MPC X, MPC Live, MPC One & MPC Key 61 Forum: Support and discussion for the MPC X, MPC Live, MPC Live II, MPC One & MPC Key 61; Akai's current generation of standalone MPCs.
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By MPC-Tutor Mon May 29, 2017 12:24 pm
starmanwarz wrote:You mean the 16GB drive? That you can't access, and I don't see that changing because they don't want us to mess with the OS which is understandable.

Dan said they are working on something to address this as it's clear we need to be able to at least back up anything saved on the 16GB drive. Perhaps they'll create some kind of backup utility. Would also be good to be able to add expansions to the 16GB drive, so again, hopefully they'll work something out via an MPC Software 'tool'. In fact it is looking like the MPC software could benefit from a utilities 'suite' to include the existing expansion builder, backup utilities, bulk transfer to and from the 16GB drive and some kind of media library tagging system to quickly tag samples.
By marctronixx Mon May 29, 2017 12:37 pm
Its sata 3 but depends on the read write speed of the particular SSD or HDD you install.

Ive not noticed any slow down in transferring data to/from the SSD or the internal.

Jroen wrote:Do we know the max read/write speed of the live?

Or maybe do people notice the difference between the internal memory sample loading speed vs SSD sample loading speed?
By Joe bond Mon May 29, 2017 2:42 pm
For anyone wondering about a SSD.
I tried the 960 GB sandisk ultra II and it failed to work correctly. It would eject the SSD and give a error every time I tried to resave a project.

I tried an old 500 GB macbook 5400rpm drive and it work perfectly, but I'm not sure if the drive would be fast enough.

So now I'm trying a 500 GB samsung 850 evo SSD and its working smooth with no issues
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By Icepulse Mon May 29, 2017 4:59 pm
akom-studio.com wrote:Hmmm ok, thanks... I'm pretty sure I had the same issue in controller mode also, so hmmmm :-/ Is there a common good way to format the SSD? I attached it to the laptop before installing and just used standard settings and NTFS. Seemed to be fine as it is working fine for the MPC - just no access from laptop.


I swapped out the blue USB cable that came w/ the Live for an old printer cable, and my computer saw the card immediately. Many find the Akai-furnished USB cable to be unreliable. You don't even need the 2.0 software running. Just connect, put Live into controller mode, and it'll see the attached drives.
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By Icepulse Mon May 29, 2017 5:01 pm
Joe bond wrote:For anyone wondering about a SSD.
I tried the 960 GB sandisk ultra II and it failed to work correctly. It would eject the SSD and give a error every time I tried to resave a project.

I tried an old 500 GB macbook 5400rpm drive and it work perfectly, but I'm not sure if the drive would be fast enough.

So now I'm trying a 500 GB samsung 850 evo SSD and its working smooth with no issues


Considering there's (currently) no streaming from added drives, the speed won't affect performance; just loading times.
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By akom-studio.com Mon May 29, 2017 5:59 pm
You don't even need the 2.0 software running. Just connect, put Live into controller mode, and it'll see the attached drives.


Alright, just tried that again. When I connect the MPC to my computer, it is recognized (beyond other terms like MPC Live Controller) as an USB Hub / bridge. Putting a SD card leads to this card is shown and usable within Windows. The internal SSD is not shown though. MPC shows 'looking for computer' screen and MPC 2.0 is not running on the laptop. I wonder if I should remove the SSD again, delete the partition, put it back into the MPC and try again formating via cable.. (first time it was formated via sata/usb cable).

EDIT: ok, solved. One of the more stupid errors I'd say. Had to assign a drive letter within Windows, then it worked just fine... d'oh... :WTF: So if one has the same issue, go and try that...

Glad it finally works! :-)
By J-Fly Tue Feb 20, 2018 4:43 am
Some of you mentioned using a Crucial SSD and feedback has not been good. I also see that other brands may also be having problems. I guess it would be safe to stick to USB drives and SD cards for now.
By kaydigi Tue Feb 20, 2018 9:23 am
J-Fly wrote:Some of you mentioned using a Crucial SSD and feedback has not been good. I also see that other brands may also be having problems. I guess it would be safe to stick to USB drives and SD cards for now.


No problem with Sandisk SSD for me, I’ve been using one since the Live’s launch.
By tbeltrans Tue Feb 20, 2018 9:39 pm
I use a 1 TB Western Digital Blue SSD and it works just fine. Personally, I would prefer to avoid storing my stuff on the internal 16 GB SSD. The reason is that SSD media has a limited number of writes. It would take several years of heavy use to wear out the drive, so there is no immediate concern. However, since I can install my own SSD, why not just use that? The Western Digital Blue SSD will often go on sale, so it can be very reasonable to purchase. Granted, the Samsung EVO is better/faster, but that difference doesn't seem to matter to the MPC Live/X.

What I find interesting is that Western Digital acquire SanDisk, but uses modified firmware in their own SSD media. I did some extensive testing on my own between the SanDisk and the Western Digital, and had better luck with the Western Digital SSD media. So, even though Western Digital owns SanDisk, the product on the shelves is not quite the same. Western Digital seems to have somewhat better error correction algorithms. I don't mean to imply that SanDisk isn't good product, but instead that I like Western Digital better based on my own testing.

Just for the sake of completeness, since I have written algorithms for this stuff (i.e. the following doesn't really matter in your purchase decision for the MPC Live/X,, but might be interesting to the geeks among us)...

The limit on the number of writes is approximately 100,000. SSD use an algorithm called "wear leveling" so that the same block in the media is not being consecutively written to. Each block gets swapped after a certain number of writes to it, and then later swapped for another in a sort of round-robin fashion so that all blocks are being used instead of just those few at the addresses most frequently written. The intent is that all available blocks are equally written to, making for a much longer media life overall. Every SSD has spare blocks that are not addressable by the user, so if you have a 1 TB drive, there is probably somewhere around 1.2 or 1.3 TB of useable blocks. These "hidden" blocks are used internally for error correction and detection, so that a bad block is swapped out of service and replaced with on of the hidden spares.

One major difference between the very expensive commercial SSD media, such as that used in large Google or Amazon corporate disk farms, and the consumer stuff we typically buy as discussed in this thread, is the number of spare blocks. The more spares you have available, the longer the drive will last because the more bad blocks can be swapped out before you run out of blocks.

Tony
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By Ill-Green Tue Feb 20, 2018 10:21 pm
Thanks Tony. Did not know about Western Digital acquiring SanDisk. I rarely see Western Digital products, just the usual suspects and some new brands.
By J-Fly Tue Feb 20, 2018 10:38 pm
tbeltrans wrote:I use a 1 TB Western Digital Blue SSD and it works just fine. Personally, I would prefer to avoid storing my stuff on the internal 16 GB SSD. The reason is that SSD media has a limited number of writes. It would take several years of heavy use to wear out the drive, so there is no immediate concern. However, since I can install my own SSD, why not just use that? The Western Digital Blue SSD will often go on sale, so it can be very reasonable to purchase. Granted, the Samsung EVO is better/faster, but that difference doesn't seem to matter to the MPC Live/X.

What I find interesting is that Western Digital acquire SanDisk, but uses modified firmware in their own SSD media. I did some extensive testing on my own between the SanDisk and the Western Digital, and had better luck with the Western Digital SSD media. So, even though Western Digital owns SanDisk, the product on the shelves is not quite the same. Western Digital seems to have somewhat better error correction algorithms. I don't mean to imply that SanDisk isn't good product, but instead that I like Western Digital better based on my own testing.

Just for the sake of completeness, since I have written algorithms for this stuff (i.e. the following doesn't really matter in your purchase decision for the MPC Live/X,, but might be interesting to the geeks among us)...

The limit on the number of writes is approximately 100,000. SSD use an algorithm called "wear leveling" so that the same block in the media is not being consecutively written to. Each block gets swapped after a certain number of writes to it, and then later swapped for another in a sort of round-robin fashion so that all blocks are being used instead of just those few at the addresses most frequently written. The intent is that all available blocks are equally written to, making for a much longer media life overall. Every SSD has spare blocks that are not addressable by the user, so if you have a 1 TB drive, there is probably somewhere around 1.2 or 1.3 TB of useable blocks. These "hidden" blocks are used internally for error correction and detection, so that a bad block is swapped out of service and replaced with on of the hidden spares.

One major difference between the very expensive commercial SSD media, such as that used in large Google or Amazon corporate disk farms, and the consumer stuff we typically buy as discussed in this thread, is the number of spare blocks. The more spares you have available, the longer the drive will last because the more bad blocks can be swapped out before you run out of blocks.

Tony

Ok, 1 TB seems to be more than enough. What about heat being generated from the drive. Does this occur with Western Digital?
By tbeltrans Tue Feb 20, 2018 11:14 pm
There will be some heat, but not as much as a rotating disk drive and if the MPC Live/X was designed to properly house a disk drive of any type, any heat generated should be taken into account by the mechanical engineers involved in the project. I doubt that the Western Digital SSD draws any more heat than a similar device from another manufacturer. I can say that I have yet to encounter any problems.

Tony
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By richie Wed Feb 21, 2018 1:09 am
tbeltrans wrote:The limit on the number of writes is approximately 100,000. SSD use an algorithm called "wear leveling" so that the same block in the media is not being consecutively written to.
Tony


It would be fair to assume that Akai did not bother incorporating any sort of TRIM related algorithms into their OS which could be a pro or con based on how well the hard drive handles cleanup. Personally, I'm not sold on the idea or see any advantage to purchasing a high end EVO over an average decent SSD to use on the Live. My preference is the type of nand technology used (you know, MLC, TLC) which I take into consideration based on the specific use in mind (such as if I want a read only drive or a drive that will be handling a lot of constant read/write)

I am somewhat curious regarding why you prefer the WD SSD over the Sandisk. Is that WD SSD being compared to the budget Sandisk or an Extreme variant?
By tbeltrans Wed Feb 21, 2018 2:18 am
richie wrote:
tbeltrans wrote:The limit on the number of writes is approximately 100,000. SSD use an algorithm called "wear leveling" so that the same block in the media is not being consecutively written to.
Tony


It would be fair to assume that Akai did not bother incorporating any sort of TRIM related algorithms into their OS which could be a pro or con based on how well the hard drive handles cleanup. Personally, I'm not sold on the idea or see any advantage to purchasing a high end EVO over an average decent SSD to use on the Live. My preference is the type of nand technology used (you know, MLC, TLC) which I take into consideration based on the specific use in mind (such as if I want a read only drive or a drive that will be handling a lot of constant read/write)

I am somewhat curious regarding why you prefer the WD SSD over the Sandisk. Is that WD SSD being compared to the budget Sandisk or an Extreme variant?


Also in my post, I said...

The Western Digital Blue SSD will often go on sale, so it can be very reasonable to purchase. Granted, the Samsung EVO is better/faster, but that difference doesn't seem to matter to the MPC Live/X.


So, what the EVO might provide is probably not needed for the MP Live/X. I say that because I have had no problem with the Western Digital Blue that I installed. If there were any problems with throughput or some sort of incompatibility, I would have seen it by now, and I have not. So it seems we are in agreement on that.

The SanDisk Ultra II was the same price as the Western Digital. I ran into some issues when mounting/unmounting the SanDisk drive that I did not see with the Western Digital. Also, with very large file transfers, I saw some errors with the SanDisk drive that I did not see with the Western Digital. Sample size for me was three of each type of drive. I did the testing using my laptop system with the drives being mounted in an external housing. It was some time later that I purchased my Akai MPC X, so I just used a Western Digital drive and it has been fine. These seem to go on sale often enough that there should be no reason to pay full retail, making them an even better choice.

We could get into a lengthy discussion about the various aspects of the technologies used in these drives, but I feel it is sufficient to point out that at a very reasonable cost, you can get a commonly available SSD that will work fine. I got mine at Best Buy when they had one of their frequent sales. I discussed a bit about wear levelling because I didn't want to alarm anyone into thinking that their internal 16 GB SSD would die any time soon. However, since we can easily install an internal SSD drive that is easily swappable if it becomes problematic, that seems to make more sense to me.

Tony