external storage for notebook daw

[kensuguro]

I have a 7200 rpm drive on my notebook, but it's quickly running out since all my projects are on it too. (totally closed system, cool!) And I'm thinking of moving some of my sample libs on an external 7200rpm, and install more libs on it. Has anyone tried this? It seems a little risky to me to be running high bandwidth stuff over usb, but maybe I'm just oldschool. I know you can do video editing off these things just fine.. not sure if it'll hold up against multi gigabyte instruments. I'm thinking of getting something big like Goliath. I guess 1tb drives are around $100 so its worth a shot.

[siriusbliss]

I have Kontakt3.5 and Superior2 libraries on an external 500G drive, and have never really had any issues. The other thing I've considered is several smaller drives containing dedicated libraries for different ROMplers. Theory being that the stream off the drive is dedicated. The other consideration is too many USB slots being consumed and Windoze freeking out. But again, I've never had any issues doing it this way.

Greg

[netguyjoel]

I have an external Fantom Drive w/ (2) 1TB drives mirrored for external storage. USB and eSATA connectors. USB is still fast...but the eSATA is blindingly fast!

[dawman]

A connector card for eSATA that goes to a pair of 300GB VelociRaptors or SSD's in case you like polyphony.

Double_HDD_Rack_eSATA_and_USB_002.jpg

[braincell]

If you can wait a little longer, USB3 will be out soon. It's fiber optical.

These are really nice:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductLi ... &x=22&y=25

[valis]

USB3 has been 'out soon' for a year now (specification was 'finalized' last november.) The first few chipsets to include it also had to have it disabled since it was buggy...but yea there are one or two products on the market now.

I've used external firewire drives for years (almost all are now firewire/usb and possibly ESATA compatible) and I'm careful to not move the drives when powered on as vibrations tend to kill drive performance (and thus drive components.) With careful treatment the drives never die, it's usually the enclosures that fail or their power supply, and the drive winds up being ripped out and installed into a machine somewhere as additional storage space.

[kensuguro]

cool, good to hear. I'm not looking for insane performance, like running full symphonies off of it, etc. So a good sized usb2 drive seems like it'll do the job. USB3 will be cool when I get a notebok that's got usb3. Sample libs on system drive has always freaked me out since it's too much traffic on the internal..

[kylie]

If you can wait a little longer, USB3 will be out soon. It's fiber optical.

intel had plans for fiberoptic interconnects in 2007, but they are not (yet) part of the final usb3 specification.¹

a little longer would mean (in reality) 2011. the market acceptance rises and falls with the availability of the interconnects in chipsets. the experience with sata and usb2.0 backup the theory that new interconnects will have their breakthrough only when they are available on the majority of new built computers (thus obsoleting the use of (expensive) host cards) and the prices for matching hardware start to drop. intel delayed prototypes of xhci-enabled chipsets that were expected for the beginning of 2010, so speculations say that we'll see chipsets with xhci not before early 2011. so calm down everybody

¹ this is a translation of the heise newsticker article I like to quote on that matter

[siriusbliss]

As I've stated elsewhere - having worked at Intel - you MUST remember that this whole industry has to deal with Intel and their laggard attempts at being true developers.

Economics are also coming into play, as many next-gen chipsets (wireless, network, etc.) are ALL being slowed down in the cue until things recover. The only advantage of this is it gives them more time to work out bugs ahead of releases.

Greg