Newby External hard drive query

  • Thread starter Thread starter lennymac
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lennymac

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Hi folks, I'm still trying to find my feet with DAW recording. I posted this in the digital recording and computers section but think it may be a newby questions trying my luck here, if I'm in the wrong place please let me know.


I have just bought a Dell Inspiron laptop for home recording, uni work, web browsing/multi purpose stuff. It has dual core i5 proc, 4 gig RAM, 5400 RPM hard disk. I will be running Cubase Artist 6 with an Mbox 2. After doing some research it seems 5400 RPM doesn't really cut it and I am looking to upgrade with an external for recording/storing projects onto. Question is what should I go for? All stuff online says that I really need a 7200 RPM disk, however I have seen post about eSATA disks that run much faster and are more suitable for this type of thing. According to Dell, my laptop has 2 x USB 3.0 port, 1 USB 2 port and a 'USB 2.0 with E-SATA & Power Share' port. Does anyone know what this means? Can I run an eSATA drive? What should I do? Any help will be greatly appreciated as i am quite new to this. Thanks in advance.
 
You should PM this question to dgatwood.
 
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I would be suprised if any modern laptop with those specs had any major issues - dpending upon what you're doing, of course.

Mine isn't nearly so funky and does just fine. I'm not an expert, however. Be interested to see what others say...
 
Armistice said:
I would be suprised if any modern laptop with those specs had any major issues - dpending upon what you're doing, of course.

Mine isn't nearly so funky and does just fine. I'm not an expert, however. Be interested to see what others say...
Click to expand...

OFF with their heads!!
 
read the many threads about using a computer for recording - most important is shut everything that runs in the background down when recording if you can't dedicate a computer just for recording. Don't go out and buy a truckload of equipment to start, go slow, and make educated purchases. You'll need mic(s) first. Headphones and monitors.
Do some experimentation before deciding to upgrade your computer specs.
 
Sata is faster than usb with sending and receiving info.
and esata is an external hard-drive that connects the same way as a normal drive, but i'm not sure about your usb esata power and share port

I don't know if this will help you, but i had the same problem with my macbook pro, the internal 500gb 5400rpm hdd wasn't cutting it, and my interface took up my only firewire port.
So i took out my cd disk drive and put in another hdd with sata connections (mac has a special hdd for this purpose, expensive because of steve jobs)

I'm sure if you're ever so daring you could rig the internal sata cable from your cd drive, into an external hdd and use a usb drive for your cds.
Just a suggestion
 
Thanks all for taking the time to read and respond, appreciated and gives me some things to think about!
 
5400ms HDDs isn't going to be an issue if you're only doing 2 tracks at CD quality. If you have a firewire device and are doing more than 8x channels, maybe. Or if you're using a USB interface AND a USB external HDD at the same time, then you'll have issue. Same with sharing the same bus on firewire, but less so (more bandwidth). IMO outside of some video capture or HD video editing a 5400ms HDD probably isn't going to be your bottleneck. You can always swap your HDD with an after market one. Easier said and done with something like linux. But possible with windows too (sort of). Some laptops even have dual HDD slots now.
 
I totally agree with this comment. Also, consider installing 2 drives. One for system files and the other JUST for recording audio.

mjbphotos said:
read the many threads about using a computer for recording - most important is shut everything that runs in the background down when recording if you can't dedicate a computer just for recording. Don't go out and buy a truckload of equipment to start, go slow, and make educated purchases. You'll need mic(s) first. Headphones and monitors.
Do some experimentation before deciding to upgrade your computer specs.
Click to expand...
 
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