External SSD speed for large sample libraries

[FrankT]

Hi, I am using a Crucial P3 Plus SSD 4TB, M.2 PCIe Gen4 NVMe in a Thunderbolt enclosure Anyoyo TBU401Pro. Afaik this is an Acasis brand.
The official r/w speed of the Crucial SSD are 4800MB/s / 4100MB/s.
I know that these values are Marketing…

When connected to my laptop (Dell XPS, Win 11 Pro) through TB3 I can measure c 3000 MB/s for Read with CrystalDiskMark. But only c 500 MB/s for Write. While Read is pretty good, the values for Write are below e.g. Samsung T7 USB 3.2. so very disappointing!

Here is The QUESTION: when using Sample libraries like Komplete 14 from an external SSD, i.e. loading instruments/samples into my DAW (S1/Cubase): are the READ speed of the SSD the relevant metrics? If yes, I could live with the setup as once I’ve installed the libraries on the disk I‘d be fine with the 3000 MB/s read speed. If, however, WRITE speeds also play a role for this use case, I will need to change the setup…

Thx!

[FrankT]

To answer my own question, this solved it:
Device Manager>Disk Drive>select drive>Properties>Policies>turn on write cache
Disk performance settings
I now have write speeds of c. 2500 MB/s.

[maanga]

That option is turned on by default unless you changed it. Am I correct?

[FrankT]

It wasn‘t for the drive.

What you also need to check:
Disk Management ==> target disk, select Properties, Select strategy,Select better performance, enable write cache on the device and click OK, the disk achieves the best performance.

Still would like to know though whether Write speeds have any relevance for the use case of loading Kontakt libraries / other large sample libraries into my DAW…

[FranklyFlawless]

Still would like to know though whether Write speeds have any relevance for the use case of loading Kontakt libraries / other large sample libraries into my DAW…

It does not. Only read speeds of the hard drive will affect how quickly the sample libraries are accessed, with the secondary factor being RAM speed for caching the sample libraries themselves. Write speeds of hard drives become a factor when installing sample libraries onto other storage media.

[FrankT]

ok, thanks!

[DevonB]

That option is turned on by default unless you changed it. Am I correct?

External USB should be set for Quick Removal, not cache enabled, so you (hopefully) don't corrupt the drive, especially on an 'accidental' removal. It's been that way as long back as I can remember? Windows ME timeframe? On internal drives, they should have cache enabled by default.

Devon

[maanga]

That option is turned on by default unless you changed it. Am I correct?

External USB should be set for Quick Removal, not cache enabled, so you (hopefully) don't corrupt the drive, especially on an 'accidental' removal. It's been that way as long back as I can remember? Windows ME timeframe? On internal drives, they should have cache enabled by default.

Devon

Thank you. Learned something today.