Ableton Forum

Hi there

I've got a late 2013 mbp running High Sierra with Live 9 with a 500 gig ssd and 8 gig of RAM. I have the Arturia V collection installed and I do a lot of rendering to audio to put into live sets for performing at gigs. I think I'm going to be upgrading to Live 11 soon.

Inevitably I'm running out of room as it's only a 500 gig internal ssd. I looked at prices of 1TB or 2TB internal SSDs and they are really expensive. It seems that for a fraction of the cost I could buy an external SSD (also bigger than 1 or 2 TB).

Would this be an option for storing and working in the studio on Ableton projects? I appreciate that an external SSD would be connected via the old usb ports to the mbp. Would I be able to play synths in the V collection okay still without latency? Someone told me that as I have Live and the synths installed on the internal 500 gig ssd this isn't an issue. They said the external would just be used for storing Live sets with all their renders on. This machine is essentially for studio use so I don't neccessarily need to be triggering audio quickly.

Would this be a sensible solution to storage? Essentially I just want to use this machine for writing and rendering. I have a 2012 mbp which I take to gigs and this works fine with rendered sets with the cpu rarely going above 10%. The plan is to do the studio work on the 2013 and then put the rendered sets onto the 2012.

Another point, is it pointless using an external ssd due to potential bottlenecks with usb transfer? Might I just as well use a cheaper spinning external HD?

Finally, if I were to have an external SSD with my data on, would I do TM back ups of this rather than the internal ssd? Would I be able to sync an external to the icloud for added back ups?

Many thanks in advance.

a decent external USB3 SSD will work well for your purposes. don't get an old spinning hard drive, it will be much slower.

you can add the new drive to your Time Machine backup set, you don't need to choose one or the other.

i don't think you can sensibly use iCloud Drive with an external drive — i would choose something more suitable, like Dropbox.

Thanks for this info.

Yes an SSD is certainly going to be better but what I'm not sure about is as you say a USB 3 external SSD, I'm going to be connecting this to a 2013 mbp which has a USB (1?) port. Would this cause a problem?

Hopefully this should still be okay.

I think the plan will be to have the macos, Ableton (plus all the bundled sample content) and the v collection and Izotope on the internal 500 gig SSD. I'll use the external 2TB SSD (could go bigger!) for all the projects including collect all and save stuff.

Thanks, this is all reassuring!

your Mac definitely has USB3 ports.

if you want to see for yourself, select "About this Mac" in the Apple menu. then click on "System Report...". this will open up the System Information utility. next click on "USB" in the Hardware section in the sidebar. that will display your USB device tree...

Thanks for this - just checked - fantastic it's usb 3! I was assuming because it was a rectangular connector it would be usb 1 or 2 - I thought 3 was the mini oval shaped thing.

That's great, so an external SSD will link well to my mac and I'll be able to get fast transfer. I'm not going to be running Live sets at gigs and triggering stuff with my launchpad on this mac - it's literally just for studio use.

Does it sound a sensible way of doing things, keep the macos, Ableton and softsynths on the internal ssd and put the projects on the external? Where shall I put samples and loops I've downloaded? (including the content in the Live Suite). After the macos, Live installation, Arturia V Collection and Izotope installations I should still have around 400 gig I guess?

I suppose the really important thing here is to use collect all and save when putting projects onto the external to avoid any missing sample messages.

Thank you