I have been chasing down the cause of very long load times on some Kontakt Libraries.
 
For a couple of years I have been keeping most of my third party Kontakt libraries on a 1TB HD with an SSD Cache. Recently I encountered very long load times (see http://forum.cakewalk.com/FindPost/3499167 ) with the Embertone Mountain Dulcimer. Once I moved a copy of the library to my SSD drive it loaded very quickly.
 
It has been suggested on the NI forum that the cached drive may not be ideal for use with Kontakt. https://www.native-instruments.com/forum/threads/very-slow-loading-in-kontakt-5-6-1.310506/
 
Does anyone else here have good or bad experiences with a cached drive?

The thing about cached (hybrid) drives is that the cache is not usually large enough to make a difference with the newer, larger sample libraries, so all of the loading is still from disk. An SSD is really the only "cure".
 
Regards,
Dan

dcumpian
The thing about cached (hybrid) drives is that the cache is not usually large enough to make a difference with the newer, larger sample libraries, so all of the loading is still from disk. An SSD is really the only "cure".
 
Regards,
Dan

 
Makes sense but I run pretty big libraries off of it, the issue with the Embertone library was very strange, it was taking tens of minuets to load.
 
I notice the difference loading recently used libraries compared to ones you have not used for a while, as I would expect, but nothing chronic like this last experience.

Glyn Barnes

dcumpian
The thing about cached (hybrid) drives is that the cache is not usually large enough to make a difference with the newer, larger sample libraries, so all of the loading is still from disk. An SSD is really the only "cure".
 
Regards,
Dan

Makes sense but I run pretty big libraries off of it, the issue with the Embertone library was very strange, it was taking tens of minuets to load.
 
I notice the difference loading recently used libraries compared to ones you have not used for a while, as I would expect, but nothing chronic like this last experience.

Maybe the new Embertone library packages it's samples differently than other libraries you have used. My understanding is that the hybrid drives will read-ahead to try and anticipate what the computer will access next. Do you see any packaging differences, like single large compressed files vs many smaller files?
 
Regards,
Dan

The way any kind of caching works is that the drive searches the cache first, and if the file isn't found it then copies the file to the cache and re-tries. Every time it finds the file in the cache on the first try, it's called a "cache hit". Every time it doesn't, it's called a "cache miss". The ratio of hits and misses is called the "hit rate". As you can imagine, this actually slows things down when the hit rate is low. A sample library is going to have a very low hit rate when it first loads.

I have a 250 gig SSD for all my Kontakt libraries and never an issue with load times. I can strongly recommend this solution as affordable and reliable. 

ampfixer
I have a 250 gig SSD for all my Kontakt libraries and never an issue with load times. I can strongly recommend this solution as affordable and reliable. 

I use a 2TB Samsung SSD for Kontakt and BFD3 libraries. What a difference. I'll be adding a second one in November (on that dark day after Thanksgiving).
 
Still not sure why the OP is having slow load times with a single library and not any others though...
 
Regards,
Dan

dcumpian
Maybe the new Embertone library packages it's samples differently than other libraries you have used. My understanding is that the hybrid drives will read-ahead to try and anticipate what the computer will access next. Do you see any packaging differences, like single large compressed files vs many smaller files?

Nothing seems unusual about this library. I also tried it on one of my hard drives, as expected slower than the SSD, but perfectly acceptable.

bitflipper
The way any kind of caching works is that the drive searches the cache first, and if the file isn't found it then copies the file to the cache and re-tries. Every time it finds the file in the cache on the first try, it's called a "cache hit". Every time it doesn't, it's called a "cache miss". The ratio of hits and misses is called the "hit rate". As you can imagine, this actually slows things down when the hit rate is low. A sample library is going to have a very low hit rate when it first loads.

Yes, my experience shows recently used libraries load quickly while those not used for a while take longer so normal behaviour is as expected. The Embertone dulcimer however did not show any noticeable improvement even after it had been loaded a couple of times.
 
I have been using this drive successfully for a couple of years and have never seen this problem before. I will need extra storage soon so I am looking at options.

Not arguing with what was previously said.
But my impression was that the cache in a cached HD was mainly to improve boot up time.
My SSD made such a big change in everything I ran on my PC that at this point the difference between cached & uncached feels insignificant (though I still use them for back ups).
 
About your issue - 
How full is your drive?  (not an issue on SSD drives)
What's your fragmentation look like?
If your drive is fairly full then new additions may end up being badly fragmented.
 
Also is the cached drive a 5400 or 7200 rpm?
For a while (maybe still? haven't checked in the last 2 years) Seagate was putting out some 5400 cached drives where the rpm wasn't on the label.
At one point I was using one of these as my sample drive and chucked it for straight 7200.