External hard drive question!!

[Nik D]

External hard drive question!! Important!

I got a Maxtor 120 gig hd for xmas today, it's USB 2 just like I asked for. The only thing is it's 5400 rpm and not 7500. Is that worth shelling out a hundred more bucks to up the speed? I'm recording 24 bit audio usually in at least 9 channels at once. My comp is a 2ghz p4 running XP with 500 megs of ram, along with usb 2.0 if that helps. I'd like to know as I have some projects coming up within the next few weeks, and would like to exchange it asap.

 

[RWhite]

That's a good question. If the drive was internal IDE, I would say absolutley, return the drive and exchange for the faster model. But I have not yet played with any USB 2 devices, and I'm not sure whether the RPM difference would matter in this situation. I'll see if I can find any data ... meanwhile maybe someone else out there knows?

 

[belowthesun]

I think you are limited by the bandwidth of usb 2.0, which means increasing to 7200 rpm's probably wouldn't make any difference.

I'm not positive, so don't take my word for it. It's just something to think about. You could always compare the trasfer speed of the hard drive to the bandwidth of usb 2.0 and ide.

 

[cromicus]

Just calculate the rated speeds, account for the fact that you'll probably only get about 90% of the rated speed, and compare that to what you need it for.

9 channels * 3 bytes/sample * 96000 samples/second = 2592000 bytes/second, or 2.472 megabytes/second.

 

[continuity]

been told 7200

From what i can tell, most folks will say if you're running an external drive for recording
and playing back audio, you should use one with 7200 rpm. You will need a firewire port be able to use one of those...Pricewise though, you can get one with plenty of space for under $200----mine was 80g's and cost 160. I'm kinda new to this but something i hadn't thought about that has come back to sting is:


Volume!!! The one i got has this fan running which is a real bummer when you're trying to record quiet tracks. I'm goin to this bedding' wholesaler tomm to buy some foam. I'm build a little anti-wind crate to muffle it down while recording!

So----goin' back to your question, it all really depends whether you're using this drive to archive finished songs, or for real time tracking + playback. Oh yeah, and whether or not it's external, cause i've been writing under the assumption that it is!

Good luck!

 

[Frusciante_Fan]

Usb 2.0 is fast!!!

really fast,, 480 Mbs. Thats fast!

Faster than the fastest IDE.

yea get 7200 and your in buisness