Drum sample libraries on an external SSD drive

[garrettendi]

Not got a lot of space on my laptop! Would installing a VST drum plugin on the main SSD drive and the library data itself on an external SSD be doable? The VST itself allows for this but will it likely make latency/glitching an issue?

[Wonks]

It will probably depend if the VSTi loads the data into RAM or streams it off the disk as required. There may be an option within the VSTi to pick which method it uses. Loading it all into RAM could obviously reduce the amount of RAM available for other things, but drum samples tend to be quite small unless they have a lot of velocity layers per drum.

[Aled Hughes]

I’ve just moved all my Superior Drummer and Sampletank stuff to an external (USB-C) SSD and I haven’t encountered any problems yet.

[IAA]

I do that with all my sample libraries which includes BFD3. Most of the programs enable this with options in the instrument for streaming to reduce any latency.

Ian

[garrettendi]

Additional bonkers question here. SD cards are cheaper than an external drive and can be left in the in built reader all the time.

I can get a Samsung EVO Plus card, 256gb for less than 25 quid and it seems the specs are good. Will this work for drum samples? Specifically: Melda’s MDrummer?

[amanise]

Additional bonkers question here. SD cards are cheaper than an external drive and can be left in the in built reader all the time.

I can get a Samsung EVO Plus card, 256gb for less than 25 quid and it seems the specs are good. Will this work for drum samples? Specifically: Melda’s MDrummer?

I have a couple of those, but 1Tb ones. I'll never fill them. They work wonderfully (with a few management software weirdies) on SATA, and have been very reliable. Since I moved them out of my old DAW (where they held VSTi libraries and EZD3 samples) and on to their own USB3 ports I've not been that confident. On my new DAW (which is a laptop) I keep my libraries on the C: drive as its an SSD (NVMe?) with enough space. Everything works fine with very little latency. Admittedly a bit more than when they were on their own SATA ports - but then there's latency all over the shop (comparatively) in laptop land. Seems you just have to live with it a bit more.

I think I'd be similarly nervous about keeping libraries in a card reader. I've had a few weird corruptions of camera cards which seem to need formatting quite frequently, and reinstalling my VSTi libraries as often as that happens would drive me insane.

[garrettendi]

Ah yes corrupting SD cards. I don’t think it’s a huge problem because the VST will live on the main SSD drive on C and the SD card will have just the samples. It won’t have any of my own recordings on it either, so the occasional reformatting and reinstall isn’t the end of the world.

But it’s something to think about

[S.Crow]

Additional bonkers question here. SD cards are cheaper than an external drive and can be left in the in built reader all the time.

I can get a Samsung EVO Plus card, 256gb for less than 25 quid and it seems the specs are good. Will this work for drum samples? Specifically: Melda’s MDrummer?

Cards have inferior controllers, so the latency might be significantly worse than compared to a decent USB drive.
Latency is particularly important when reading a lot of small samples, which tends to be what drum samples consist of.

That doesn't necessarily mean that the performance will be below what is acceptable for you.
There are too many variables to generalise.
But you are reducing the performance headroom of that data by using a card.

Also, the card readers in laptops can vary a lot in terms of performance.
So even with a decent card, some laptops will be handicapped by their card reader.

[garrettendi]

That makes sense. I shall keep it in mind, but my thinking is, I spend about £20 or so on an SD card, and if the experiment fails, my wife has a spare SD card for her photography business. If the experiment succeeds, I have saved money on an external SSD drive.

Either way, the result is either going to be acceptable, or great.