How do I use an external hard drive?

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dudleys100

New member
Howdie. Welcome to my newbie question. I want to get an 7200 hard drive and put it in a firewire enclosure (for future upgrading). I am using a laptop with a 10 gig in it already. I need to know how I use this external HD for recording. For example, can I have a seperate OS on the external and use it independantly, or is it just an extention of my current hard drive. Do I use it like a partition? I would like to have this drive totally clean other than audio. I would also like to be able to reformat my current hard drive, without affecting the external. I am new to this and need help in simple terms, if you can give me some advice, I would really appreciate it.
 
As far as the way the drive will look in the operating system, you'll have a new drive letter like your CDRom, D: or E:, or something along those lines. So, now instead of having like C:\MyProjects\Song1, you'll have E:\MyProjects\Song1, where E: is the drive letter that Windows (or whatever) assigns the new drive.

The recommondation seems to be to put ONLY audio files on a dedicated disk (ie your external FireWire drive) for best performance when multi-tracking. However, if you're all so looking to store other stuff that you are sure won't be used during recording on that drive, i think that would be fine. Things like documents and archives won't affect performance simply just being on the drive, only if they are accessed while recording.

How are you getting audio into your laptop BTW?

Later.
Mo.
 
Oh, and as the formating goes, formating disk will be seperate. So, if you have a bunch of stuff on your external (call it E:) and you decide to say install a new operating system on C:, you won't affect the data on E: when you reformat C:. However! You won't be able to access the data on E: until you have a valid operating system on C:.

Mo.
 
Thanks for the reply. I have the new Roland UA-5 coming in the mail as we speak, that will be the way I am putting audio into my comp. Now I have a question about the external hard drive. Would I be able to have a seperate OS on the external? Would I have a seperate desktop for it? Would I run my tracking software (eg Sonar) off that hard drive or would it have to be running off of my current hard drive. If, I have to run it off of my current hard drive would there be any reason to put out the extra money for a 7200 rather than a 5200? Thanks again.
 
dudleys100 said:
Thanks for the reply. I have the new Roland UA-5 coming in the mail as we speak, that will be the way I am putting audio into my comp. Now I have a question about the external hard drive. Would I be able to have a seperate OS on the external?]
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I don't *think* so. I don't think we have gotten to booting from usb, firewire or cardbus harddrives yet.

Would I have a seperate desktop for it? Would I run my tracking software (eg Sonar) off that hard drive or would it have to be running off of my current hard drive.
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You would use your current desktop, and the new harddrive would just be an extention of your current setup. You should run Sonar off your current harddrive, and only store audio on the new drive for best performance.

If, I have to run it off of my current hard drive would there be any reason to put out the extra money for a 7200 rather than a 5200? Thanks again.
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A 7200 as your system drive wouldn't hurt things, but i don't think it'll make enough difference to warrant an upgrade. A 7200 as your external drive is good to lay your recorded audio to, because the machine can lay down the track(s) as quick as it records them, instead of having to buffer, which is where some errors can occur.

Mo.
 
Wow, this is great I am learning so much. Now my last question (I think) is how would I set it up so that all of my audio files would automatically go to this hard drive. Can I just set it up within my audio program to send all the files there when finnished? And is this what I would want to do? Thanks again.
 
I doubt, dudley, that this will be your last question... :D but i enjoy helping.

You're right on. When you set up a new project, it should either prompt you for the drive and directory to store the project, or it should be an option somewhere, i don't use sonar, so I'm not sure of the specifics.

I think there is a Sonar forum on here somewhere, they could probably help you with the specifics.

Mo.
 
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