I wonder if Cubase can properly be run from an external HDD? As I know the software is doing some calculations about latency during recordings, to be able to align the recorded material perfectly. I wonder if I run Cubase from an external drive, can it mess up these calculations to result in an improper alignment of recordings in the end? Is Cubase capable of taking into consideration that it is run from an external source through USB 3.0?
Hi Bencurl11 - if you’re using Mac then it has to be installed on the root drive, like all other programmes. A bit of a pain considering the fugal capacity Apple spec on their computers!
In the PC world Cubase also wants to be installed on the system drive. However keep in mind that the fairly small Cubase program is different from the content which can be huge, but you can locate content wherever you like. The most common reason folks want to install Cubase somewhere else is because of diskspace limitations, which relocating content can help with.
I just took a peek & Cubase 14 uses 1.5GB while the associated content is 116GB, so about 100 times larger.
This is not the reason that I want to install Cubase on external drive. At the moment my laptop has 2 system drives, no more can be added. To run Cubase, I needed a 3rd system drive, due to the system requirements, that it needs Windows 10. I cannot put that drive inside to be a sata drive. I can only attach it as USB 3.0 drive. It will be system drive, but connected externally. USB 3.0 or I have eSata as well. That’s why I am asking.
That’s another story if Win 10 would run like that. Maybe not. MacOS does so. So maybe Win 10 as well. I will try. You can’t install Windows like that, but maybe after installing it does not matter.
In Windows only the Drive with the letter C: is the system drive, because the Windows System is installed here.
Windows programs are installed in
C:\Program Files
and that is what @raino is talking about. The Cubase Installer simply follows this convention.
My system drive is a 475GB drive. I still have 175GB free.
I recommend that you clear out what you have on that system drive that is not actual programs and documents etc. A lot of software will download and install libraries on the system drive if you let them and that takes up space. It would be wiser to offload libraries onto an external drive and leave programs on the system drive.
I’m just guessing that that’s your problem. I have a hard time believing you have a small system drive.
You can’t install Cubase on any of my recent drives. I have windows 7 on one, and Mac OS El Capitan on the other. I have license for Cubase 12. It will work with none.
I have Windows 10 license as well, but cannot insert 1 more drive to be Sata. PERMANENTLY! That means, I can put a new drive into the laptop to be C:, install Windows 10 on it, then remove it, and boot from that when I connect is as USB 3.0 drive. I assume it will boot up. As I remember from earlier days it does so. MacOS surely does, I run it sometimes like that, so if Win 10 fails I can create a new drive with newer MacOS and install Cubase there, then.
So all in all, the operating system would be installed onto the drive inside the laptop, then taken out and used as external drive.
Forgive me for asking, but why wouldn’t you just replace the Win 7 drive with a new one with Windows 11?
What is the upside in doing what you wish to do?
Firstly my computer won’t take Win 11. Win 10 came with it originally, but it was terribly slow after a while, so in 2019 I installed Win 7 and it works like a charm since then, fast, and no problem. Faster than the laptops that were purchased in the family meanwhile and that use Win 10 and 11. Secondly I have a lot of important Softwares on both drives that I am not sure could run on new systems (like Logic 9 for example, that I still need to collaborate with a friend who only has that). So all in all it would be just too big of a stress to rebuild both drives on new systems and I am not sure I shouldn’t pay more money for upgrades to do so.
Hello, what about running Cubase from an external hard drive but by using a Windows virtual machine?
It would be still installed in the root drive (of the virtual machine).
Would that work?
Technically it is possible to run a virtual machine from an external drive. But practically you are combining two performance problems, the lower speed of the external drive (compared to internal SSDs) and the processing overhead of the virtual machine.
For a time critical software like Cubase… No.
As JuergenP has noted, Cubase will not work properly on a virtual machine. I have tried some Daws on virtual machines, even on internal drives which should be faster, and the performance has always been very very low, completely useless.
When you launch Cubase it is loaded into the RAM of your computer and is run from there. Therefore the storage location on the external hard drive has no effect on how Cubase is executed. It might be necessary to access the drive at times to load a .dll into RAM after the launch but also this has no effect on keeping auido tracks in sync.
The drive might become a bottleneck if a lot of data has to be transferred between the drive and the rest of the computer. So if you work with huge sample libraries or simply have a lot of small samples on a lot of tracks. But also this has no effect on Cubase keeping everything in sync.
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