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"Disk too slow....."


PeterIngmar

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“Disk is too slow or system overload” I´m sorry to bring up this topic since it´s been dealt with numerous times before. On this forum as well as on many other. Crazy thing is; while many are familiar with this message only some of us get them to a degree where it´s utterly impossible to have any kind of workflow going. Me, I´ve scanned the net for advice. I´ve tested and tried them all. To no avail. My set up I´ve had for about a year (during which time the error messages have steadily increased); iMac 27 Retina 5K 4.0 GHz Quad Core (intel core i7) with 32 GB SDRAM. The internal drive is a 250 GB SSD. I´m on the latest version of Logic Pro X (10.3.2) and Sierra 10.12.6. I stream my sample libraries/VST/loops etc. from an external SSD/thunderbolt drive and my audio from SSD/USB3 dito. Usually everything runs smoothly in the beginning of a project when I´m mostly working with Midi. It´s later on when it builds up with recorded audio that the messages start to appear. Right now I´m recording and mixing an album for the first time with this set up and it´s just not possible. With multi-micked drums, bass, keybords and some guitars, even without any plugins, Logic already stumbles. The activity meter reads almost nothing under Audio (CPU) but hits spikes at random parts of the songs under I/O (disk) This happens whether I freeze all the track, maximize the buffer size etc. etc. or not. Help. Me. Please

 

EDIT: After trying streaming the audio from all kinds of different external drives I finally got the system working after moving the audio to the internal system disk which goes against everything I´ve read and heard about how to set up Logic. This is not a long term solution though as my system disk is only 250 GB and only 100 GB free at that 

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For audio recording, I still use external or second internal spinning disks and never had issues thru eSata or USB 3.

Even with 24 simultaneous tracks at 88.2k.

 

On the SSD side, a lot depends on the brand in my experience.

I only use OWC drives on laptops and old cheese grater mac pros as system drives and they work great.

I don't know if the garbage collection on SSDs got any better or if it's still an issue on brands like Samsung, Crucial and the like.

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OK but this would mean Logic can´t be used in a professional environment. The things I´m throwing at it now, in the middle of process, is nothing compared to what it will when it´s time to mix. I´ve been a Logic user since 1998 and I´ve had all kinds of different computers. The iMac I´m using now is the most powerful of them all. On paper. Performancewise, with the latest version of Logic, it´s the worst set up I´ve ever had. But as I wrote in the EDIT note, it works fine if I move the audio to the the internal system drive (you´re not supposed to do that, I know) How come that works?
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Whoops! Turns out my Lacie drive is in fact HD not SSD. Sorry. (it´s so damn quit still) Now, since it´s the one causing my problems the question is, what would be the best alternative as external audio drive; a SSD through USB3 or a fast HD through thunderbolt daisy chained with my sound card?
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Yes it is.

 

my external 5400rpm 2x RAID0 goes around 170mb/s. Also thats for sequential r/w.  if its fragmented and heads need to jump, it drops drastically, and with USB2.0 latency its even worse.

 

SSDs are cheap. Get the cheapest  thunderbolt LaCIE rugged, throw the drive away and fit it with and SSD if you can't afford to have active projects on the internal SSD.

 

I keep ALL my active projects on internal SSD and only move them to external when I finish them.

 

Also, new macbooks have 3gb/s SSD speeds. faster than anything you can buy, be a shame to waste all that speed.

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No, that stops here and now. I´ll use it for Time Machine back up. I´m gonna try out one of those Glyph drives next. A 7200 rpm  with 2 thunderbolt2 ports. Thanks everybody for helping out

thunderbolt is wasted on 7200rpm, might as well get USB3.0 (cheaper)

or, use the Glyph enclosure, rip the 7200 drive out and put an SSD in. buy a cheap usb3.0 enclosure on the internet to use the 7200rpm

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