Hello everybody.
I am used to storing my Cubase projects directly on my system for several years. My Mac is starting to feel a little slow, so I’m questioning this method.
My question: Is it better to store current composition projects on the system or on an external HDD? (and in the case of an external HD, won’t this pose a problem when the session is opened)?
thank you
Hi,
It depends if your internal drive is HDD or SSD, same for the external one. And how fast is the connection (do you use USB2/USB3…)?
Hi Martin, for the moment I store my entire plug-in library on an SSD, otherwise I only have external USB 2 HDD.
Hi,
The project itself is not such a big deal. The sound libraries are more interesting from this point of view. But I doubt the access to USB 2 HDD will be faster compared to the access to the internal SSD drive.
So you think I can open and work on a project stored on an external USB 2 HDD without having any crashes, latency or bugs?
works fine for me on USB3. That is sometimes I open a project and work on some details and realize afterwards I have opened a project from an external SDD. I also have the regular project drive which for no particular reason feels safer but maybe isn’t. I have no problems with any of it anyways.
A stereo 96Khz/24bit Wav file has a file size of 576KB per second.
Typical hi-speed USB 2.0 hard drives can be written to at rates around 25-30 MB/s, and read at 30-40 MB/s. Thast’s on a good day with a fresh disk.
So (theoretically) with a traditional external hdd you are able to record 40-50 tracks or playback 50-60 stereo tracks of 96Khz. The less the sample rate the higher the track count.
Regarding your libraries, your disk’s speed does matter only the first time that you’re loading a library (audio samples) on your vsti. After that is loaded on your RAM.
The ideal is to have a disk for your system and programs and another fast one for the rest.
So in my opinion you either get a 2nd internal sata hdd or better an ssd to store your projects (not an option with macs…) or a fast external disk, something like a usb3 ssd or so.
Then you can put your projects and libraries on external.
Thank you very much for this precise information. I’ll do some testing and let you know. Thank you for your time
Thanks @HowlingUlf for your answer, I will try that!
If you don’t want to get into trouble of buying new external disks etc I would say move all your libraries and projects to your external drive and just have each time the project(s) you are currently working on on internal. When you’re done move them to external again and so on.
This way you will free up space on your internal so to perform better.
You will still run projects and apps from the same drive though but the internal is always much faster due to sata connections.
If you’re into tweaking and your mac has an hdd I suggest you switch that to an ssd to top up the performance.
I saw a difference in performance on a very old G4 iBook even by switching system’s 5400rpm 2.5" HDD with a 7200rpm.