need laptop info

[ngs]

i'm looking to buy a laptop, can you use an external 7200rpm hard drive with a 5400rpm in the laptop or is it better to get a laptop with internal 7200rpm? What problems if any can occur with a 5400rpm hard drive for recording?

 

[Armistice]

Depends upon what you're planning on using your external drive for and what sort of recording you're planning on doing and a host of other factors.

 

[ecc83]

Laptops, modern ones at least, are generally regarded as a poor choice for serious audio work and by that I mean anything other than MP3 and tooobe playing!
The problem is not so much their lack of power, most blow the 3G P4 I type this on out of the water, it is the power management and CPU throttling systems that screw you. In older machines you could defeat virtually all of these systems, in new stuff you cannot. The 5400 hard drive is the least of your worries!

That said, I have a HP g6 1170sa i3 laptop. It was bought as a gen' purpose machine but it plays out 13 tracks of Cubase Elements 6 faultlessly and records 4 tracks from my NI Ka6 perfectly. It is also virtually silent if not pushed, i.e. two tracks Ka6, AKG p150's and acoustic guitar, same room, fine. (all at 44.1kHz 24bits).

Have a varder at Sound On Sound | Recording Techniques | Audio Technology | Music Production | Computer Music | Video Media forum, they have an ongoing thread about the foibles of lappies!

Dave.

 

[nagol5178]

I use an iMac for recording but when I was using my macbook pro I had no issue. If you're looking for a PC it's a bit different. Back in my PC days I always head to deal with latency and finding ways around that.

I use external hard drives to record with. I actually use a portable one. But I use a firewire one. I have two regular external drives and two portables. They are fast enough to record with in my case. I can get as many tracks as I want and have no problems with the western digital studio 1TB firewire. Around 150 bucks.

I even edit Canon 5D mark iii footage using the external portable drive and have no issues. And those are big files and a lot goes into editing those videos. It takes a lot more cpu power than recording music.