Crazy? Possibly. I was originally planning on plunking down a small fortune for an internal 500 GB SSD and replacing my MBP's internal SuperDrive with it, for a dedicated internal sample drive. It was only when I was investigating getting SD cards for the MBP's unused card reader that I started wondering if it was possible to use an SD card as a secondary drive. Unfortunately, SD cards are as expensive as (and perhaps even more expensive than) SSDs ... but it turns out MicroSD cards are extremely cheap and theoretically work exactly the same, with the exact same parts, just smaller. The only reason I can assume this is possible is because few people are using SD cards, while everybody who owns a cell phone, a digital camera or a tablet is using microSD cards. And they usually all come with a passive SD adapter (buying one on its own usually costs a whopping dollar). Bear in mind, the deciding factor for me was that my SD card reader is technically a PCIe port, with a bus speed of 2.5 GT/s, not a USB port like older model MBPs, which would only give me the same 480 Mbps as an external USB drive, regardless of seek time.

So, with that in mind, I purchased a 1 TB microSD card (I was previously unaware they even came in that size) and will be taking it for a test (sample) drive when it shows up next week. So far, everything I've read suggests it'll be possible to use it as a plug-in sample drive (even better, I'll be able to transfer it to a second Mac when I finally get one, without having to put in a secondary internal drive or installing a mind-boggling amount of libraries) and clear up a great deal of real estate on my system drive. I imagine load times will also improve. But we'll see!

 

You cannot focus in the speed of the connection, sata 1,2,3, pcie3 or whatever.
The focus must be the drive.
The best microsd have lower speeds, but lots of people are doing raids with pcie host for 10 of them...still a problem because that are not done for extensive read/write.
Cheapest solution: raid 5 with hybrid drives with software options like Softraid.
The future will be M.2

 

In my experience small format removable media like memory cards and usb sticks is really only for short term transfers. They tend to fail more frequently. Seeing that they have no moving parts inside them they are also solid state drives essentially.... so that means data recovery is not possible when they do fail. I'm not familiar with M.2 drives but i imagine the future of music being much more cloud based. Soon the entire creation platform will be an online format (i.e.log in... make beats ... log out) Splice.com has an amazing online/desktop style platform similar to dropbox that works well. Splice.com is the beginning of the future of music creation. I had a sata drive crash on me a few months and I was able to download all of my lost music thru Splice. Because I keep my production tools (kits, presets, drum packs, kontact libraries)on a separate drive than I do from the drive I save the projects on I had every single beat and song still. AND I HAVE ALMOST 1000 BEATS UPLOADED TO SPLICE RIGHT NOW and it is FREE. So if you have a limited budget this might be a bit of a solution for you. I strongly encourage you to save your data on a hard copy as well for safe keeping. I even pay for $5/month for Google Drive and iCloud cloud storage space, so i triple back up everything.

 

The beauty of using it as a sample drive (which was the same thinking I had when I was going to get an SSD) is that it will mostly be a read-only drive with few writes other than to set it up and occasionally add another library or two. I don't think I'd use it for project or document storage, but I have plenty of external USB drives for those.

 

Suboptimal solution. If you really have to use SD card, use its regular size, not microSD.

And you were right with your original thought - there are no 1TB microSD cards. The one you purchased is clearly a fake. Try to run H2testw to check its real capacity.
In fact, regular SD cards are cheaper than microSD once you pass 128GB. But neither is suitable for handling random read/write efficiently. The MB/s figure is always sequential read, not random. You'll be lucky to get 30MB/s out of 95MB/s card.

 

Last edited: Oct 20, 2016

My apologies: in my original post, I said "1 TB" (that's the size of my internal drive) -- it's a 512 GB Samsung class 10 MicroSD. They don't actually make a 1 TB MicroSD card ... yet. As for speed, I guess that's where the testing part comes in. I'm planning on starting out with my Kontakt library, which will be the easiest thing to shuttle back if things go south. If it doesn't work out, I guess I'll have another archive drive sitting around.

 

I only picked the microSD because of the price. I believe the read/write speed and lifespan is about the same.

 

Pretty much. cArds & USB sticks don't report much SMART data, if at all. So you won't know in advance when they'll fail. Couple taht with questionable write speeds, and you've got a whole lot of




AT least most SSDs have a MWI or wear/life SMART indicator, and good ones should have brick protection if there;s a power loss.

 

Can you specify where you bought your card: In Amazon, the biggest size they sell is 256 GB, there's no clue of a 512 GB Micro SD...

Most of all, a 1 TB SSD drive cost around 220 $ whereas this 256 GB Micro SD listed on Amazon is almost the same price therefore... well, you know.

 

Yeah at my store, a 512 GB SD card costs 226 euro, and you can get a 512GB SSD drive for 195 euro. Where is the saving?

 

Why go through all the hazzle. SSD prices per gb will soon drop to hdd level, so just wait a bit.

 

The thing is with your SD/microSD, you won't get any speed improvement versus even a usual HDD in loading your samples from Kontakt, so what's the point ?

Just be patient and get some more money to buy a decent SSD,

Samsung is supposed to sell soon some very fast NVMe/M2 SSD 960 Evo,
For any choice, better read some reviews before buying because you never know...

 

After a lot of deliberation (and reading through this thread), I just cancelled the order. It wasn't a lot of cash, and I did do a bit of research before buying, but it all seems a bit fishy. I appreciate you checking it out!

Actually, while I haven't done a complete cost tally, a Samsung 1TB SSD actually isn't that bad, and the kit (as well as the procedure) to install it as a secondary drive in my MBP is surprisingly affordable. I just regret not posting this before I embarked on this ...

 

Try Tardisk, though not really cheap: https://www.tardisk.com/.

 

I wonder where all this leads with the current direction of Apple where it is no longer possible o exchange the SSD by yourself.
have a look at the upgrade priced :
http://www.apple.com/shop/buy-mac/macbook-pro?product=MF841LL/A&step=config#
500$ for 1TB SSD
200$ for i7 CPU
wtf?
http://www.apple.com/shop/buy-mac/macbook-pro?product=MF841LL/A&step=config#

Buying an iMac is even more expensive:
1TB SSD 700$
32GB RAM 600$
i7 250$
http://www.apple.com/shop/buy-mac/imac?product=MK482LL/A&step=config#

This seams to apply even for the new iMacs ?

https://9to5mac.com/2015/10/14/new-27-inch-imac-maximum-ram/


Soon they do not sell any user upgradeable Computers anymore?
No wonder why Hackintosh increasing popular



Samsung EVO 1TB ~299$
https://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss_1?__mk_de_DE=ÅMÅŽÕÑ&url=search-alias=aps&field-keywords=samsung+ssd+1tb

 

Last edited: Oct 20, 2016

256 GB --- 399$, indeed thats anything else then cheap

 

Why not simply test it with as ssd to see random read speeds which are most important?

There you go, I took the time to contribute. btw sequential read of this class 10 microsd would be around 40MBps.

 

Yeah, my next computer will either be a used Mac Pro tower or I'll be getting off the Mac train altogether. My MBP can run Sierra, but there are certain functions it won't be able to use (Bluetooth-related, I think). I'm sure it's only a matter of a couple more upgrades before I'm completely off the list of compatible computers ... same with purchasing a Mac Pro tower. And those black air fresheners are terrible -- they're just oversized iPhones with Thunderbolt 2 ports. I've been seriously looking at RADAR workstations. A bit pricey, but it's probably the best option out there right now for digital pro audio.

 

If Apple stuff wont be that expensive I would give an iMac 27 " a try.
But i am a bit nervous about that Retina Display and that most Plugins do not support i res screens/..

Anyone using an iMac 5k ?