HD meter and slow loading

I am having issues with slow load times in Logic Pro and the HD meter showing overload. When I drag a audio file into my project I get the spinning colour ball for about 10 seconds before playback and the HD meter at the top fills to full and shows a blue dot. I have a very new (2018 model but bought new in 2021) 3.2GHz Mac Mini 6 Core Intel i7 with 32GB RAM and I'm running the project off a Lacie Rugged USB3 plugged directly into the Mac Mini. I don't get any "disk too slow message" and the I/O Buffer Size is as 1024 samples. The CPU meter is barely registering. I have the same issue when I use iZotope RX8 as an external sample editor. I use Shift-W to open RX8 and make some adjustments to a sample, and when I save the file in RX8 and go back to hit playback in Logic I get the spinning colour ball for about 10 seconds and the full HD meter. Anyone know why this is happening? I would be surprised if it would be a slow drive as it is USB3 but it is the only thing I can think of.

But if the internal drive is 5400 rpm, it doesn’t matter that it’s USB 3, the drive is still slow.

Also, how is the drive formatted? If it’s Fat32 or ExFat, not good either, because they’re Windows formats.

Logic wants to see Mac OS Extended or APFS.

Ok good to know, it is actually formatted as ExFat. So are you saying that Lacie Rugged are too slow too mix directly from the drive? Should I only use SSD drives from mixing from?

I transferred the project onto my computer HD and it seems to be loading very fast now so it must've been that the Lacie Rugged external drive is too slow. I didn't realise that the RPM of the drive would affect the way it performs in Logic, I thought as long as it was USB3 or Thunderbolt it would be fast enough. Thanks for setting me straight.

Ok good to know, it is actually formatted as ExFat.

Always format all disks or other storage devices used with Logic Pro should be formatted in the APFS or MacOS Extended (Journaled) format.

 

So are you saying that Lacie Rugged are too slow too mix directly from the drive? Should I only use SSD drives from mixing from?

No, triplets is saying that 5,400 rpm drives are too slow. You can still use them, they're just slower than 7,200 rpm drives, which are themselves slower than SSD drives. Note that you're not "mixing from a drive". You're mixing a project that is loaded from your drive to RAM on your Mac. However while mixing, Logic needs to make calculations and use your Mac's CPU, stream audio from a drive, your Mac is using MacOS which may have to page data in and out of RAM onto a drive, etc. So using a faster drive is always a good idea. SSDs are inexpensive enough nowadays that they should be a no-brainer choice for all drives used while working in Logic (especially the system drive) except maybe for large size backup drives.