External Harddrive - USB or Firewire

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Joy

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Hello all. I am looking to purchase an external harddrive to keep all of my audio recordings separate from my other files, as well as to provide a backup if necessary. I already have the minimum specs to use a PreSonus FireBox using the Firewire interface. I'm actually "cheating" a little bit by buying an internal harddrive and buying an external enclosure, thereby making the 'internal' an 'external' drive. But at any rate, I am a little confused as to which would be the better connection of the harddrive to my current computer box--USB or Firewire? Since I already use FireWire with my FireBox, does it matter if the harddrive itself should be FireWire or would USB suffice? I will most likely record straight to the external harddrive (rather than recording to my current drive, then copying or moving the files to the external drive). Thanks for your help!
 
firewire, faster constant data speeds

(fire 1 is faster than usb2, fire2 is hella fast)
 
Sorry to hijack this thread, but I'd rather post here than make a new one.

I'm going to get a laptop system soon. I was just wondering, would it be healthy to connect both the external hard disk and my audio interface (MOTU) together into one Firewire card?

Or will I run into problems?
 
NashBackslash said:
Sorry to hijack this thread, but I'd rather post here than make a new one.

I'm going to get a laptop system soon. I was just wondering, would it be healthy to connect both the external hard disk and my audio interface (MOTU) together into one Firewire card?

Or will I run into problems?
Click to expand...
I've run my Digi 002R and harddrive from the same firewire port before without problems. You'll probably get higher track counts if you have seperate ports, although I never got to do an A/B on my new DAW. I would run it in this order: computer<->Hard drive<->Interface, that way if the interface loses power for any reason, your files won't get corrupted.
 
reshp1 said:
You'll probably get higher track counts if you have seperate ports
Click to expand...

Sorry, but what do you mean by that?

What I had in mind, when I posted my question, was using many Firewire devices on the same card.

I don't have a laptop yet, and I'm assuming things because I have a Firewire card on my PC system. It's a Firewire card that I stick into one of my PCI slots into the PC. It has 3 ports so that means I can hook 3 devices at any one time, right?

Do Firewire laptops work the same, or am I talking crap?
 
NashBackslash said:
Sorry, but what do you mean by that?

What I had in mind, when I posted my question, was using many Firewire devices on the same card.

I don't have a laptop yet, and I'm assuming things because I have a Firewire card on my PC system. It's a Firewire card that I stick into one of my PCI slots into the PC. It has 3 ports so that means I can hook 3 devices at any one time, right?

Do Firewire laptops work the same, or am I talking crap?
Click to expand...

Laptops, if they have any at all, usually only have 1 firewire port. With Firewire, you can daisy chain different devices with only one port. For example one cable connects the computer to one of the harddrive ports, another cable connects the other hardrive port to the audio interface, all three devices can communicate with each other. You can get firewire cards for laptops that don't have firewire ports or want an extra port to run the interface and harddrive to your computer using a separate port for each. They are like PCI, but for laptops they're called PCMCIA and are smaller cards. The advantage to running the interface and harddrive into seperate ports is higher track count, by which I mean you can playback more tracks simultaneously before your harddrive can't keep up. Also most laptops have smaller 4 pin firewire connectors instead of the standard 6 pin one, so you'll probably have to get new cables.
 
FWIW, I run my interface Firewire and my external Hard Drive USB2, and I have had no problems with 20+ track counts. My Tascam 1804 didn't seem to like having the firewire bus shared by anything so I hooked my external drive to the USB instead. Has been working great for me.
 
Joy said:
Hello all. I am looking to purchase an external harddrive to keep all of my audio recordings separate from my other files, as well as to provide a backup if necessary. I already have the minimum specs to use a PreSonus FireBox using the Firewire interface. I'm actually "cheating" a little bit by buying an internal harddrive and buying an external enclosure, thereby making the 'internal' an 'external' drive. But at any rate, I am a little confused as to which would be the better connection of the harddrive to my current computer box--USB or Firewire? Since I already use FireWire with my FireBox, does it matter if the harddrive itself should be FireWire or would USB suffice? I will most likely record straight to the external harddrive (rather than recording to my current drive, then copying or moving the files to the external drive). Thanks for your help!
Click to expand...

Neither. Do not use an external hard drive for audio recording. A large number of audio apps make stupid assumptions in their latency calculations. The result is stuttering and very low track counts when using an external drive even though the drive's throughput should easily handle the number of tracks in question. Basically, you'll see the drive sit there idle for five seconds, then suddenly spike its throughput to the drive's max capacity, then stutter a quarter second later when the drive didn't shove all that data quickly enough.

Don't get me wrong, software shouldn't have these sorts of bugs, but I find that it's much more frequent than it should be. It is -much- better to add another internal drive. It can make the difference between 20-odd track counts periodically stuttering and 40-odd track counts not stuttering at all. (Of course, this does depend on your DAW, as I said. Your DAW might not have an issue. It is best to research this before buying anything, though.)

BTW, as for the question about separate FireWire jacks on a card, it varies. Depending on the way the card is wired, you could easily have two (or maybe even three) PHYs on the same bus. Typically, though, a firewire controller has at least two busses, so you'd typically have one bus with a couple of PHYs servicing two ports and a second bus with a PHY servicing the third port. The only way to know for sure is to examine the device tree/registry/whatever to see which firewire bus shows the device plugged into a given port.
 
Hmm, I guess it's a lot safer to just buy a laptop with physically separate internal hard disks, and hook my audio interface into a PCMCIA Firewire card. I'd have to find a Firewire card using Texas Instruments' chipset though...

Cheers :)

- Nash
 
NashBackslash said:
Hmm, I guess it's a lot safer to just buy a laptop with physically separate internal hard disks, and hook my audio interface into a PCMCIA Firewire card. I'd have to find a Firewire card using Texas Instruments' chipset though...
Click to expand...

Ah. A laptop. Sorry. I missed that detail. You're right. Adding another internal drive doesn't work in that environment.

The performance of an external firewire drive could easily be better than a laptop internal drive. *sigh*
 
Oh, so it's not possible to have two physical hard drives inside a laptop?

Sorry, I have zero experience with laptops. The only thing I know about laptops is that you can carry it around. :P

Anyway, I was looking at this PCMCIA Firewire card that has two ports, using Texas Instruments' chipset. It appears to have good reviews, and since MOTU only wants to work with TI Firewire chipsets, I think this is the best choice.

Since everyone pretty much uses an external Firewire hard drive to record on a laptop, I think I have no other choice... I need the portability!
 
Been running on laptops here since the dinosaurs roamed the earth...

No problems with 20+ track counts even on a 4200rpm internal drive. No problems at all with the 5400 & 7200rpm firewire drives. I typically record on the internal drive just to have one less noisey box whirring away in the room, but for big projects I record to the external drive. I haven't experienced the stuttering you mention, dgatwood, but its also been a while since I speny much time in a DAW other than Pro Tools.

I do remember one instance of Cubase VST 5 (yeah, it was a while ago) running *better* on a ssllooww internal 4200 drive than a firewire 5400 drive...but it still smoked with the 7200 drive.

-Chris
 
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