Storing Samples and Loops on Flash Drive

[kevmove02]

I really tried to find a thread pertaining to this, so forgive me if this is redundant. As Flash Drives have gotten significantly larger and cheaper, I've been wondering about the viability of using them with my DAW for sample and loop storage. I've successfully run Band in a Box off of the USB drive (which isn't a surprise, since they will sell you a USB Flash Drive with all the files on it), but now I would like to use a flash drive as a substitute for my external hard drive for storing my loop and instrument libraries.

Is there any downside to this that I have not considered? Your feedback is appreciated!

[brandondrury]

I haven't tried it. I'm curious about the speed / latency of the flash drive. In normal use they seem fine, but that's totally irrelevant when dealing with the ultra low seek times necessary for sample playback.

I'm sure someone more technical than I can help. I'm curious myself.

Brandon

[kevmove02]

so far so good. I am using a 8 gig Sandisk and a 16 gig Sandisk. I have filled both with loop libraries and virtual instruments and have experience no problems yet. I going to "push" by playing a track that has a decent mix of VST instruments and loops to see what happens. I will post the results in a little while.

[ryanoliver]

I don't understand why you wouldn't just get an additional hard drive. Storage is dirt cheap now. 16 gigs? Get yourself 500 for 50 bucks on newegg.

[gary7rev]

I just got a glyph 500gig that goes into a rack unit. its bulletproof i am in love with it.

[kevmove02]

Reading Comprehension = D-

Anyway, I just played a 16 track song with softsynths and audio effects without any latency issues. One of the advantages I've already discovered is I can transport specific loop libraries without having to carry my hard drive around everywhere I go.

[ryanoliver]

Reading Comprehension = D-

That's generous. After re-reading I give myself an uber fail.

Carry on.

[fortyseven]

I can think of very few technical benefits to using a flash. The speed of USB 2.0 (480Mbps) remains the same regardless of the device. Possibly because flash is solid state, it might have a slightly faster access time that an external.
Technicalities aside; flash is super portable and easier to carry with you should you need to be mobile. If only they made the buggers in large sizes.

[jagcmos]

Originally Posted by fortyseven

I can think of very few technical benefits to using a flash. The speed of USB 2.0 (480Mbps) remains the same regardless of the device. Possibly because flash is solid state, it might have a slightly faster access time that an external.
Technicalities aside; flash is super portable and easier to carry with you should you need to be mobile. If only they made the buggers in large sizes.

Kingston came out with a 256 GByte flash drive. It has a max read/write speed of 20/10 MBytes per sec. It's $900 dollars though.

[kevmove02]

After doing some research, it appears that not only is the flash drive a viable option, but at least 2 companies have begun selling "DAW on a stick" type programs. As the price of these drives continue to fall and the size increases, i wouldn't be surprised to see loop libraries on a stick as the norm.

Lessons learned so far:

1. Make sure you plug in your USB drive (as well as other usb devices) into the same USB slot each time. Each time you plug in a USB drive into a different slot, a new device install occurs. Once 10 "usb device installs" occur, Windows XP won't recognize any new devices. The only way to remove these nonpresent devices is to go into device manager and uninstall them. I now label which USB port each device should plug into to avoid this problem.

2. Make sure the drive lettering doesn't change. I had to create short cuts that pointed to the flash drives. I plugged my drive into a different USB slot, which led to a different drive letter assignment. This of course made all of my files "not found". The quick fix is to reassign the drive letter to match the shortcut. Don't do what i did, which was to go through each shortcut and manually change the targets. BTW, that was not the dumbest thing I could have done. I could have just created a set of shortcuts for each potential drive letter assignment.

3. Make sure to save project files to the flash drive also. nothing is more frustrating than realizing the one file you need most was saved to the laptop hard drive, and not to your flash drive, especially when the laptop is not 100 miles away.

Is this really worth all this effort? For me it was. I used to carry my "laptop ring" in an airline carry on bag. Now I can get everything in to a small backpack:

P4 2.2 ghz laptop
Korg P5XD audio interface
Ableton Live
Sequel 2 on flash drive
BAIB on flash drive