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External HardDrive + VSTs

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Sanova

Sanova

Guess Who's Back
ill o.g.
Battle Points: 9
This topic can fit in so many sections, i aint know where to put it..

anyway, I just got a 160gig external harddrive, cuz my stock HD was about to Damn-near explode.

I wanna put all my samples and VSTs on the new HD. But i got a question, I dont have the install files or CDs for most of my VSTs.. So will they still function correctly if i just copy/cut and paste them into the new HD?

Dont just say yes, think about it.. Like Akoustik Piano, it is also a standalone application and had to be INSTALLED. So if i take the folder it is installed to and drag it to the new HD will it work?
 
Sanova

Sanova

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ill o.g.
Battle Points: 9
So far, the main one i wanted to transfer is working like a charm. ILL!

edit: mmkay not workin exactly like a "charm" but i got it workin.. I had to go thru a bunch of shit to get it to work right, but i got it thx
 
thedreampolice

thedreampolice

A backwards poet writes inverse.
ill o.g.
Battle Points: 21
bthis!
That is going to cause you trouble down the road. Keep your VST's on a internal drive. Also is the external drive firewire or USB2, generally internal drives perform a bit better because they are connected directly to the system bus. But if you forget to hook up your external drive at least all of your plugins will load.
 
bigdmakintrax

bigdmakintrax

BeatKreatoR
ill o.g.
Battle Points: 123
bthis!
I have to add piggybacking on the dream police, think of it like this, for plugins remember 2 key things...memory, processing power and fast access..there is the possibility this could work but...putting them externally just adds a time factor of performance on your setup to fetch them from the physical drive using your processor that also has to process the vst, the other thing is do you have enough memory and processing power to run your plugins on 5 or 6 tracks without delay or problems? I ran into someone about 2 months ago that is part owner of the guitar center, I went to his house actually to buy a keyboard in his setup he had Ivory and a ton of other plugins running btw ivory fits on like 3 or 4 DVD's and he was running 2 g5's, one of them was strictly to hold all of his plugins the other one was running cubase I think or some mac sequencer?
 
Sanova

Sanova

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ill o.g.
Battle Points: 9
I have firewire, and firewire is proven to be faster than usb 2.0 in a sustained connection due to its archetectural setup. Anyway, I have run into no problems, everything is running fine. No Latency, the plugins load in my sequencer almost instantly, and if it needs to load a soundbank it does so even faster than before. So i think i'm set.

It would probably be slower if i had a crappy processor and USB 1.0 hard drive. But for now the external harddrive and the internal are workin in unison as one big happy family. And i'm not gonna foget to hook up my harddrive cuz i leave it hooked up, this is my studio, so im not using a laptop or anything. Preciate the feed, So far everything is actually running smoother than before.
 
O

open mind

Guest
agreed firewire is faster than usb.right choice nova.for the others if u wanna buy an external harddrive and u got a firewire slot into your pc go with the firewire harddrive instead of usb.in case u dont have a firewire card just buy one sumtin like 10-20 dollaz its worth it.
 
Sanova

Sanova

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ill o.g.
Battle Points: 9
Question: Which is faster Hi-Speed USB 2.0 or FireWire?
Answer: In sustained throughput FireWire is faster than USB 2.0.

Question: If Hi-Speed USB 2.0 is a 480 Mbps interface and FireWire is a 400 Mbps interface, how can FireWire be faster?
Answer: Differences in the architecture of the two interfaces have a huge impact on the sustained throughput.

FireWire vs. USB 2.0 - Architecture

* FireWire, uses a "Peer-to-Peer" architecture in which the peripherals are intelligent and can negotiate bus conflicts to determine which device can best control a data transfer

* Hi-Speed USB 2.0 uses a "Master-Slave" architecture in which the computer handles all arbitration functions and dictates data flow to, from and between the attached peripherals (adding additional system overhead and resulting in slower data flow control)

FireWire vs. USB 2.0 Hard Drive Performance Comparison

Read and write tests to the same IDE hard drive connected using FireWire and then Hi-Speed USB 2.0 show:

Read Test:

* 5000 files (300 MB total) FireWire was 33% faster than USB 2.0
* 160 files (650MB total) FireWire was 70% faster than USB 2.0

Write Test:
* 5000 files (300 MB total) FireWire was 16% faster than USB 2.0
* 160 files (650MB total) FireWire was 48% faster than USB 2.0
(source: http://www.usb-ware.com/firewire-vs-usb.htm)

NOTE: The only thing USB has up on Firewire is compatibility. Not all computers ship with a firwired card, but almost every computer has usb ports. So there you have it folks
 
bigdmakintrax

bigdmakintrax

BeatKreatoR
ill o.g.
Battle Points: 123
bthis!
Yeah what Sanova said, I had this same thread not too long ago also.
https://www.illmuzik.com/forums/showthread.php?t=11751&highlight=firewire
but yeah if you really did some heavy duty ish maybe it would make a diff...but I have and external 80 gig usb 2 with protools and, a gig of ram and barely have any problems unless I load a ton of vsts so its definitely possible I just used that example, this cat was doing it heavy though with like 8 or 9 keyboards and modules along with using the vst's....and I thought I would mention this I just copped the Korg X50, never let anyone tell you the triton sounds are old this is a sweet piece of gear, I have a hardware triton now that I can use as a VST and edit it on the comp...I will give some more feedback too
 
Sanova

Sanova

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ill o.g.
Battle Points: 9
M

mp3

ILLIEN
ill o.g.
the problem (which is the same for pretty much any program or application extension) that when you run it, it looks for its support files (samples, etc.). If they aren't where they were originally, then you may run into problems. Some VSTs (mostly free ones) are insulated from this problem because either its a single DLL file, or its designed to look in the folder where it resides in order to find its support files. Others will let you remap the file location.

Other VSTs will write support file locations in a confing file or an .ini file. Others use the registry. The you got some, like Spectrasonics plugins that you can put wherever and just create a shortcut to the .dat file.

So the short answer is that if you move your VSTPlugins folder, some will work, some can be tricked into working, and others will need to be reinstalled.
 
Sanova

Sanova

Guess Who's Back
ill o.g.
Battle Points: 9
mp3 said:
the problem (which is the same for pretty much any program or application extension) that when you run it, it looks for its support files (samples, etc.). If they aren't where they were originally, then you may run into problems. Some VSTs (mostly free ones) are insulated from this problem because either its a single DLL file, or its designed to look in the folder where it resides in order to find its support files. Others will let you remap the file location.

Other VSTs will write support file locations in a confing file or an .ini file. Others use the registry. The you got some, like Spectrasonics plugins that you can put wherever and just create a shortcut to the .dat file.

So the short answer is that if you move your VSTPlugins folder, some will work, some can be tricked into working, and others will need to be reinstalled.
Click to expand...

Yea preciate that dog, but i had figured it out when i moved somthing and it couldnt find shit, but i went into the programming and got it to work right. thats why i said i got it, but it was a bitch to do. thanks for the insight
 
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