Here are some guidelines regarding what drive formats to use and which ones to avoid for your Spectrasonics instruments:

Drive Type

SSD (Solid State Drives) are the recommended drive type to use for Spectrasonics instruments. 7200rpm HDDs (Hard Disk Drives) will generally perform adequately, although there may be some slower models or configurations that should be avoided.

The connection to external drives should be as fast as possible (Thunderbolt or USB3 are recommended).

Format - Mac

For Mac computers, it’s recommended to use the format APFS. If you are using macOS Sierra or earlier, MacOS Extended (Journaled) (also called HFS+) will also work.

Note: Please ensure that the drive you are using for your Spectrasonics instruments is not the same drive you are using for Time Machine backups. 

To view your current drive format on Mac, right-click (i.e. control + click) on the drive (either in Finder or on your Desktop) and select "Get Info". The format of the drive should be listed here:

Format - Windows

For Windows computers, you'll want to use the file system (i.e. format) called NTFS.

To view the current format of your drive on Windows, right-click on the drive (either in File Explorer or on your Desktop) and select "Properties". The format of the drive should be listed here:

Additional Considerations

For all users - Please AVOID the following drive formats: exFAT and MS-DOS (FAT32). These formats are never acceptable on any platform as they limit the amount of data that can be written or transferred, which will cause your Spectrasonics sounds to load very slowly.

There is no single drive format that is optimal for both Mac and Windows.

If your drive is not correctly formatted for your system, you will need to backup and reformat the drive. However, please note that REFORMATTING A DRIVE WILL ERASE ITS CONTENTS!

Any data that has not been backed up prior to reformatting your drive will be permanently lost. Reformatting a drive is a straightforward process on both Mac and PC, and instructions on how to do so can be found online.