KVR Audio

Cinebient · Post by **Cinebient** » Sun Feb 04, 2018 2:46 pm

My macbook got out of space and while i already moved most of my Kontakt 5 and Logic Pro samples on an extern Samsung T1 and a Samsung T3 SSD trough USB-3.0.
Some of them works fine but some of the bigger ones load very very slow compared to my intern SSD and i often get disk overloads while playing fast. I already did the resave-batch thingie etc.
It‘s slow but usable in most cases but now i needed more space and moved the about 150 GB Steam folder from Spectrasonics on one of the extern SSD‘s. I expect it to be slow, especially with Keyscape but some even takes minutes to load or even freeze after a while. Normally it all works in a few second or at least under a minute with my intern SSD.
Now i saw that it is recommended to format those SSD‘s into the „macOS journaled“ or even „APFS“ if you are on High Sierra.
I thought these SSD‘s are ready to use like they are (i’m new to this, sorry). I mainly use them as backup or for sample libraries and wonder if it really makes such a difference in speed or if i will be anyway limited trough USB 3.0.
So i would consider to buy a new T5 with 2TB if it would be usable for large sample libraries.
Is anyone using these tools with extern SSD‘s and is quite happy with the performance, especially with Keyscape.

oleg1978 · Post by **oleg1978** » Thu Feb 15, 2018 3:57 pm

Did you check the speeds of your external SSD? I would consider a benchmark and health check using Samsung Magician or similar software.

I use the T3 512GB as one of my sample SSDs and it works quite well. The benchmarks (at least for sequential read/write) are similar to those of my internal SSDs (840 EVO, 850 EVO). But I had real struggle to get the full speeds with the T3 because of the wrong cable. I ended up with a USB Type-C Thunderbolt cable which finally did it.

MrFurious · Post by **MrFurious** » Fri Feb 16, 2018 7:39 pm

Were these external drives made specifically for Macs?
If not then they are probably formatted for use by Windows, to FAT32 or NTFS format.
I don't use Mac myself, but did you get prompted to format the disks when attached the first time?

I can imagine that the MacOS (OSX?) implementation of NTFS is slower that the native MacOS formats, so I would try a format to whatever is the current best/fastest native Mac disk format.

Cinebient · Post by **Cinebient** » Mon Mar 19, 2018 12:19 pm

Sorry for this late answer but in the meantime i indeed formated my SSD´s from the default exFAT to the latest APFS since i´m anyway on High Sierra yet (i guess macOS extended/journaled works too well here).
And it´s night and day really. Now everything loads fast again and i especially have no issues with hanging loads when changing and loading new instruments like i had before.
It´s not as fast as my intern SSD but still fast enough, even for large samples like Keyscape inside Omnisphere etc. Omnisphere always loaded just the first instrument and then it freeze when i tried to load another one or it took several minutes. Now that works fine too. I also had often disk overload, especially in Kontakt.....now no trouble here too.
I just connect my Samsung T1 and T3 via USB 3.0 and it works fine now so far.
I guess next time (i plan to get a 2TB Samsung T5 SSD) i will format from the beginning to APFS (which is a bit hidden for noobs like me on High Sierra) since i only work on mac and it seems to works best for now.
I just want to let people know if someone else had/have trouble with this.
Cheers and a late thank´s for the suggestions.

DJ Warmonger · Post by **DJ Warmonger** » Tue Mar 20, 2018 5:51 am

Yes. External drives are slow, because they go to sleep mode when you don't use them. It takes a few seconds for them to wake up before they're ready to use again.

Michael L · Post by **Michael L** » Tue Mar 20, 2018 6:30 am

In HIgh Sierra, APFS is now the default format for SSDs; your internal SSD would have been auto-formatted with APFS, and now your external ones are too. Now we know!

Cinebient · Post by **Cinebient** » Tue Mar 20, 2018 7:52 am

Michael L wrote:In HIgh Sierra, APFS is now the default format for SSDs; your internal SSD would have been auto-formatted with APFS, and now your external ones are too. Now we know!

Yes. My internal SSD get auto formated. The externs not of course and i didn‘t know that makes such a huge difference so i had to do it manually.
Now i compared it to my macbook pro default space and i loaded some huge multi with Keyscape and Kontakt libraries.
Even just with an USB 3.0 connection it‘s really super fast to load. Very close to the intern flash/SSD in my Macbook Pro 15“ late 2013.
The downside since i use APFS is that some plug-ins now have a bit chaos in their preset browser. There is no logical order anymore.
However, i‘m happy for now. These SSD‘s are half the size of my smartphone and fits in my pocket.
They are still not cheap but at least a lot more affordable compared to a few years ago.

Cinebient · Post by **Cinebient** » Tue Mar 20, 2018 7:59 am

DJ Warmonger wrote:Yes. External drives are slow, because they go to sleep mode when you don't use them. It takes a few seconds for them to wake up before they're ready to use again.

I thought that too but i must say since i formated them now they are super fast for all my sample libraries. I really had no clue in what format they came and it was exFat which seems to be very slow and unstable for macOS.
Then i saw that people recommend to use the macOS extended/journaled format.
Since i was already on High Sierra i read that APFS should have all the pro for mac that macOS extended has but even more and it‘s even faster too. So far i can say that it is true.
Of course i can‘t use my extern SSD‘s now on windows. But i won‘t anyway.

Michael L · Post by **Michael L** » Tue Mar 20, 2018 8:13 am

Big preset library developers needed to update their file system for High Sierra - big headache!

Cinebient · Post by **Cinebient** » Tue Mar 20, 2018 8:44 am

Michael L wrote:Big preset library developers needed to update their file system for High Sierra - big headache!

Yep....Apple like to do this. Often it gives no pros over the old OS but sometimes it not that bad if developers are forced to new things maybe.
But Apple pushing it too fast. IOS is a good example. It´s often even worse here and developers can´t catch up every year since some apps/tools took longer to develop. But also developers seems to use faster the new things (maybe because they are forced to do so) they added like metal/metal 2 for GUI and whatever.
MacOS High Sierra seems to run in general fine on my notebook from 2013 and beside a few examples most applications and plug-ins works fine....even the older ones which don´t get updated yet. Apple might try to push macOS changes as fast as they do with their mobile OS, which is of course not the best thing for huge and complex applications.
At least i have now everything on APFS and it will be for sure last for the next decade or so.
Still i sometimes wish we wouldn´t get so many hard- and software updates these days. Maybe every 2-4 years would be great. But that´s the way it works today like no one would repair a washing machine or TV today.....just buy a new one every few years.

External SSD‘s really slow to load samples