RME Fireface UCX II 40-Channel USB-B Audio/MIDI Interface - Manual (Page 106)

106 User's Guide Fireface UCX II © RME
Examples of high performance media for DURec
An example of a USB thumb drive that handled the maximum transfer bandwidth error-free was
the
SanDisk Extreme Memory . It worked without write pausing under USB 2. It was able to write
40 channels at 96 kHz on a UFX+, at USB loads below 90% and R/W Times below 100 ms.
When Western Digital bought SanDisk some years ago the controller of this particular model
was changed and performance from then on was disappointing.
Fortunately these days there are many alternatives, even for low costs:
 SSD based hard drives. Use a cheap SATA SSD, add a cheap USB 3 to SATA adapter ca-
ble, format the SSD to FAT32 – full performance will be available.
 SSD based Thumb drives. While these are a bit more expensive than standard USB Thumb
drives, they are still not much expensive (not anymore), and offer stellar write performance
without pausing.
 Mobile hard drives, often directly with USB port. These old dogs usually work ok and can be
used perfectly after formatting them to FAT32.
 Micro SD cards. Used in a small micro SD to USB adapter they look like a miniature Thumb
drive. These cards are built to not have the dreaded write pause, because in cameras – their
main application – there is not much memory for buffering. Fast serial shots as well as high
resolution videos have the same demand as DURec. And these micro SD cards are cheap
as well. Note the exact type details for best performance: the card should have
U3 and V30
specification. Additionally these cards are usually formatted with exFAT. They need to be
wiped completely, a new volume created and formatted with FAT32 to be accepted by the
UFX+.