State of hard drives. Are they getting better. Should I still get one?

I’m sure this question has been asked before, but as it is a topic that changes with the tunes, I thought I’d bring it up now. As I’m at a decision making point tonight.

 

I presently have all my Spitfire Audio libraries on a Samsung T3 1gb that has no room left on it. Obviously they are the way of the future. But as it is with sample libraries, they never stop growing. And I need more storage, now. I also own Komplete Ultimate, which resides on my internal drive, and various other libraries floating in limbo.

So I was shopping around, and, a 4tb WD hard drive is a bout 150$. Where as 2tb of ssd is 800$.

I never really used an external for my sample libraries until I got the ssd, so I don’t have much experience running samples from an external hard drive.

 

Will an external hard drive, usb 3, on a new MBP, be up to the task, like the ssd, of streaming my large libraries? Load times can be longer, I don’t mind, but actual playback and performance is critical.

I’m not going to spend 800$ on a new Samsung T5 ssd 2tb, so I’m wondering what kind of options I might have.

 

Cheers for any help. Going to buy something tomorrow. Please advise me.

 

A

I would make sure the external HD is effectively 7200 rpm and give it a shot.

Also make sure it's a high performance WD drive. None of that energy saving crap.

Sounds like you need to do some organizing, like getting that huge Komplete Ultimate library off your system drive. HDDs are great for project storage and backup, SSDs are best when you require faster read/write speed for certain sound libraries and big LPX projects. Where speed is less of an issue, you can save money by using 5400rpm drives for backups. I'm a fan of Glyph HDD and SSD drives. OWCs are also great. Pick the drive speed to match the task.

Thanks for your input guys, yeah, for sure this isn’t for backup, it’s for my libraries that feed Kontakt.

 

I’m curious, because, obviously people have run samples off externals, and clearly ssd are better, but native instruments has been recommending users to use an external long before ssd were in the picture.

So, what I’m wondering is, just because ssd are here, it shouldn’t really discount the fact that a good hard drive did the trick in the past as well. Right?

 

I infact asked a similar question a while ago on this forum, and everyone was like “yeah it’s fine don’t worry, the speed is much more than you need”.

 

Have libraries gotten more demanding over the last 5 years, but so to should have hard drives.

The more realistic the samples, the more demanding they become on the hardware.

 

So, a high performance 7200 rpm USB 3 HD should be a good place to start.

Yes, clearly a Spitfire audio string library will be more demanding than a base level generic strings patch.

But is anyone still using hard drives? I find it hard to believe, at the price point for storage of an ssd, that everyone has moved their 6tb libraries over to external ssd.

 

I strictly need a drive for streaming.

A 7200rpm hard drive with usb 3, shouldn’t that be more than adequate?

I’m not necessarily looking for validation, more just a first hand account of “yes, I have my heavy libraries on a **** external drive and everything is fine. I can load ** number of kontakt instances and everything runs fine.

Or,

“No, my external drive limits me to 10 tracks of a string section using Spitfire contemporary strings, it’s not worth it. It eats up too much memory because of having to adjust kontakts buffer, get a SSD”

 

Thanks everybody for advice

When not using the slave, I run a ton of VI's from a 3TB Lacie 7200....connected via a USB3 hub (powered) from my MacBook Pro. VI's include several NI libraries, Omnisphere, and numerous third party Kontakt libraries. Unless you're running power-hungry libraries like EastWest Hollywood Strings, you'll be fine. And I highly recommend choosing a drive with its own power supply (not bus powered). This also goes for hubs.

Thanks Wolfie for the advice. Yeah, my existing external is a powered LaCie, but it’s just a backup drive.

Thanks for sharing your experience, I appreciate it. We’ve all got opinions, but we don’t all have experience.

Unfortunately I do run some fairly resource heavy libraries. In the end I think I’ll just stick with the ssd. The Samsung T-series are pretty slick. I’ll just pony up the extra cash.