Migrate-Move Ableton Projects to External SSD Advantages-Disadvantages?

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spanktron
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Migrate-Move Ableton Projects to External SSD Advantages-Disadvantages?

Post by spanktron » Mon Jan 17, 2022 5:46 pm

Hey Everyone.

My laptop is getting full and today i was thinking and trying to decide what the disadvantages of moving all my projects to an external drive might be. For example if it would make a worthy of mentioning difference CPU hit wise.
My projects are not huge usually. Between 300mb -5gb max, and i almost never use big Sample libraries and such.


I would like to use an external SSD probably via USB 3. I thought its fast enough. What do you think?


It`s a MBP 16inch Intel 6core 2.6ghz with 16gb Ram

Peace

Tarekith
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Re: Migrate-Move Ableton Projects to External SSD Advantages-Disadvantages?

Post by Tarekith » Mon Jan 17, 2022 6:01 pm

I think it's doable, but obviously load and save times will be a bit slower, plus anything that needs to get cached into RAM. I don't think you're going to see much difference in terms of CPU though.

Personally I would treat the external SSD strictly as storage and load any projects I was working on to the internal SSD first just to keep things quick. I would think it would be easy enough to keep 5-10GB free space on the internal drive for this.
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spanktron
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Re: Migrate-Move Ableton Projects to External SSD Advantages-Disadvantages?

Post by spanktron » Mon Jan 17, 2022 6:10 pm

Tarekith wrote:
Mon Jan 17, 2022 6:01 pm
I think it's doable, but obviously load and save times will be a bit slower, plus anything that needs to get cached into RAM. I don't think you're going to see much difference in terms of CPU though.

Personally I would treat the external SSD strictly as storage and load any projects I was working on to the internal SSD first just to keep things quick. I would think it would be easy enough to keep 5-10GB free space on the internal drive for this.
I have tried a similar approach in the past. Like: "the 20 most recent and important projects i will keep internal and the rest on the external"

but it never worked long term as i jump too much back and forth between projects and after a while i don`t have the overview and the discipline so the 20 became 70 and so on and so on....

What you suggest i can imagine working (in my world) if i am about to finish something . Like and Album or Ep or to master a bunch of tracks in which case i want the last 1% of performance and load speeds.

You mention "cached to RAM" . That made me wonder. Does Ableton load the whole project to RAM?

But in general if the only disadvantage is loading speeds i can live with that. I was more worried about scenarios like:
" a project that brings the Laptop to its limits , might not work at all on the external" kind of thing-y.

These 512gb SSD laptops are a bit too restraining for someone like me. I need more space for my chaos to unfold and admire people who are more disciplined but i never managed to be that till now....

fishmonkey
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Re: Migrate-Move Ableton Projects to External SSD Advantages-Disadvantages?

Post by fishmonkey » Mon Jan 17, 2022 9:51 pm

another option is a fast Thunderbolt 3 external drive (i'm using an Envoy Express enclosure):

https://www.owcdigital.com/products/envoy

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Re: Migrate-Move Ableton Projects to External SSD Advantages-Disadvantages?

Post by [jur] » Wed Jan 19, 2022 1:34 pm

imo you shouldn't worry at all!
I have all my sets on an external drive, and as you also did I have a "current sets" on my internal drive... and of course this folder is way too big and my discipline is shit :lol: Every year or so I try to clean this one up, but the truth is I simply don't mind and don't notice any difference when I'm loading a set, be it from the internal or the external drive.
The only occasions where I'd copy a set to the internal drive to work on it is if it's a huge +20Go set, but I never compared really and it might also perfectly work from the external drive.
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