External Hard Drive Too Slow?

[awholtzapple]

Seeing as how the HD on my computer is pretty full, I'm thinking about getting an external HD. I use a FW audio interface which uses my 1 FW port. So my question is: if I got a USB external HD, would it work smoothly or would the slower transfer speeds of USB cause latency or other issues while recording?

 

[jmorris]

Seeing as how the HD on my computer is pretty full, I'm thinking about getting an external HD. I use a FW audio interface which uses my 1 FW port. So my question is: if I got a USB external HD, would it work smoothly or would the slower transfer speeds of USB cause latency or other issues while recording?

I have both fire wire and USB hard drives for my setup. The USB works fine however if it does not for you and you feel its slow, transfer projects into main computer. I stor all my projects in external HD's. Then I bring into computer just what Im working on. Then transfer back to external HD's after.

 

[awholtzapple]

Sounds like a plan! What size hard drive do you have and what is the average size of a song?

 

[jmorris]

80 to 120 gig each. Each song can be from 800 mb to some 3 gig.

 

[TimOBrien]

For over a year I've used a Glyph GT050 firewire drive for audio and a Seagate USB2/Firewire drive for video projects on my laptop. ZERO problems.

The Glyph is worth the few extra bucks, because it's DEAD SILENT and rack-mountable.
The Seagate is much noisier, but that doesn't bother me since I'm not recording anything during video editing sessions.

 

[mixsit]

For over a year I've used a Glyph GT050 firewire drive for audio and a Seagate USB2/Firewire drive for video projects on my laptop. ZERO problems.

The Glyph is worth the few extra bucks, because it's DEAD SILENT and rack-mountable.
The Seagate is much noisier, but that doesn't bother me since I'm not recording anything during video editing sessions.

How many tracks would you say? 44.1?