What Hard Drive should I buy?

D

dandolino

New member
Hi guys!

I'm new here and I'd appreciate if someone could point me to a thread about Hard Drives...
My Kontakt library is getting too big. I'm running out of space on my computer and need to buy an external hard drive.
I'd like some advice on what kind of hard drive I need...

Cheers,
 
USB 3.0. 7200 RPM if you’re buying a hard disk and not SSD but I’d consider SSD if it will be running in a recording environment. And buy a second, cheaper unit the same size to plug in and back up the working drive periodically. Or buy two drives and configure as mirrored. (That can get really noisy if you have big fast drives and may require a fan as well, so SSD is almost required if it will be in a room with mic’d recording IMO.)
 
You do of course need a USB 3.0 port on the PC! It will have a blue 'tongue'.

Assuming you are talking about a desktop you can fit a 4 port USB 3.0 PCIe card very cheaply. If you do go for an external spinner make DDSure it cannot fall off anything! I have had 2 drives croak in 10 years. I know one was dropped, never got to the bottom of the other. Fortunately freezing one of the drives allowed us to retrieve some 90% of son's tunes.

The experience caused me to buy a 2TB NAS drive that sits behind my chair, on the floor in my living room. Had it ages now and it is bloody slow! I guess if you have a gigabit RJ45 port on the PC they can be found much faster now?

Dave.
 
I'd suggest buying the highest capacity SSD that you can afford, and USB3 or USB Type C would be the preferred connectivity if your computer supports it.

SSD drives read and write extremely fast, and USB 3 has the bandwidth to transfer data nice and fast compared to older standards like USB 2 and FireWire.
 
Tadpui said:
I'd suggest buying the highest capacity SSD that you can afford, and USB3 or USB Type C would be the preferred connectivity if your computer supports it.

SSD drives read and write extremely fast, and USB 3 has the bandwidth to transfer data nice and fast compared to older standards like USB 2 and FireWire.
Click to expand...

I could (easily!) be wrong Mr T but I think even USB 3.0 will limit the speed of an SSD and the link would be no faster than using a 7200 spinner?

I can easily find 1tB 7200 external drives for £55-70 but 1tB SSD is £300! I have a Seagate 7200 1tB on USB 3.0 and that is bloody quick!

Dave.
 
Tadpui said:
I'd suggest buying the highest capacity SSD that you can afford, and USB3 or USB Type C would be the preferred connectivity if your computer supports it.

SSD drives read and write extremely fast, and USB 3 has the bandwidth to transfer data nice and fast compared to older standards like USB 2 and FireWire.
Click to expand...


Yes, SSD! I think that's a given... I should have mentioned that the computer I'm using has ONLY USB-C ports, four of them! I was told they are really fast like they can do up to 50GB/s
I am just not sure how fast the transfer speed / writing speed has to be when I work with my Kontakt Library on the SSD drive.
 
dandolino said:
Yes, SSD! I think that's a given... I should have mentioned that the computer I'm using has ONLY USB-C ports, four of them! I was told they are really fast like they can do up to 50GB/s
I am just not sure how fast the transfer speed / writing speed has to be when I work with my Kontakt Library on the SSD drive.
Click to expand...
I honestly can't guess because I don't use that software, but even though you've got USB-C ports, you'll still be limited by the drive enclosure controller, which probably is going to be USB 3.0. (There may be faster implementations in price ranges I haven't investigated!)

I don't have any problems with my projects on an external drive (RAID 1) on USB 3.0, while I did experience occasional hiccups with USB 2.0.
 
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