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  4. Mac Minis with internal SSD or External Thunderbolt ?

  • Mac Minis with internal SSD or External Thunderbolt ?

    C
    C
    I'm planning on getting 2 Mac Minis to run as slaves (controlled by DP7 on a Mac Pro). They Minis would be running VE Pro, hosting Kontakt libraries (multiple ones, including LA Scoring Strings, Project SAM etc), Omnisphere (possibly Stylus RMX), and Gigastudio samples running in G-Player. Since I have a LOT of sample libraries (500GB ++) I'm trying to decide whether to run them on the internal SSD (which is only 256GB so I'd have to constantly be shifting sounds between the internal and an external storage drive), or an external Thunderbolt drive (which I know would also be fast...). I know that the fast SSD means that Kontakt could play more sounds (since it would be able to stream off the disk, and so tax the RAM less - which would be max 16GB). However the inconvenience of having to juggle sample libraries around is not appealing. Any thoughts?...
  • M
    M

    Hello,

    Consider spreading your samples across as many ThunderBolt drives as possible. SSD's or HD's.

    You are correct, SSD's should allow you to realize your Rams full potential.
  • C
    C
    Thanks . I was thinking about going with either a Lacie or G-Drive Thunderbolt (despite the painful price!). Does anybody know if it's possible for 2 Mac Minis, each running samples on VE Pro, to access the same drive for their sample libraries (i.e. plugging 2 computers into one external ThunderBolt drive - obviously one that has 2 inputs?). Would this be too taxing on the drive Read?.... Since one of these drives would be big enought for ALL my sample libraries, I'm just trying to save a $!.
  • M
    M

    You'll probably want a separate drive for each Mini.

    You could go with non-ThunderBolt G-Drives or CalDigits using Firewire 800 to ThunderBolt adapters.

    As CalDigits and G-Drives usually ship (Raid-0 Mac ready) they are more than fast enough and considerably less expensive.

    There's still so much we don't know about Thunderbolt. It may well allow single drive access to multiple computers (simultaneously), but I doubt it.
  • C
    C
    Thanks Mike. Yes, my instinct tells me FW 800 would be fine for now (I can always get ThB when they come down in price). Wouldn't getting FW to ThB adapter defy the point of Thb speed (i.e. it would be just liked doing regular FW800)... ?
  • M
    M

    My mistake, I thought you only had ThunderBolt.