External hard drive speed

guitarplayr82

guitarplayr82

New member
So I'm buying a new external hard drive to record to/save projects to. What speed should I look for in order to avoid problems/slowness while recording/mixing? Also, will firewire 400 be sufficient even though I already have my interface on the same firewire bus?
 
Firewire 400 is more than sufficient. If you can get a 7200 rpm firwire drive. That is what I use it is glitch free
 
Might be worth getting an internal to do that, then use an external as a backup/portable drive. That way, you get the full speed in recording to a drive, but also have the portability I'm guessing you want the drive for.
 
Firewire400 will stream over 100 simultaneous channels
(about the same as the capacity of a 7200rpm drive)
Bandwidth is not a problem.

BTW- thats why you dont see many Firewire800 interfaces and why the approved
fw1600 and fw3200 specifications were never built, very few people need more than fw400....

I've been using a Glyph fw400 drive daisy-chained to my Motu828mkII for years with zero problems.
 
I have both FW800 and FW400 connections on my box, and when I use it for video purposes, my cameras are supposed to "prefer" the 800. Truth is, I never pick the same one twice in a row, and I've never noticed a problem. Turns out I'd have been fine with just a 400.
 
firewire 400 will be fine for that.

Some interfaces will be fussy about whether the drive or interface comes first in the chain, but other than that you're good to go.
 
And I found that a lot self contained backup drives (sold for data backup) tend to be 5400 as well. I just bought a USB3.0 drive case and a 1TB 7200 Barracuda for $100.
 
An external drive is an internal drive in a sealed enclosure. You can save money by purchasing an internal drive and an enclosure or power/connection interface for around $15.
 
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