Ableton Forum

Has anybody used a wireless external hard drive like Western Digital's My Cloud or Seagate's Central to store their samples (and kontakt library)?

If so, any issues with it?

Thanks!

Probably OK for small samples and loops if you are using them in a device that loads them into RAM rather than tries to stream them from source.

I wouldn't even consider trying to do this however as it seems to be just begging for trouble, particularly with Kontakt which AFAIK has quite decent memory cache management that probably depends on decent access to the underlying sample storage to be practical. Even with fast local storage some Kontakt instruments can take some time to fully cache and be fully playable. I sometimes find I need to let a part loop through when loading a project that includes some of the big kontakt instruments and that's with an attached FW800 external HD.

I tried this for a while and although useful, it was noticeably slower when browsing through a large list of samples - I wasn't getting that instant playback, there was half a second or so delay. Doesn't sound like much but it is when sifting through a large folder through of drum hits.

Instead I know use a 1TB self powered USB3 hard drive and its lightning quick.