Regarding external hard drives

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Yankee_Racers

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I'm recording with a new laptop (2ghz Core 2 Duo, 2gig ram) using a MOTU ultralite. I want to record to an external hard drive. I have read while searching the forum that it should be 7200 rpm and perferably firewire. My computer has 1 firewire port and its being used by my MOTU interface. Would USB 2 be ok or should I look for another solution? Do you have any specific hard drives that you recommend? I don't know if this is relevant but I am just recording myself one track at a time.
 
Firewire is absolutely the faster of the two interfaces. I suppose it matters if you are recording tracks to the external but only you will be able to determine whether the results are or are not satisfactory.
 
Ok. The Ultralite has 2 firewire ports on the back of it. One is used to hook it to the laptop. Can I plug the external hard drive into the other firewire port on the Ultralite and then just have them both connected to the laptop through the other firewire cable?
 
Yes. I was about to suggest this, its called daisy chaining and thats why the motu has 2 ports on it. if im right you should have 2 on the drive as well

"Cable length is limited to 4.5 meters (about 15 ft), although up to 16 cables can be daisy chained using active repeaters, external hubs, or internal hubs often present in FireWire equipment. The S400 standard limits any configuration's maximum cable length to 72 meters. The 6-pin connector is commonly found on desktop computers, and can supply the connected device with power. A 4-pin version is used on many laptops (although some use the 6-pin powered connector, particularly those made by Apple) and small FireWire devices and does not have any power connectors, although it is fully compatible with 6-pin interfaces." -Wikipedia
 
Ahh but I am powering the MOTU with its AC adapter because my laptop uses 4 pin firewire. If I understand correctly, the external hard drive wouldn't get power then, unless it can get power from the MOTU interface?
 
Yankee_Racers said:
Ahh but I am powering the MOTU with its AC adapter because my laptop uses 4 pin firewire. If I understand correctly, the external hard drive wouldn't get power then, unless it can get power from the MOTU interface?
Click to expand...

the external drive will have it's own power supply.
 
For well over a year I've used a Glyph firewire drive daisy-chained to my 828mkII.

ZERO problems.

Never use the firewire bus to power your devices unless you absolutely need to for on-location recording. Always use the power supplies and make sure that all of them are plugged into the same outlet (different circuits can cause hum problems...)
 
I'm gonna hijack a bit. I record to an external drive, that has both FW and USB 2.0. At my house, I use the FW, cuz I have multiple FW inputs on my computer. At my bassists house, though, I've been using the USB, because his only FW port has our Firepod plugged into it. Would it be better/advisable to plug the Harddrive into the Firepod (port 2), essentially daisychaining the two (unrelated) devices? Or would that cause a bottleneck of information that would be worse than having the harddrive on a USB solo.

I ask becuase I am having pop/click problems at his house, but not mine.

I suppose the best answer is "try it and see what happens," right?

Edit: I guess that is EXACTLY what TimO says he does with zero problems, so I guess I should try it.
 
better to have them both plugged into the computer instead of daisycahining
but it shouldnt really be a problem untill about 15 or 16 tracks are recorded

if you think about it when daisy cahining you go instrument inputs>computer and them computer>interface>hard drive so its more data going through the firewire (inputs>comp>HD)!


hope that helps
-Josh
 
IMHO firewire and USB are soooo last year now that there's external drives with eSATA connection. AFAIK Using eSATA is like having an internal SATA drive with much faster transfer rates than Fw or USB.
 
PeteHalo said:
IMHO firewire and USB are soooo last year now that there's external drives with eSATA connection. AFAIK Using eSATA is like having an internal SATA drive with much faster transfer rates than Fw or USB.
Click to expand...

+1 for that.

I would go for this controller with any of the available esata enclosures or an external drive with esata built in. It should outperform the drive in any laptop
 
I highly recommend the OWC Mercury Elite Series hard drives. They are made specifically to be used as an audio disk or for video editing. They also have all the right (and recommended) chipsets if you're gonna use these for Pro Tools.

They have version with eSATA, 800, 400, and USB 2.0 all in one. They ROCK ROCK ROCK! Love these hard drives. And, they are sexy too. :P

http://eshop.macsales.com/shop/firewire/1394/USB/EliteAL/400+USB2/
 
would it be faster to daisychain the harddrive with the ultralite, or should I plug the ultralite into my firewire 400 port and plug my external harddrive into the firewire 800 port? I have a macbook pro laptop
 
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