug-ins should be installed in the default place as I described above, and the associated sample library on your external hard disk.

Good luck!

/Joachim

PS Disregard any references to ".dll" in any of the previous posts - .dll:s are only found on Windows systems.

Thanks for all the feedback it's a big help.

But if i still wanted to use the WD 7200 rpm Drive for streaming the Sample Libraries, how would i get around this only having USB 2.0 ports. The WD 7200 External Drive has a 3.0 next generation port, but no FW port, and the Mac only USB 2.0.

It's complicated but is there any way around this ? or would it be a case of just having to replace the Mac's internal 5400 rpm Drive for a 7200 Drive ? Can this be done on a 2008 Macbook ?

USB 2.0 is perfectly adequate - USB 3.0 is brand new and we have gotten this far without it..

WD is a great brand - a few days ago i saw a chart showing failure rate of drives and most reliable were Hitachi then WD by some margin - however, the news came through that WD has bought Hitachi drive division..

I had a similar discussion with the clerk when I bought my new WD external. I didn't have USB 3 ports on the old computer, but it came with a USB 2 to 3 conversion cable. If you Google speed tests, one done by the NY Times states:
In the test, writer Rik Fairlie copied a folder containing 10GB of files. He did this once over USB 2.0 and once over USB 3.0. The USB 3.0 connection took 6 minutes, 31 seconds, and the USB 2.0 connection took 22 minutes, 14 seconds.
One thing the clerk suggested was getting a regular hard drive and buying a case for it. The advantage was it would be just as fast as your internal drive. Yhe drawbacks are the cases are ridiculously expensive for what they are. You have to hook the drive up internally, and then you have to partition it correctly.