I use a factory refurbished laptop PC thats an i7 processor, 2.4ghz with room for up to 3.2, and 8g ram x64bit , running x32 bit ableton.
My computer has only 40Gig of internal memory , and it is ALL used up. there is hardly any room so i install and run all my plugins directly off my hardrive....

Would it be better to run directly off the computers internal disk?

im seriously considering getting a new desktop, this being one of the underlying reasons. ive been having terrible crashes in ableton and am wondering if running off the hard drive could play a role in this? i just bought a legit version of ableton and komplete, still having crashes, and am ready to do what it takes to get the absolute smoothest running situation possible.

input is greatly appreciated!

 

I'd strongly recommend to go for the desktop option.

How are you connecting the external drive? Usb, usb2, FireWire, etc?

Also a quick thing... "Memory" is not the space left in your drive. That's called storage space or HDD space.

Oh, another better option -but very expensive- is to use a large external SSD drive. But as I said... Expensive.

Getting a desktop built id's definitely your best, most robust and most long lasting option.

Good luck!

 

Depends on the interface and drive. It usually will speed things up if you mean vs. having it on your Windows drive because the head has to seek less since the internal drive is reading the Windows and applications stuff and the external is reading the audio stuff. Again it depends on a lot of factors.

 

Just a tip,

i produce almost every genre (said almost :p) anyway, what i do is like this

a hard drive dedicated only for Kontakt Libraries,

a hard drive dedicated only for Samples,

a hard drive dedicated only for Os and installed programs, such as daws and stuff like that,

a hard drive dedicated only for VSTi, and what ever they needs such as soundbanks, from sylenth to omnisphere, trilian ect ect...

for the rest, i use a hard drive for my music movies, games whatever is out of production circle...

i would take Demon's advice, and go for a desktop option, buy few hard drives, depends on the use, for ex 4tera only for kontakt stuff, ect ect, i don't know how you're gonna apply this method, suit your self,

the reason why i do this is to make thinks run faster for ex, when i wanna load a kontakt library and pick some vsts or whatever i want, they won't all load from the same hard drive wish is gonna take more time, and will get your hard drive to fail faster than it should, and even when i wanna load an existent project, it wont take mush time if he's gonna pick the elements from more than one drive...

good luck, this is really worth the money...

 

I keep my Omnisphere and Kontakt libraries on a USB3.0 drive but the actual plugins (which take up next to no space) on my primary SSD. Plugins boot quickly, patches take a bit longer. I've had no trouble so far.
This is how I would proceed, I wouldn't put the plugins on an external because everytime you twist a knob they're accessed but the libraries just get transferred to your RAM once.

 

I do something similar to Mr Lyann: one 2tb drive for kontakt; one large SSD for OS, programs, plugins (I like them to run locally); one 2tb drive for downloads, which is usually a mess while extracting files, before I allocate them; one 1tb for videos and any other random stuff. Then I have a 10tb NAS where I store anything of value (photos, family videos, artwork, all documents, e-books, fonts, my freelancing stuff, all my music and my self made music projects. The NAS also backs up every night to two separate 2tb drives and the most important stuff to the cloud once a week.

If I travel somewhere and the house is left alone, I take one of the NAS backup drives with me, I just chuck it in its original box with all its cables. If anything gets stolen or burnt down, I have everything with me.

I know it sounds overkill, but I got broken into once and lost everything, including my newborn photos. And another time a virus wiped everything (one of those ransom ones). It took years to save for the NAS and other drives, but it was worth it!

If you have valuable data, consider having a long term plan to store and backup your stuff. It took me five years to gather all this.

 

NI KONTAKT, IK Multimedia SamplTank 3, Best Service Engine 2, Ueberschall ELASTIK, Spectrasonics Stylus RMX, Omnisphere and Trilian, and many others App with large Libraries could be used with they own Libraries installed over external HD (in other Partition.... The same with WAV AIFF REX MIDI and other format Libraries.
So you can keep your system only for your DAW and your main VST and VSTi plugins, saving lots of space and increasing performance.

For your situation as described, I think is a good Cost x Benefit solution.

 

Aside from having the OS and applications run on an SSD (much faster than an HDD) in my Macbook Pro (i5 2.4GHz w/ 8GM RAM), what really made a difference in running Kontakt (via Logic Pro) was to keep the sample libraries on an external Firewire 7200 RPM HDD (an SSD via Thunderbolt would be optimal, I suppose). I also have Logic's EXS24 samples on there (aliased from their original locations on the OS drive) and the samples for NI's Battery as well. This way, my computer is reading the software and the samples from different drives, not doing double-duty for both on one.

Additionally, I have a third drive – a 7200 RPM SATA HDD – installed where the optical drive had been, exclusively for data files – that is to say, exclusively for writing-to while using Logic. The thee-drive configuration helps a lot to avoid "system overload" error messages, but of course maxing-out the RAM and using drives with faster read/write speeds play their parts.

Such a configuration of drives is also beneficial for using video-editing software, especially on larger projects requring lots of rendering.

Another thing that helps, when using Kontakt, is to have Kontakt's memory manager turned on, and well as to have Kontakt kill superflous numbers of voices, to minimize the load in the RAM at any given time. Although I am using 64-bit Logic, it should be even more crucial for running 32-bit software such as Ableton (as it seems that most people use Ableton in 32-bit mode). With Kontakt, it's best to avoid libraries' memory-hogging effects, such as reverb and delay – and especially tape saturation – and to use the DAW's plug-ins instead.

I hope that this has been of some help to you and/or anyone else reading.

 

There are external drives and there are fast external drives. use USB 3.0 get the fastest drive you can afford. Min 7200 speed.

 

Yeah I find the best config for me is a

1. 1tb SSD system drive,
2. I have a few larger drives (running SATA in my mac pro, it has 5 bays, 6 if you include the dvd... but I keep all my Kontakt stuff and Application libraries like STEAM for omni etc on a big sata drive, and have another big drive for "scratch" work, which is 7200, which is fast enough to stream fair amounts of "live" audio, and then have other drives for backups and legacy projects, and another boot drive for repairs on my main SSD system disk if it needs it, or heaven forbid it goes down, and need to continue working.

I also recommend using Kontakt memory server, as it keeps the Kontakt samples "outside" your DAW (which in OSX, using Live 9.1.4 32 bit (just more stable for me, and legacy 32 bit plugs without having to deal with bridging solutions....).... caps out at 4gb, which can easily be chewed up by just a few Kontakt libs online!

There are some gotcha's for some apps, in terms that they want to store their libraries in specific places, but you can work around with alias folders etc... (though the number of those is shrinking, i think the only ones that are a bit finicky about relocating really are the GForce Mtron Pro, VSM or minimonsta etc....)....

A friend of mine using a newer iMac uses a thunderbolt drive as his boot drive as switching the drives was a bit of a pita, and it works great for him, so if you are using something like that, don't fear the thunderbolt solutions...

 

i run everything off from floppy disk drives stacked

 

lol

 

Internal = External if connected with native interface, i.e. SATA, eSATA, eSATAp (or IDE/PATA).
Mechanical HDD might struggle with multiple operations, SSDs usually don't.
That's why it's good to have one mechanical drive for single usage. E.g.
One for samples
One for projects, recordings
One for system
etc.
With SSD everything is way faster and it's possible to have everything in one place.
Also don't fall for the 7200rpm trick, 5400rpm is fine (with 500GB single platter you still get speeds 100-120MB) and HDDs with such speed usually lasts longer and produce less heat.

Get as much space as you need, but remember that larger drive is more difficult to keep clean and might elude you that when there's so much space, there's no need to clean up. Actually the opposite is truth - I learned that the hard way.

Memory server is awesome functionality, especially for 32bit OS/DAW, unfortunately reserved only for OSX, and not available on Win/PC. *no*
I still wonder though why 36bit extension never became popular, with 36bit right from the start, the cap won't be 4GB but 64GB

 

From my experience, going from an external HDD USB3.0 to a simple 7200rpm HDD dedicated to Kontakt Libraries had a significant impact on loading speeds. It used to take me 10min to load a particular piano when I worked on my laptop and my external drive. Same piano loads in about 15 seconds on my setup now.

 

Your setup puzzles me.
i7, 8 gb ram and only 40 gb hdd? I doubt it. It's a real bizarre combination. Even 15 years ago 40 gb was not much.
Why don't you just buy a large internal hdd for a handful of cash and everything will be smooth?

 

40GB left free he means, at first I thought the same, then I realized it just can't be
If its USB3, you can use it for i.e. sample libraries and stuff. I do that with Kontakt4 factory library and a couple other heavy libs I just cant't keep on internal HDD on my Mac. I don't use them often tbh.
Surely going with a decent desktop will help in any case

 

... really? I did not know that 5400rpm was as decent as 7200 for streaming, say "Imperfect Samples Pianos" etc.... I haven't done a bench tests myself, I just assumed that 7200 would be a lot faster and create less problems.... not arguing, just interesting to know!

and that sucks that they never developed Memory Server for Win/PC... did not know that either. That blows. I imagine running 32bit sessions must get bogged down pretty quick then..wow...

 

The 'trick' is with HDD density, 5400RPM 320GB HDD is way faster than 7200RPM 160GB. With capacities about 500GB per platter, the sequential read speed is very similar for both speeds. 7200s get 'better' random access times though, about 14ms instead of 18ms, yet that's still negligible difference.
7200RPM overall are louder, produce more heat and have shorter lifespan and the tradeoff for 5% better sequential read and 13% better access is not enough for me.

Get single platter 5400rpm drives (with large buffer and NCQ) 500GB 2.5" and 1TB 3.5" and you're good to go.

Actually I'm used to freezing tracks often (at least on my x86 lappys) so I don't hit the mark that much. Since my samples are stored on SSD I can reduce preload buffer to 12kb and that helps a lot. *yes*
Memory tab for Kontakt properties looks like this on 32bit PC:


No memory server at all, yet there's "room" for it

 

Sorry for the OT: what's that stylish 8 bit theme you're using?

 

It's called Windows Classic Style and it's included in every Windows release up to W7. W8 and W8.1 does not have it (in real sense), which is one of the reasons I won't 'upgrade' in recent years. Also in W8 you cannot turn off 'themes' to speed up system, because the core requires it for 'floating' desktop - which also requires HW acceleration.
Personally I like my OS clean, without Aero and unnecessary 'stylish' animations and fading effects, which only reduces performace. Windows Luna is an exception though, that I like. *yes*