Anyone using USB thumb drive for storing samples?

[Paulie]

I've got a MacBook Air with 8GB RAM and a 256GB internal drive. I recently bought Logic Pro X and the Kontakt Komplete 10 bundle. It comes with 130GB of content,supposedly (on 13 DVDs). Given the data already on my laptop installing the entire library would almost max out my internal drive. I saw a 128GB thumb drive on sale for $70 so I snagged it. My Kontakt library installation ended up being around 90GB., the main software was installed on the internal hd and the libraries were stored in the proper Shared folder but on the thumb drive. Then I recently added the Scarbee Funk Guitar vi (awesome, btw).

So far so good, but I've not yet recorded anything to completion. Is anyone else using a similar setup? I figure what's the difference between a USB3 thumb drive versus an external drive connected via USB3?

[kclements]

Hey Paulie.

I think the issue with using a USB stick drive is sustained transfer rates. They were not meant for audio work. So you my get drop outs when you don't expect them. And if you are recording and get a dropout, it could damage your session, and really screw things up. But I haven't used one, just things I've read.

If it works, it works, but I would be sure to backup all the time. I've had USB drive fail out of the blue. So backup.

I think you would be better off eventually getting an external hard drive, make sure it's 7200 rpm. I like the drives from OWC.

Cheers
kc

[andygabrys]

Kayles got a good idea there Paul.

The thing with using a computer in general for production is its a compromise when it comes to actually choosing the machine.

You either go big and immobile - a MAC PRO or similar PC tower. Never moves, full of juice and everything. Pretty much becomes an installation in your room.

or you go smaller and portable - a laptop like yours.

but then you have to deal with sounds.

If you go all mic recording (say you are a singer songwriter always recording yourself and your guitar only) then its minimal. An interface and a mic or 2 and you are good.

If you use a lot of virtual stuff, then you have to figure out where to store and stream the sounds from. Then you have to do a little research into how portable and how robust those streaming sources are going to be.


two things that you can count on to begin with:

filling up a drive of any kind to capacity makes it run slower.

A mechanical hard drive slows radically (exponentially actually) once you fill it more than 50% full. This isn't so much of a problem these days cause mech HD are very inexpensive per GB. You can get a 1 TB drive for about $60. As Kayle says, 7200 RPM with a decent size cache like 32 MB or bigger, and an interface speed of 6gb/s (SATA III) is the type to go for. Long term reliability for mech HD is poor - you can be sure it will fail sooner or later especially with heavy use. Most mech HDs come with 2 or 3 yr warranties, although some like the Western Digital Caviar Black 6 gb/s drives are 5 yrs if I am not mistaken. The extra money is worth it cause replacing drives is a major PITA - its happened to me on a number of occasions over the last few years.

a solid state drive (or which USB keychain flash drives are very closely related from what I know) operates best when you have 20% or more of the drive open. SSD's have better long term read / write rates than standard keychain drives usually. Again SSDs come in 3 gb/s (SATA II) and 6 gb/s (SATA III) and the 6gb/s ones are the ones to go for. You also get a choice to spend more money up front and get a "pro" model which usually has a 5 yr warranty vs. a 2 or 3 yr warranty for the standard models.

So putting 128 GB of samples on a 128 GB drive probably is taking a performance hit right there. I usually try to figure out my near-future space need is and double it.

There are other options for portable streaming drives out there from OWC among other places: http://eshop.macsales.com/shop/firewire/on-the-go or http://eshop.macsales.com/shop/external ... -Envoy-Pro again trading dollars for performance.

The other issue is how to connect all this stuff to the machine - with a laptop it makes it more and more of a fixed installation but if you get a "dock" and connect a variety of peripherals up to it, it makes things a little more organized. Something like this: http://eshop.macsales.com/item/Elgato/10024010R/ - and there are always newer and different models appearing.

good luck!

[Paulie]

Was looking at this OWC drive and found this article comparing USB 3 to Firewire 800. Looks like USB 3 wins for spinning disk, Firewire 800 wins hands down for SSD. So, if I don't care about a Firewire 800 connection option I can save $40 and go with just USB 3 for $99 for 1TB (7200 RPM, 32MB cache). Bus powered, 3yr warranty. Think I'm sold.

Now, hopefully I can just copy all of the contents from my 128GB flash drive to the new drive, name it the same and have Logic/Kontakt recognize the new drive. If not, it will be another multi-hour installation of the 14DVDs that Kontakt Complete is made up of.

Thanks for the tip, Andy!

[Paulie]

Update: SUCCESS!

On-The-Go Pro 7200 RPM Drive and Elgato Thunderbolt Dock arrived last week. I copied the entire Kontakt 10 Bundle over from the USB drive to the new drive (took about 12 minutes), renamed the new drive to the thumb drive name, and Logic didn't skip a beat. Haven't had any delayed samples or latency at all.

Thanks for the recommendations Andy!