Hello, Good Day,
I'm using kontakt on a mac and was wondering what external drive should I get? I need one that is quick enough to get the job done as these libraries are large and I will be primary using this drive to store the library instead of my macbook hard drive. I currently own a drive but it works to slow to get the job done.

With that said, a few questions I have are.

Does 5400 RPM differ that much from 7200 RPM as far as speed is concerned?

What is raid 0 or raid 1? Does that involve backing up a hard drive or is that two disk in the hard drive and the way they work together?

I'm really a noob to all this but here are a few drives I am considering lol.

amazon.com/Seagate-Expansion-Portable-External-STEA1000400/dp/B00TKFEE5S/ref=sr_1_3?s=pc&ie=UTF8&qid=1484793475&sr=1-3&keywords=external%2Bhard%2Bdrive&th=1

amazon.com/LaCie-Rugged-External-Drive-9000298/dp/B00IRV005E/ref=sr_1_1/166-4015737-4229814?s=pc&ie=UTF8&qid=1484892480&sr=1-1

amazon.com/dp/B00FRHTSK4/ref=twister_B01CQV9RDG?_encoding=UTF8&psc=1

amazon.com/dp/B00G9TZM22/ref=psdc_595048_t1_B00NV8PQ48

amazon.com/dp/B01LQQHF2W/ref=twister_B01LZY0PXU?_encoding=UTF8&th=1

Please let me know if any of them are good.

Thank you!

 

Last edited: Jan 20, 2017

Cant see anything in the code field by the way, might want to update that, nevertheless:
You'll want to look at failure rates for all of the drives you are looking at, then the average lifespan, read and write speeds are important. You'll most likely want 7200 rpm. HSGS i think has the lowest failure rate, but i dont know if the manufacturer makes them portable.

 

Here is what Seagate has to say about the subject: http://www.seagate.com/do-more/everything-you-wanted-to-know-about-hard-drives-master-dm/ I have a Seagate and a Silicon Power. The Silicon Power is built to military specs. (you can drop it a few feet and it still works, in theory). The Silicon Power also self formats across mac and PC. They both work fine. Seems type of connection is more important than rpm for speed of file retrieval.

 

Last edited: Jan 20, 2017

Hello.
External hdd's have sometimes low rev hdd units (5400, 5900, or "variable rpm") which are less suitable for sample libraries. A 7200rpm is a must, 10k or 15k rpm are sometimes useful, for huge libraries. You'd want to format the hdd and make a clean install, to have contiguous files.
Most important, do not keep the hdd vertically, only horizontally, in a gyroscopic position. I saw dozens of external hdd's gone in months because of that commercial "standing book" position.
Raid 0 doubles the speed of access, data goes randomly on both hdd's (allows using low rev hdd's), raid 1 mirrors the hdd.
I would buy an external hdd bay, and get some good hdd's, like wd caviar black (noisy toys, btw), samsung 103sj (older, but very silent and reliable 1tb hdd - avoid the 1,5tb eco-fails), or hitachi's hgst (also reliable). Some seagate units are ill-reputed, I'd stay off those (sv35 or constellations are better).

 

Last edited: Jan 20, 2017

You can use almost any SSD drive stay away from HDD they are not fast enough on loading time.
That is what I am using and the loading of samples in Kontakt's memory is now super fast 8 to 10 times faster.
You will be very much impressed if you do this.
I made a lot of research on the matter and this is the ultimate solution.
I am using a Crucial M500.
Believe me you won't regret it.

 

Last edited: Jan 20, 2017

Sorry about that, this site messes up amazon links for some reason but I fixed the issue.

Thank you.

Thanks for sharing that link, I'll check it out.

Thanks you very much for your advice. I believe the only 7200rpm drive I have in the OP is the LaCie Rugged External Drive. I also never liked the idea of standing the bigger drives up anyway because I figured that wouldn't be a good idea.

As for Raid, does that mean I would use two hdd's or is that a disk built into the hard drive. Where there is a 1 tb disk and another 1tb disk in 1 drive.

 

The thing about those drives is that they are so expensive though. I'm not sure if they are worth it.

I just need something that can be used to hold my libraries. Even if it takes a long time to batch resave (or whatever you call the process in kontakt). Once it's loaded I needed something that will allow me to play the sounds with no issues. One of the issues I have with my current drive is that when playing with the libraries in kontakt, the sounds freeze up and so I would press a key to trigger a sound and not hear anything.

 

For Kontakt way to go is SSD. No spinning discs etc. Also important is formats etc. Streaming access speeds way important when it comes to Kontakt therefore as a general rule avoid ExFat etc as slow and use formats such as Mac OS Journaled wherever possible.
SSD is expensive but performance wise is the best option.
Be selective rather than install loads of libraries that you never use etc

 

ThirdEyeJim, thanks for the appreciation.
Raid 0 or 1 means invariably two perfectly identical hdd's.

 

Last edited: Jan 20, 2017

All dependes witch kontakt libs you will use.
Usb is real slow and use processing power, so PCs must use raid pcie cards ( my hackintosh have 2x raid 5 with 5 disks each) and OSX uses the expensive thunderbolt.
RAID 0 is very good but you can easely have much more chance to brake it. with raids 5 you can loose one hd and it will continue to work.
With a real raid card and my hybrid hds my speed is almost 3 times faster than a good ssd. Raid cards with 16 ports cost less than 30 us dollars but a thunderbolt is only a costly dream

 

So NTFS is the best format to use? Also SSD makes that much of a difference? I mean don't those drives take a lil delay too sometimes and won't they inevitably fail as all HDD drives do?

Thank for the info, I will be usng all the kontakt libraries that come with komplete. Especially Alicias Keys and the drum ones(Abey road and etc).

 

Does anyone know of any particular USB SSD drives? I'm not looking for a drive for my computer but more so an external I would plug into it.

 

I'd RATHER get a 5800rpm drive, because it's slower.

Slower = less heat = longer life.

 

For windows users NFTS the format to use. For MAC etc generally OSX extended or similar considered the "optimal" formats.
Does make a difference. Have read various articles around formats etc and they seem pretty well constructed.
I guess everything going to fail at some point on a PC etc.
SSD's are slowly coming down in price and with regards to lifespan they are now considered pretty solid etc. Does make a discernable difference with regards to speed.
SSD has lower seek time and you are able to stream more samples.
With regards to the libraries themselves is normally the large orchestral type libraries where you are streaming lots of samples that benefit most from SSD.
With regards to the drive itself, Samsung 850pro is a good drive that is reasonably priced. 256GB might not sound a lot but in reality it's a pretty fair size as long as you don't have libraries right, left and centre.
It's not USB though
USB should have no real drop in speeds etc but if you are going to go down the route of USB then also consider investing in a good USB hub etc. Like everything, I guess there will be arguments for and against and I guess you have to make decision at some-point but only you can weigh up with regards to how much you're willing to invest VS needs around usage etc.
Like some others have pointed out there will be arguments in many directions etc.
Think if your selective about what libraries your likely to need or use rather than installing hundreds upon hundreds of GB's etc then it can be a realistic option

 

get one Samsung T3 portable SSD drives. I have one and loads libraries instantly, Copy/Paste have transfers from 310 to 450 MB/s, via USB 3.1 port

 

Internal 3.5" 7200 RPM SATA3 drives are easy fast enough for Kontakt libs.

I "store" all my libs on an internal 3TB SATA drive - no problems with libs. Keep it defragged.

Probably the most cost-effective solution is storing libs on a big cheap external USB drive - and copy them over to an internal drive as and when you need them. Hassle, but.....saves $$$$

 

Answer: You don't need fast.. you need reliable. You are "storing" data that will not perform executable operations.. there will be no frequent reading task done directly within it, or writing task directly to it. The speed of the storage drive for your Kontakt libraries will only pertain to how fast you can transfer your libraries to or from that storage drive. That isn't so important because transferring your libraries around isn't something you'll be doing all day every day. Your operating/program drive is the one that needs to be fast as it will stream the sitting data/Kontakt libraries. And you should have at least one internal storage drive for your song projects that is fast. This is the drive that will share the executable portion of everything you record, bounce, mixdown. But yeah.. speed is the focus to put on executable operations such as the DAW on your operating drive recording realtime data to your project recording drive which will share the task. Your Kontakt libraries are just sitting data that will pre-allocated by your operating drive when you boot up. So you can disregard speed and get whatever you feel is cheap and reliable storage for your libraries. In fact, if you buy a faster driver for your libraries the only thing it will be is more expensive and more noise in your room.

 

Last edited: Jan 22, 2017

What about DFD? Most kontakt libraries use DFD? As you lower the preload buffer size without fast drive your gonna get audio dropouts?

 

In that manner the OS disk fetches and streams the sample. The process is dependent upon the executable performance of the OS disk, not the storage disk. Decreasing the buffer increases the read-from duty of the OS drive.

 

Last edited: Jan 22, 2017

So as in without Fast OS disk etc you not getting full benefit of SSD? So say for as near to an ideal say situation for max performance then if you replaced OS Disk with SSD then albeit expensive you gonna get the full benefits