Ableton Forum

Hello folks.
My main computer has died, and I am going to be using my older Macbook for Ableton from now on, but it has almost no space.
If i bought an external SSD drive, would it be possible to install and run VST's, Ableton live packs/Native Access etc etc from the SSD?
This seems like a simple question, but when I googled it I got different answers from various forums etc.
Thanks a lot folks

Really depends on what your connection is for the drive. If it is USB2 then probably won't be a good idea. USB3 should be fine but you need a USB drive attachment that can deliver the speeds.

It's typically a good idea tho to install software and plugins on the internal drive and have content, samples and libraries on the ext drive if at all possible. I know macbooks make this hard due to only offering a spare 2MB of HDD space for files but it is the prefered way to work so try move as much "data" to the ext drive and keep programs on the internal drive.

sinkysaurus wrote: ↑

Fri Dec 04, 2020 11:52 am

Hello folks.
My main computer has died, and I am going to be using my older Macbook for Ableton from now on, but it has almost no space.
If i bought an external SSD drive, would it be possible to install and run VST's, Ableton live packs/Native Access etc etc from the SSD?
This seems like a simple question, but when I googled it I got different answers from various forums etc.
Thanks a lot folks

um, which MacBook have you got?

2014 macbook pro

sinkysaurus wrote: ↑

Sat Dec 05, 2020 10:03 am

2014 macbook pro

okay, so you have Thunderbolt 2 and USB 3 ports. a decent external SSD that connects via USB 3 will be workable for samples and other library content. the internal drive however will be much faster, so you it would be best to put the most critical stuff on the internal drive.

how big is the internal SSD?

One factor no-one’s mentioned is that a USB SSD can not be sent TRIM commands by a Mac. Thunderbolt can handle TRIM though depending on the OS version it may be necessary to use the trimforce command to switch it on.

TLW wrote: ↑

Sat Dec 05, 2020 8:32 pm

One factor no-one’s mentioned is that a USB SSD can not be sent TRIM commands by a Mac. Thunderbolt can handle TRIM though depending on the OS version it may be necessary to use the trimforce command to switch it on.

Yeah it's really only something one needs to be concerned about if they use the drive as an active read+write drive moving a lot of files around and modifying/deleting files constantly like an OS drive or something used for maybe recording.

If it's a static library drive where you dump data and just read it forever, TRIM isn't a concern worth explaining about really.