Ableton Forum

I've recently installed Live 8 suite onto my macbook and was wondering if storing my own sample library on an external hard drive will be a problem.

I've only got 50gb left on my macbook so I dont know whether this is a good idea as the sample library is likely to grow.

Lives library has been installed on the macbook. Could it be an idea to relocate this to the external drive as I havent installed EIC2 or session drums yet and I know they are enormous size wise?

Also where is the best place to save my Live projects/sets? I'm presuming these would be best kept on the macbooks drive rather than the external.

move you pron to the external drive instead.

Hi fixed_up, you can move your library anywhere. If you do plan to move the Library, be sure to go to Live's Preferences, and, under "Library," select "Change Location" to the new location you have designated.

Also, please note that, while you can change the location of the Library to an external drive (or to elsewhere on your internal drive), the one thing you cannot do is split the Library. So, you would need to move your Library to the external drive in advance of installing EIC2 and Session Drums, if you wanted to have those on your external drive.

fixed_up wrote:I've recently installed Live 8 suite onto my macbook and was wondering if storing my own sample library on an external hard drive will be a problem.

I've only got 50gb left on my macbook so I dont know whether this is a good idea as the sample library is likely to grow.

Lives library has been installed on the macbook. Could it be an idea to relocate this to the external drive as I havent installed EIC2 or session drums yet and I know they are enormous size wise?

Also where is the best place to save my Live projects/sets? I'm presuming these would be best kept on the macbooks drive rather than the external.

Not only can you do this but I heard it is recommended if you’re working on a laptop as notebook HDDs are usually relatively slow (5k RPM) and limited in available space.

Having your library on a 7200 RPM high capacity external HDD will probably improve your performance.

BoddAH wrote:

fixed_up wrote:I've recently installed Live 8 suite onto my macbook and was wondering if storing my own sample library on an external hard drive will be a problem.

I've only got 50gb left on my macbook so I dont know whether this is a good idea as the sample library is likely to grow.

Lives library has been installed on the macbook. Could it be an idea to relocate this to the external drive as I havent installed EIC2 or session drums yet and I know they are enormous size wise?

Also where is the best place to save my Live projects/sets? I'm presuming these would be best kept on the macbooks drive rather than the external.

Not only can you do this but I heard it is recommended if you’re working on a laptop as notebook HDDs are usually relatively slow (5k RPM) and limited in available space.

Having your library on a 7200 RPM high capacity external HDD will probably improve your performance.

i could be talking nonesence but wouldnt USB/firewire be slower than an internal sata or whatever?

making any perceved gain between 5400 & 7200 rpm drives a loss.

Slightlydelic wrote:

BoddAH wrote:

fixed_up wrote:I've recently installed Live 8 suite onto my macbook and was wondering if storing my own sample library on an external hard drive will be a problem.

I've only got 50gb left on my macbook so I dont know whether this is a good idea as the sample library is likely to grow.

Lives library has been installed on the macbook. Could it be an idea to relocate this to the external drive as I havent installed EIC2 or session drums yet and I know they are enormous size wise?

Also where is the best place to save my Live projects/sets? I'm presuming these would be best kept on the macbooks drive rather than the external.

Not only can you do this but I heard it is recommended if you’re working on a laptop as notebook HDDs are usually relatively slow (5k RPM) and limited in available space.

Having your library on a 7200 RPM high capacity external HDD will probably improve your performance.

i could be talking nonesence but wouldnt USB/firewire be slower than an internal sata or whatever?

making any perceved gain between 5400 & 7200 rpm drives a loss.

This is what I was thinking. Although I know little about computers so could be wrong.

I think I will leave the library where it is for now as I dont think Ill need EIC or session drums in the forseeable future.

I don’t have the exact figures but USB 2.0 is pretty fast. It takes not more time to transfer files from one of my internal HDDs to another than from one of my internal HDDs to my external HDD so I guess the drive speed is the bottleneck here.

Especially considering that laptop HDDs are even slower.

nope, USB2.0 is not fast, and is definitely the bottleneck, not the drive itself.

to the OP: assuming your MacBook has firewire 800, for the best performance use that to connect an external 7200RPM drive (btw, the spindle speed is only a rough guide to a drive's performance)

Do you think it would be better to replace the internal drive on the Mac with a 7200 hard drive and use the external drive for back ups? ( I do have another external drive but think that would be a bit fiddly having two external drives). Have been looking at a samsung 1tb one for under £50.

IMO eSATA is the way to go. Especially if you can get a machine with powered eSATA capabilities (eSATA port w/ a USB port in the middle of it.)

Nothing beats having a powered external drive that is just as good as your internal, if not better considering heat issues.

fixed_up wrote:Do you think it would be better to replace the internal drive on the Mac with a 7200 hard drive and use the external drive for back ups? ( I do have another external drive but think that would be a bit fiddly having two external drives). Have been looking at a samsung 1tb one for under £50.

I changed the stock HDD of my MBP as well but I had the choice between a faster drive and one with more space and I chose the bigger one (500GB WD 5200RPM).

While a 7200RPM drive is certainly a solid upgrade performance wise (especially when using a sample-based DAW), keep in mind that notebooks use 5200RPM drives for a reason. They use less power (more battery life) and produce less heat.


At the end of the day it’s your call though.

BoddAH wrote: While a 7200RPM drive is certainly a solid upgrade performance wise (especially when using a sample-based DAW), keep in mind that notebooks use 5200RPM drives for a reason. They use less power (more battery life) and produce less heat.

At the end of the day it’s your call though.

heat and battery usage are non-issues with current 7200RPM laptop drives.

One added benefit with a 2nd drive is that you reduce the load on the primary OS drive and should see a reasonable performance improvement. This is a really simple, cheap way to improve performance on heavily loaded systems. Almost all corporate servers are configured with the OS on a separate drive, so this is not just theory.