putting slate digital plugins on external drive

Optimizing Your Workflow with External Hard Drives and Slate Digital Plugins

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When working with large audio files and numerous plugins in Ableton or Logic Pro X, managing storage space can quickly become a daunting task. One effective solution is to consider external hard drives specifically designed for storing your plugin collection outside of the main operating system drive.

Benefits of Using External Hard Drives

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1. Improved Performance: By moving resource-intensive programs and plugins away from the primary drive, you'll notice significant performance boosts in your DAW.

2. Data Protection: In case of a hardware failure or data loss on one external drive, having an up-to-date backup elsewhere ensures minimal downtime for your workflow.

Setting Up Your External Hard Drive

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1. Choose the Right Hardware

When selecting an external hard drive specifically designed for storing large files like audio plugins, look for features such as:

- High-capacity storage (at least 2TB)

- USB 3.0 or faster interface for fast transfer speeds

Slate Digital recommends using a Thunderbolt 3 or M.2 NVMe SSD if possible due to their speed and durability.

2 Formatting the External Drive

Before transferring your plugins, format the external drive as ExFAT (Extended File Allocation Table) from within macOS Preferences > About This Mac > Storage > 'External Drive' > Erase > Quick Format.

3 Moving Your Plugins to the External Hard Drive

Once your external hard drive is formatted correctly:

1. Connect it via USB-C or Thunderbolt depending upon which port(s) are available on both your Macbook Pro/Pro Max (or iMac).

2. Locate your Slate Digital plugins within Ableton's Plug-ins folder (/Library/Audio/Plug-ins/VST64 for macOS): drag-and-drop all the folders containing these into an easily accessible location like:

- /Volumes/'External Drive Name'/Slate\ Digital

4 Configuring Ableton to Recognize Your External Hard Drive

1. Launch Ablelive and navigate to Preferences > File > Advanced.

* Underneath 'Mac OS User Library', click the three dots next to it, then browse until you see:

- /Library/Audio/Plug-ins/VST64

Make sure that this path is selected in both 'Components' and 'Presets'.

5 Automating the Process with Automator

To save time each session or whenever your system restarts after powering down your Macbook Pro 16 (or equivalent):

- Open Finder, then select Go > Applications.

* Double-click on “Utilities” to open it up; from there double click 'Automator.app'.

Within the main window of Automator:

• In left-hand sidebar under 'Actions', expand Utilities and drag/drop both 'Move Items' & ' Quit System Preferences'.

- Set destination for first action as /Library/Automator then give this new Application a descriptive name like “Slate Plug-In Mover” before saving.

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By following these simple steps, you can significantly improve your workflow by moving resource-intensive plugins such as those from Slate Digital onto an external hard drive. Remember to regularly back up your data and keep both drives connected for optimal performance and peace of mind in case disaster strikes.

Putting slate digital plugins on external drive