Ableton Forum

Is it possible to run a VST insturment off your external HD. I have Ableton and have VST plugins that take up like 3GB . Or some other solution. My HD is really small so every gig counts

I run all my vst's off an external harddrive. It's not a problem at all.

Komplete 8 ultimate edition (I think it's called that, if my memory is correct

Anyways - it COMES on an external HDD.... ie. - it's made to be run externally...

And it is a pretty big, pretty heavy package, so I would say you'll never have any problems - but it may depend on how the VST works (does it load samples into RAM or only access them when they are used etc.)

Most good VST's would generally have the sample in RAM so as to avoid having to wait though

Bainesy wrote:Komplete 8 ultimate edition (I think it's called that, if my memory is correct

Anyways - it COMES on an external HDD.... ie. - it's made to be run externally...

And it is a pretty big, pretty heavy package, so I would say you'll never have any problems - but it may depend on how the VST works (does it load samples into RAM or only access them when they are used etc.)

Most good VST's would generally have the sample in RAM so as to avoid having to wait though

There just mastering plugins ,no samples. Heres the problem, some of them are just files you insert in your " VST " folder in your computer HD, so if you move them how would Ableton know where to find them. Do you just go into Ableton preferences and change something. I also have "waves PLugins" installed. I wish I could just move it with out re-installing it, but I will probaly have to re-install it. Not sure if it ask you for a install location but I will see

Don't forget Ableton Live can reads your aliases/shortcuts for your VSTs, sometimes pretty handy

ilya.soloviev wrote:Don't forget Ableton Live can reads your aliases/shortcuts for your VSTs, sometimes pretty handy

please explain more. How??

dusty4444 wrote:

ilya.soloviev wrote:Don't forget Ableton Live can reads your aliases/shortcuts for your VSTs, sometimes pretty handy

please explain more. How??

I'll take a stab in the dark. He basically means you create a shortcut link (PC) or an alias (Mac) to your VST which is on the external drive on your computer and then in Ableton you would load up the VST by using that shortcut.

...and if you want all of your VSTs to load from a special folder on an external drive, you can simply go to Lives preferences (file tab) and choose the folder on that external drive as your main VST folder. And if you work with many VSTs you can also create subfolders in your main folder to sort/catagolize/categorize them.