Pre-purchase and Installation questions

Hi there,

2019 27" iMac 3.6GHz 8 core intel core i9 proc - Used for music only
512GB SSD - 40Gig RAM (463GB FREE according to DU and no TM local snapshots that I can see)
Catalina 10.15.7; LogicPro 10.6.1
2 External T5 1TB SSDs (one about 650GB and the other about 900GBs FREE)

Im not new to DAWs but Im new to NI and I'm interested in purchasing Komplete13U CE. First, I have spent a LOT of time on these forums, the NI site and looking at youtube videos. Going by this forum, there seems to be a lot of problems getting these products installed and naturally that is a concern to me as a newbie. Soon I'm going to get another external SSD but in the meantime, going by my internal drive and as long as I install things one by one I shouldn't run into problems?

NI can I please make a constructive suggestion? Newbies may not know what Native Access is let alone how the whole install procedure should go. It would save us new people so much time if there was an easy to find post somewhere to show a simple but complete procedure, namely, the order of things to be done to get these products safely installed. I'm not saying the info isn't there, but its just not in one place. You're often having to stumble across information and tips by accident. For example, I've seen people saying they have to disable their firewall. That is a real concern if it is recommended by you - is this the case?

Other Questions
I know you can see this once you make an account but is there somewhere on NI site that shows a list of download sizes for the individual products pre-purchase?

Assuming complete installation of K13U CE, how much drive space is needed on the system drive for NI software POST installation? (not including temp files etc) To be clear, I'd use an external drive for downloaded installers, and content but stick to your recommendation where programs get installed.

I plan to get the HDD option if I purchase as I'm on an internet cap and DL speeds are not that fast. Obviously I want to get the most recent version possible so I download as less as possible from your site. Do these drives have a date stamp or similar, and do you know what the latest version is? Assuming I have the most recent/updated HDD version and I want to install everything, how much content am I still required to download from the NI site?

Can I have 2 separate external SSDs as locations for content and if so is there a recommendation as to what should reside in the same Folder/location?

Any help greatly appreciated! I'm really looking forward to this!

Thankyou.

 

You install native access, log in, then enter the serial that's in your box or mail depending what you purchased. Then in native access under preferences/paths you can set the installation paths. Then you can click install all, or if you want to devide the libaries into two locations you install products one by one. First all vst instruments and fx + a few expansions/libraries (as you like) then if you reach the limit of the first drive you change the path for libaries in the above mentioned preferences to the second location and install the rest. But it would be much easier if you would use one drive for everything, maybe you also don't need every library. I don't know all the file sizes but you find them normally on the product pages. And on mac you need free space even for installation of the libraries on other drives, cause it writes temporary files on main drive/ Mac OS installpartition, but I don't know how much exactly 60 GByte maybe.


Uwe

 

Maybe that helps a bit


Uwe

 

And you can only use a singe external drive for content (barring doing something clever in the OS).

 

Uwe303 - again, thanks for your input. Considering either a 2TB T5 or a 2TB T7. I'm not sure that my system would utilize the T7s speed and where I am the T7 is quite a bit more expensive. Anyway, yes I think one drive would be better.

I haven't made an NI Account yet. Do I do that after downloading, and installing NA or do I have to do it before?

Tony Jones - thanks. Im curious though, whats this clever thing I can get the OS to do?

 

No idea, but I expect there’s some trick with mount points in subdirectories

 

No you can install a few expansions, then change the libary folder in native access and install the rest.

Uwe

 

T5 is fine I think, you can make the account like you want it is a job of just a few minutes.

Uwe

 

Ohh and there are JBOD's for example and other methods but they have disadvantages and I don't know if they also work with external drives, I would highly doubt that.

Uwe

 

One thing concerning download. Cremona Quartet was not included on instalation disk (at time of release), people said. And it is about 90 GB.... So, maybe you will need download it.....
Otherwise, NA is aware of recent versions and what install from disc and what to download. And often, only patch to the library is downloaded, if never version is needed, not whole library. At least on Windows it is like that.

 

Uwe303 thanks. Really appreciate your comments. It all helps. Yesterday I ordered through my local store so pretty excited! Sorry but what is JBODs?
Kubrak thanks! Interesting to know and really appreciate these comments. Hopefully the disk that comes with my package will have it on it. I tried to get more info about this but nobody seemed to be able to help. As it is the copy I'm getting will take a week to arrive to my local store from further away in my own country.

 

JBOD is just a bunch of disks, so you can let's say have three 500 gig disks and make one partition over all three disks with 1.5 TB. There are also other methods like different RAID systems and more but as I said with external drives one big drive is the way to go.

Uwe

 

Uwe303 - thanks for that. I've never used RAID but have long heard about it. I like the idea of keeping things as simple as possible with the one drive, but nice to know I can use a second drive if needbe. I plan to keep a LOT of space free on my external SSDs. Dont ever want to get below 25% free. Also, Sample Libraries dont change that much so not a lot of writing needed as, as far as I'm aware, for MacOS you cant do Trim through the USB bus. Apparently Samsung do their own maintainance, like Garbage Collection.