Slow Reading Speed for Samples on External HDD

ryanmiller

I'm facing some difficulties with my Native Instruments samples that are stored on my external HDD. I'm running Ableton Live 11.3.10 on a Mac Studio with M1 Pro. The issue I'm encountering is incredibly slow reading speeds. For instance, when I try to load an instrument, it takes an agonizing 2-5 minutes to load each preset. Exporting the session is becoming a nightmare due to sound interruptions and clipping. This situation forced me to export stems for mixing, only to find them unusable due to these problems.

Interestingly, I noticed a vast improvement in loading and reading speeds when I moved the instruments I used to the Mac library. This leads me to my main question: What type of HDD should I consider using, and should I be looking at a different format type as well? I'm currently using APFS format. My current HDD is a 1TB WD, USB 3.0, 2.5".

I'm eager to hear your thoughts. Are there any other steps I might be overlooking or should check? Thank you all in advance for your assistance!

Royal Tee

You forgot 2 important pieces of info.

Drive speed, HDD type.

Using slower drives meant for other things could yield poor results.

Ftr, I have never and would never use an external drive for anything that needs to be accessed during a session.

External is a storage solution for me.