Advice for music production storage strategies
March 29, 2018 6:15 AM Subscribe
I'm having lots of fun making my own music. I'd like to try some tools that include large sample libraries (i.e. Kontakt, et al) but I have an Air with a pretty small hard drive and they are a butt to upgrade. Seeking advice on my options to have libraries (and maybe some VSTs?) externally.
I've been reading around the topic and it seems reasonably certain that I could pop the libraries on an external SSD and connect it to one of my 2 USB3 ports, or possibly to the USB3 ports on the OWC thunderbolt2 dock that I have. I've sort of fallen into the clutches of gear lust via the advice in this youtube video on 'what gear do I need?' - hence have ended up looking at the Samsung portable drives (he recommends a Samsung T3, but there's now a 1TB Samsung T5 currently available: http://a.co/2RAC4tA ). I'm happy to keep my drive fairly sedentary, so wonder if a regular 2.5" SSD and a SATA to USB3 cable would do just as well for me (and be a fair bit cheaper.) I think I can get the difference doown to about $60-70. Do you think the portability factor and more self-contained nature of the T5 might swing it?
Saving a bunch of storage for libraries will help a lot, but I haven't yet found anything comprehensive about strategies for project storage or apps. Can I keep project storage on relatively slow media? Are there ways in which it would be practical to run any apps on a different drive to my OS (I'm thinking of some of the VSTs my DAW uses. ) This last bit seems unlikely to me, but I'd love to decant some of the larger and less well used ones. Going forward I'd one day like to build a desktop system that had a bunch of task-centric drives, but for now I'd like to use what I've got.
Thanks for any help - I've been reading about these topics a bit, but I'm getting lost in the woods of gear reviews & stuff that's too expensive.
I've been reading around the topic and it seems reasonably certain that I could pop the libraries on an external SSD and connect it to one of my 2 USB3 ports, or possibly to the USB3 ports on the OWC thunderbolt2 dock that I have. I've sort of fallen into the clutches of gear lust via the advice in this youtube video on 'what gear do I need?' - hence have ended up looking at the Samsung portable drives (he recommends a Samsung T3, but there's now a 1TB Samsung T5 currently available: http://a.co/2RAC4tA ). I'm happy to keep my drive fairly sedentary, so wonder if a regular 2.5" SSD and a SATA to USB3 cable would do just as well for me (and be a fair bit cheaper.) I think I can get the difference doown to about $60-70. Do you think the portability factor and more self-contained nature of the T5 might swing it?
Saving a bunch of storage for libraries will help a lot, but I haven't yet found anything comprehensive about strategies for project storage or apps. Can I keep project storage on relatively slow media? Are there ways in which it would be practical to run any apps on a different drive to my OS (I'm thinking of some of the VSTs my DAW uses. ) This last bit seems unlikely to me, but I'd love to decant some of the larger and less well used ones. Going forward I'd one day like to build a desktop system that had a bunch of task-centric drives, but for now I'd like to use what I've got.
Thanks for any help - I've been reading about these topics a bit, but I'm getting lost in the woods of gear reviews & stuff that's too expensive.
I don't use an external drive but have no space on my laptop's SSD for VSTs, so use its slow old hard drive for all my VSTs and sample libraries (Sampletank 3 [55 GB], Miroslav [7 GB] and SonicSynth [10 GB] + a ton of REX loops). I've not run into any trouble so far with loading times are access from the HDD.
Every VST installer that I've come across will allow you to choose where to put it, so just define a VST folder on your SSD and install there. Then, in your DAW just make sure you point to the correct VST folder and you should be up and running.
I've got a couple of external SSDs kicking around from a video project that I'm going to try with my Sampletank library to see if it speeds things up slightly, but the principle is the same.
posted by IncognitoErgoSum at 6:52 AM on March 29, 2018 [1 favorite]
Every VST installer that I've come across will allow you to choose where to put it, so just define a VST folder on your SSD and install there. Then, in your DAW just make sure you point to the correct VST folder and you should be up and running.
I've got a couple of external SSDs kicking around from a video project that I'm going to try with my Sampletank library to see if it speeds things up slightly, but the principle is the same.
posted by IncognitoErgoSum at 6:52 AM on March 29, 2018 [1 favorite]
Personally, I would keep VSTs on the same drive as your DAW. These are programs, remember (and will often give you the choice of installing them as "stand-alones," which you can opt out of).
Keeping samples on an external drive is fairly common, I think.
Keeping projects in storage on an external drive is perfectly fine, but I would advise moving them to your internal drive when you're "working" on them.
posted by kuanes at 7:04 AM on March 29, 2018 [1 favorite]
Keeping samples on an external drive is fairly common, I think.
Keeping projects in storage on an external drive is perfectly fine, but I would advise moving them to your internal drive when you're "working" on them.
posted by kuanes at 7:04 AM on March 29, 2018 [1 favorite]
Are there ways in which it would be practical to run any apps on a different drive to my OS (I'm thinking of some of the VSTs my DAW uses. )
No reason you couldn't, especially on a Mac, but note that lots of audio software/plugins are DRM'ed to hell and back (even the "free" versions) and might not like this.
What I'd try personally: Install Kontakt normally, locate the sample bank, move it to the external hard disk, and create an alias (or maybe a symbolic link) to the disk where they were originally were. Then see if Kontakt still works.
(Also in case you didn't know, SD cards for expanding MBA storage are totally a thing, so there's another option.)
posted by neckro23 at 8:08 AM on March 29, 2018 [1 favorite]
No reason you couldn't, especially on a Mac, but note that lots of audio software/plugins are DRM'ed to hell and back (even the "free" versions) and might not like this.
What I'd try personally: Install Kontakt normally, locate the sample bank, move it to the external hard disk, and create an alias (or maybe a symbolic link) to the disk where they were originally were. Then see if Kontakt still works.
(Also in case you didn't know, SD cards for expanding MBA storage are totally a thing, so there's another option.)
posted by neckro23 at 8:08 AM on March 29, 2018 [1 favorite]
Response by poster: Thanks all. Probably getting a Samsung T5 in the next few weeks, many thanks for the advice, I'm grateful to all who shared their insight and experience.
posted by aesop at 5:22 PM on April 2, 2018
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