Hi guys, i was wondering if NTFS partition format is really faster than HFS+ when it comes to R/W

I have 1 TB HDD partitioned with NTFS and HFS+ for Win and OSX.

I tried Crystall mark bench and NTFS partition scored 100 MB/s R/W
Tried Blackmagic bench on HFS+ (journaled) and scored 70 MB/s so i tried with the same app the NTFS partition wich again scored 100 MB/s

So my question is: Is NTFS format faster than HFS+?

I should get a Samsung SSD for OSX within a month so no big problem.

 

Last edited: Dec 28, 2015

Totally depends on the Drive it self, i suggest that you use the same Disk for the test, format it as HSF+ use more than one software to test, write down the numbers, then format it as NTFS, and test again.

few more information to note before going on with this : R/W speed change from Brand to Brand, changes from Capacity to capacity, RPM too has an impact on the drive, and of course if the drive is empty or has data on it, because how can i put this together, imagine a hard drive as a table, Point A is the beginning of the table, B is the end of it, you are always standing near point A, when you put food on the table the closest the food to the point A the faster you can grab it, now change the food to the data, imagine the rest

anyway, i suggest you test using an new drive with no data on it...

and i suggest you try this soft as it is available for Mac AND Pc : google parkdale.

i'll be waiting for the numbers ;)

ps : sorry for my English

 

I asked because Logic pop up every 5 seconds seeing that the disk is too slow. I'll probably get a 250-500 GB SSD for OSX and use the actuall disk as storage.

 

Try increasing your audio buffer size in logic?

 

nothing change, tried both 512 and 1024

loading the project from NTFS partition helped a little bit.

 

Linus Torvalds: Apple's HFS+ is probably the worst file system ever

It's more important to read the technical reasons he give's for this in many ways not that much different from Jobs rant on Flash.

I think SSD hides most of the performance issues nowadays due to its sheer speed perhaps it is possible to polish a turd after all?!

 

I used to get the disk too slow error on Logic 9 and dropped an SSD in for the OS. Never had the error since then

 

That error message from Logic can be due to a number of factors: RAM, buffer setting, latency setting, disk data-transfer speed (SSD wins over HDD), processor speed, # of cores used by the DAW, a variety of settings in Kontakt, automations, channel (not bus-sent/sidechained) effects (especially MIDI-controlled/-timed effects; guitar amps), the speed of the external drive hosting sample libraries (if such be the case), other applications or background processes active, whether separate drives are being used for reading and writing, whether Bluetooth keyboard/mouse are being used . . .

and how warm is the room in which the computer is being used. During the summertime, when my A/C is usually insufficient to keep my place below 80 degrees during the day, I tend to get that error message in Logic more often, and with all the other factors mitigated, than during the rest of the year.

 

When i was using Studio One under Win7 i didn't had those kind of problems. It's a little bit weird because if i jump straight into difference time of the songs everthing is fine, just the meter reaching 50-60%. Then if i just let the song play when it comes to different section it just stops and pop up about slow disk.

I tried to open the project from other HDD formatted as NTFS connected as SATA3. I got 1 month ago a 4 TB HDD wich runs at 7.200 RPM and i notice that i don't get pop up, tested the drive with Crystall mark and scored 200 MB/s for R/W doubled my actuall HDD speed (as NTFS).
The SSD should do the job.

I heard about TRIM options with SSD, what is it? Do i need to enable it under HFS+?

 

From tomshardware:
...
HFS+ preemptively manages file fragmentation by always looking for free space large enough to accommodate a file that is to be written. File size increases may result in files having to be rewritten completely. Finally, Mac OS X since 10.3 supports on-the-fly defragmentation, which takes action if a file is split up into more than eight parts, and if additional activity/access preconditions don’t apply.

This is good and bad.
Good in that it prevents fragmentation when writing files of known and fixed length, but bad for applications like audio recording where the file size steadily increases.
Have you seen the error message while recording?
Or during playback of a large arrangement with many audio tracks?

About TRIM: Did you know that from MacOS 10.10.4 on, in order to enable TRIM on 3rd party SSDs, you can simply run
sudo trimforce enable
from the command line?

Apple SSDs have TRIM enabled by default, no need to do anything.

If you need more info about what TRIM is, search online.

 

Thanks for the infos.
I usually don't record anything, I make EDM/club type track and usually pop up while reaching Build ups wich could be a good number of tracks ( not too many) and a good amout of automations.

If i remember well i didn't had all this trouble 1 year ago when i was using Mavericks 10.9.0, just a little bit because i had a old cpu (i3) and had to freeze/bounce track to get the job done. At the and was about 150 tracks both midi and audio.