SSD Recommendations

chrisd

Hi, just purchased Komplete 14 Standard. Is a 1030mb/s usb-c SSD drive quick enough for read/writes ? Any ssd make/model recommendations?

Anthony N

I have a SanDisk SSD 2 TB, just started using it this past week. Loaded all of Komplete Ultimate Collection, with a little over 1.2 Tb or so used. Had trouble initially, finally formatted it to the recommended Apple Journaled format, and it was AMAZING, near instant loads of Gigabytes of instruments.......

Then...it crashed, for no apparent reason. The SSD disk, that is. Computer was fine. I reloaded the instruments (took all day, as each had to be designated individually to be reinstalled to the Reformatted drive.).

Then, again, incredible synchronization with the SSD, my computer (Apple 14", M1Pro), and a blast to breeze through the sounds, and start experimenting with Logic Pro (deep learning curve there). A dream,.....until the next crash, again without any apparent trigger that I could tell

I'm hoping it's a glitch with software, Komplete Kontrol, Native Access, or Logic, or the Mac OS, as there have been a few incompatibilities.

But it is a catastrophe.

I'm hoping its not the SSD itself that's faulty, as it was pretty expensive.

I'm hoping someone here has an answer.

LostInFoundation

I have a Sandisk and a Samsung with almost same specifics. Although I’m lucky and both work well, the Samsung is definitely better

Brad Yost

I've burned through Seagate, Sandisk, Samsung, and Toshiba SSD's far too frequently. Finally started using WD Black and haven't had a failure on one in over three years.

My boot disk is a RAID 1 mirrored pair and it has yet to go down. (Fingers crossed)

iNate

https://community.native-instruments.com/discussion/comment/66240#Comment_66240

Apple Silicon has compatibility issues with a lot of the controller chipsets used in those USB drive enclosures. They are not reliable. Only use with Intel Macs or Windows devices.

Best option is to get an OWC Envoy Express bus-powered Certified TB3 Enclosure and slot a WD Blue or Samsung Evo 970+ NVMe into it.

I don't consider any USB devices reliable. I had an enclosure fault out from using it with an M1P MBP, and most others are extremely problematic and buggy when used with it - but flawless with Intel/AMD machines.

USB drives also lose 25-30% of their speed on Apple Silicon.

The Envoy caps at 1.35 GB/s, but that's still almost twice as fast as a T7 on Apple Silicon, and approaching 4x the speed of a SATA SSD (via USB 3.2) or Samsung T5 on Apple Silicon.

Side benefit of the OWC is the TB3 cable is integrated at the drive side (the USB plug is inside the casing) so the cable is replaceable when you open the casing, but otherwise it unplug only at the PC-end, which is nice to have.

I haven't tried any of the cheap USB 4 enclosures off Amazon. I figured it was worth it to pay more for the OWC than to keep waiting money trying to find anything else that would be reliable over the long term - or work at all. Risk of damaging the drive also factors in...