Short Version: I have tried to install my Toontrack products on a new 4T SSD three times now, and all three times, the drive became corrupted and unusable while the Toontrack Product Manager was copying files (installation step). I have wasted >1 week of my life downloading, redownloading, troubleshooting, reformatting, reinstalling, etc. I have no idea why this isn’t working, but there seems to be a highly repeatable problem (3/3). Please help if you have any ideas!
More Details:
- Computer: 2018 Mac Mini (6-Core Intel i7 with 64GB RAM)
- Operating System: macOS 12.4 (Monterey)
- Background: I ran out of sample storage space and recently decided to upgrade one of my external SSDs to a 4T SanDisk Extreme SSD. They are expensive, but I wanted to future-proof my setup. Also, the performance is pretty good (1050 Mb/s over USB C / v3.2 type 2).
- First Attempt: I formatted the new drive as Mac OS Extended Journaled (HFS+) since I was planning to also store my Kontakt libraries on the same drive, and that seemed to be recommended for Kontakt over the newer APFS format. I moved all of my existing Toontrack sound & MIDI files to the new SSD for EZDrummer 3, EZBass, EZKeys, and SD3. I then fixed the paths, so all the products were working again. I also recently purchased a new SDX 3-pack and a new EBX 3-pack. I was waiting for this new SSD so I would have space to install them. I fired up the Toontrack Product Manager and started downloading all the new stuff. The downloads took more than a day due to the enormous download sizes (Area 33 SDX, Legacy of Rock SDX, D&D SDX). While that was going, I downloaded & installed a bunch of the Toontrack MIDI packs I had recently purchased. Partway through one of the installation steps for one of the larger SDX libraries (I forget which one), the drive unmounted. The Toontrack Product Manager seemed to speed up and complete “successfully” even though the SSD was gone. The SSD was also pretty warm at that point, but not warmer than I’ve felt other SSDs get. I tried all sorts of troubleshooting through Disk Utility and ran First Aid to no avail. There was no way to repair or remount the volume. Since the drive was brand new, I thought it must have been a bad unit. Rather than spending any more time on the drive, I returned it for a replacement.
- Second Attempt: Upon receiving the replacement SSD, I formatted it as APFS, thinking that maybe the latest Apple file system is better designed for handling large (4T) external SSDs. Since I had moved all of my existing Toontrack content over in the first attempt, I was now starting from nothing. I had to download *everything* from scratch via the Toontrack Product Manager. I started working on it, downloading and installing the MIDI content in parallel with the larger downloads. I worked on this for a day or so – I have 109 paid products from Toontrack! During one of the installations, I clicked on the button to select location, and I noticed something strange – there were 10-15 mounted drives left over from the prior installations! Even though these volumes didn’t show up on the Desktop or in the macOS Finder, they seemed to still be mounted. Apparently, the Toontrack Product Manager doesn’t do a great job cleaning up after itself? Or maybe Toontrack didn’t expect someone to attempt installation of 109 products in one go without a reboot? I don’t have any evidence this contributed to the SSD failure, but it doesn’t seem optimal. Anyway, I continued on with the installations and eventually ran into a similar problem… I was checking the drive via the macOS Finder to make sure the installation was progressing, and I noticed some folders were gone. I navigated away from the SSD and back, and the folders appeared again. Within a few minutes, the drive unmounted and was unrecoverable, just like in the prior attempt. It was also fairly warm again, presumably from all of the file-write activity.
- Third Attempt: This time, I reformatted the same drive again as APFS. I was starting from nothing yet again since all of my content from the first two attempts was lost. This time I tried to take things much more slowly, thinking that I may have overwhelmed the drive or the filesystem with too many simultaneous downloads and installations. Each time I completed a handful of downloads and installations, I had the Toontrack Product Manager clean up, deleting unneeded downloads. I then exited the Product Manager, closed any open Finder windows, and manually unmounted & disconnected the SSD. This was to (hopefully) ensure that there were not a bunch of phantom disk images still mounted from prior installations. I then remounted the SSD by connecting the USB C cable. After a few installations, I also rebooted my Mac and tested out the libraries in SD3, EZDrummer, EZBass, or EZKeys to make sure it was working properly. At no point during any of this activity did the SSD get warm, presumably because I was writing to it at a less frequent rate. I got much farther this time, roughly 2/3 of the way through my Toontrack product installations. Unfortunately, while installing the final SD3 Core Library module (“Additional Bleed” sounds), the installation completed much much faster than expected (within a few seconds). Again, the Toontrack Product Manager thought the installation was “successful,” but in the process, the SSD unmounted. It suffered the same symptoms, not mountable or recoverable with the Disk Utility.
I don’t know what to try next other than to give up on the idea of having a 4T drive. Any help or advice would be greatly appreciated! Or, if you can share your experience using 4T external SSDs with Toontrack products (on Mac), that would also be helpful.
Thanks!
Carl
Operating system: macOS Monterey (12)
Carl Conrath
John
