How big of an External Hard Drive...

[fishfischer]

My friend just got Nuendo 3 for his laptop and we're planning to record an album with it. How big of an external hard drive will we need to run it and hold the files?

Will 120GB do? 250GB? 320GB?

Any answers are appreciated.

 

[MadAudio]

Are you talking internal or external? How many songs are you planning to record? How many tracks per song do you anticipate? What sample rate and bit-depth do you plan to use?

IMO, get as big a drive as you can afford. And go FireWire if you plan recording more than a couple of tracks at the same time. My external 120 GB drive was fine for awhile, but eventually I had to get a second external drive which is 300GB.

 

[fishfischer]

Thanks, MadAudio.

We're thinking external hard drive.
12 full length songs plus (10 little in between 30 second to 1 minute instrumentals.)
Probably between 8 and 12 tracks per song.
The drums were recorded elsewhere at 90hz. I'm not sure if we're sticking with that or if we're recording everything else at 44.1hz.

I was looking at firewire drives and just trying to keep the cost down. It seems like I could get a 120GB for under $100, but a 500GB is locked in more around $220.

 

[MadAudio]

$220 for 500 GB is a really good deal, IMO. What brand is that one? And what's the drive's speed?

But 120GB would certainly be enough space for what you're planning to do. Just be sure to delete any bad takes!!!

If your target media is a CD, there's not much point in recording above 44.1. Recording at 96 would eat up a lot more drive space anyway.

 

[fishfischer]

The brand is Western Digital. The 'Premium' models have USB or Firewire (the Essential models just have USB). It runs at 7200rpm.

Thanks for the input!

 

[MadAudio]

Western Digital drives are rock solid in my experience.

 

[therage!]

Western Digital drives are rock solid in my experience.

My son got me a 250 Gig WD for Xmas and man I like it. I don't know how I lived without it now.

 

[Erockrazor]

I am also trying to get an external hard drive and I have been looking at the western digitals. Good price , look pretty sweet , 7200 rpm , and firewire or USB. I might have to jump on the purchase of one of these bad boys. I think 120 gb and up will put you in good shape for your recordings. 44.1 is the maximum cd sampling rate , so if your intended goal is to make a cd out of it , id say stick with 44.1. Will save a lot of space. Good luck! Eric

 

[Mindset]

I bought a 160GB WD SATA drive from newegg, and a $20 enclosure that's rock solid and has USB 2 & Firewire 400/800 built on from a local vendor, costs a whole lot less than buying a prebuilt external drive. It also doesn't need to be SATA.

The 160GB is almost filled up to capacity. Though my application is a little more extensive than yours. I'm recording 4-5 albums onto it.

 

[mixsit]

So how is the through-put on the USB and Firewire externals? I've only used internals.

 

[Mindset]

eh for me it's slow. I use 10K raptor drives in my systems so I can't really compare vs external. Compared to regular systems, like at work, they run decent. I can't complain though, I'm now able to take sessions to and from the studio.

It's not turtle slow, but it ain't blazing fast either. Of course Firewire connection is faster than the USB connection.

 

[mixsit]

eh for me it's slow. I use 10K raptor drives in my systems so I can't really compare vs external. Compared to regular systems, like at work, they run decent. I can't complain though, I'm now able to take sessions to and from the studio.

It's not turtle slow, but it ain't blazing fast either. Of course Firewire connection is faster than the USB connection.

This is for tracking/mixing though right, not just transfers/back up?

 

[Mindset]

I never have trust tracking directly to the external hard drive. USB isn't all that reliable (it is but in the audio field, any unstabilities = BAD). Firewire is great, but something about it being external, and a nice drop can destroy your hardware (well it is repairable). However, I have done it a couple times with out no problems, except that on a slower system, it dropped the signal, and then I started getting problems like latency etc. I couldn't exactly 'pinpoint' it to the external hard drive, but it was most likely because of the system being slow.

 

[fishfischer]

I bought a 160GB WD SATA drive from newegg, and a $20 enclosure that's rock solid and has USB 2 & Firewire 400/800 built on from a local vendor, costs a whole lot less than buying a prebuilt external drive. It also doesn't need to be SATA.

The 160GB is almost filled up to capacity. Though my application is a little more extensive than yours. I'm recording 4-5 albums onto it.

Another newb question. What is SATA?

 

[Mindset]

SATA is a newer technology that stands for Serial ATA I forgot what the ATA stands for... It replaces the regular IDE ports that connect your hard drive to the motherboard. Original technology allowed 100Mb transfer between the system & hard drive, but it was flawed because it shared the same bus channel as any other drive... SATAI was designed to increase speed between the two with dedicated lines between system & HD. The speed was increased to 1.5Gb/s or 150MB. SATAII operates at up to 3.0Gb/s or 300MB/s. It is also hot swappable, like USB.

The advantages are mainly the speed increase, dedicated bus (connected 2 drives does not hender performance like before with IDE).

As said, SATAII is UP to 3.0Giga bits a second. The actual speed may vary as needed.

Hard drive performance hasn't really increased by much for 10 years. The capacity of drives have though of course since 10 years ago. For Firewire drives, I would suggest using a SATA connection to keep the signal flowing fast through the SATA connection, to the firewire to the computer. There's still bottlenecks from using any hard drive IDE or SATA since the tech has been slow to increase. Top performance hard drives are like the WD 10k rpm raptor drives & seagates fall second place with their perpendicular drives. Of course I"m not including SCSI drives that fly at 15K RPM though....

I always stress, if your looking for performance on a computer, you can skimp on getting the best CPU, the best GPU, and 1gb memory, but your weakest link will always be the Hard Drive itself, so I suggest upping the speed on the hard drive before going out and purchasing a core 2 duo 6700 or quad core you know?

HOWEVER, most people of today don't need the extra x amount of speed that you get because it's not worth it. It's not that more expensive, but logic states that if you don't need it, don't get it.

 

[Nick98338]

Yea! SATA fast! 3.0 Gbps, which is 3000 Mbps BTW, and then put it on a USB interface at 480 Mbps?? 480 divided by 3000 That never made any sense to me. I use the internal drive for working, and use the external for storage only. YMMV

 

[JuicyDbase]

I have been planning on upgrading from a lame four-track recorder to a mobile firestudio/mixer/rack setup because I plan to be significantly increasing my recording time in the near future, and so I will be needing storage for that as well as storing misc. music and other files. I will be recording from a Laptop running windows, this laptop has descent processing power. My parents have had a 300GB external Seagate hard drive on another computer and we have had no problems whatsoever. So I would like to stay with Seagate. I am wanting to record at the best quality I can. Another factor will be that I want to buy two of them, one for working with, and the other for a mirror back-up drive. So since I will be buying two I absolutely do not want to go over $200 per drive, preferably a little lower. I have been looking at a pair of Seagate 300, 400, and 500 GB drives.

Other questions I have.
- I have seen some external hard drives around 1TB that show in the product pictures with their little door open that they have multiple drives in there. Would it be possible with these to use each drive as a seperate drive or do they just come raided together? Because I would love to carry only one box around and have recording sessions on one drive, music or misc. files on another and have the others for backup. Is there anything like this?
- Is there any lag or problems with recording directly to an external drive, because I have read on here that it is better to leave the internal drive for running the programs, and using another for writing recording sessions to, thoughts?
- What do you guys think about these Seagate network servers? I have been eyeing the 500
http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.asp?DEPA=0&type=&Description=Seagate%AE+Mirra%99+Personal+Server&Submit=ENE&N=0&Ntk=all&Go.x=11&Go.y=26

With all these requirements and wishes I am wanting to do, what suggestions do any of you have for me related to recording to external hard drives and suggestions on what would provide the best outcome. Thankyou all.

 

[Jamz0r]

I just got me one of the WD My Book Premium (usb/firewire) 250GB models.
$138 shipped from Newegg.
It's the same speed as my internal WD drive...8mb buffer...7200rpm

I'll be using it for storage and backup though, not for active projects.

WD drives have been solid for me as well, and I hope this one is no different.
There were a few bad reviews where the drive has failed though..
Connected via firewire, it seems to be working great thus far.