Hi,
I looked around, but haven’t found any 100% info on that:
what is the max size card Octatrack MKII can handle?
128gb or 256gb SandDisk Extereme or Extreme Pro will work fine or?
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AFAIK 64 gb.
Check this thread.
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nothing wrong with searching the manual - the first hit on ‘flash’ shows the answer … pretty clear
3.4.1 COMPACT FLASH CARD SPECIFICATIONS
Cards supporting UDMA and at least 133x (~20MB/s) for both reads and writes are compatible with the Octatrack MKII. Cards must be FAT16 or FAT32 formatted, preferably FAT32. Up to 64 GB Compact Flash cards are supported.
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Has anyone tested 128GB CF card with both OT mk1 and mk2?
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Yup, the question is not what’s in manual, but if someone tried that…
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Just curious how much more utility 125Gb would provide vs 64Gb? I have a 16Gb card and have filled 2Gb over 2 years, so I figure I am good for more than a decade.
Makes sense if you have large sample library and want to have it available all the time for instant access on OT. My lib at the moment is around 2TB, incl. commercial packs, custom libraries, rare synth and acoustic recordings, fields etc…
I also like to sample long modular pieces directly into sampler and trim later. So on Digitakt I filled 1gb drive in a week or so.
Otherwise, of course 64 or even 16 gb is more than enough for performance or space saving work, like trimming everything, etc…
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Every now and then a thread pops up with someone trying 128GB cards and failing. There is a reason why they mention the restriction explicitly in the manual.
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Ok! Just haven’t seen any of such threads…
Using search terms “128GB CF” reveals a bunch.
For example this one from last October:
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The 16gb 50mb/s card that came with my mk2 is painstakingly slow.
Thinking about sticking in a 120mb/s Sandisk Extreme card.
Will I see a speed boost while loading/saving from and to the card?
I don’t have these laying around for testing
Are you’re projects using a lot of RAM, slots?
How long does it take?
I didn’t noticed significant difference between my older 40MB and my 120MB Extreme, but usually I don’t use much samples, mainly recordings.
My projects are very small in size. Loading especially takes a looong time. I think about 5 seconds for 5mb of samples.
My Octatrack MK1 was quicker. I was a bit shocked speed was only 50mb/s. With the static slots feature I assume it will bottleneck quickly.
Even my old Emu with SCSI is quicker reading/writing from and to SD
Quick test with MKI, 120MB : 10 secs with 20MB in RAM…
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…10 years ago, 64gb was huuuuge…
and hey, end of the day it still is…
i run 32gb cards only…
and with the extreme/pro cards i’m able to stream 8 stereo files of any size flawlessly…
and that’s all the max it needs…
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That’s like an eternity too! ;—)
I guess the marginal difference isn’t worth it then
Not exhaustive test!
A comparison playing several long static files would be interesting.
I just made the 128GB card mistake. 
Although, turns out it is the first partition’s size that matters.
So long as the first partition is FAT32* and <64GiB** then the card seems to work fine in the OT***. can read/write to it etc. Just can’t see or use any other disk partitions (will only mount/read data from partition 1).
I suppose i’ve got some “hidden” space on the card for backups/audio files now 
* - From memory, windows doesn’t natively allow partitioning with FAT32 larger than 32GiB, so it’s a linux/mac only thing unless you buy extra windows software.
** – don’t ask me for an exact number. i haven’t tested thoroughly.
*** – MK 1
Wouldn’t it be cheaper to buy a 64GB card and use it, rather than loading a 128GB turned into a 64GB card with hundreds of unique and precious projects that might become corrupted months from now?
Wouldn’t it be cheaper to buy a 64GB card and use it
Yes, but i’d already bought it and ripped open the packaging – so it’s no longer returnable/refundable. Then searched forum and saw this thread and remembered it was a thing.
I’m fine with it. Hacker mentality and all. I got to figure out a “thing”.
Posted previous in case anyone else out there makes the same mistake. They can make use of a non-returnable >64GiB card in some form if they want.
might become corrupted months from now?
I don’t see any logical reason for the card to fail because it’s been partitioned. A 64GiB card is just a single 64GiB partition on a disk. All I’ve done is split the disk into 2x.
Plus, backups.
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