USB External Hard Drive

[Purpleb]

Can you use pro tools with a usb external hard drive? Like keep the program on the system drive and when I create a new session have it go to the external hard drive?

Thanks

 

[reshp1]

Yes, but you'll get much better performance from a firewire drive though.
EDIT: And even better performance from an internal drive.

 

[altiris]

Make sure its a SUB2 HD and you have USB2 ports and the USB2 drivers are loaded and that the port speed is set to the speed of USB2 on your motherboard BIOS. Fire-wire speed it around 450MB/S and USB2 is 480MB/S. Since your already using protools on your firewire you are already taking up bandwidth from your firewire. But I think you will get better performance from an internal HD.

 

[Purpleb]

Should i just use my system's internal hard drive it is 120gb and there is really not that many programs and things intsalled on it and use the external usb hard drive to safe completed songs etc. on that?

 

[reshp1]

Fire-wire speed it around 450MB/S and USB2 is 480MB/S.

Yes, but for sustained transfer speed, without periodic decreases in performance, Firewire is the winner.

 

[altiris]

Yes, but for sustained transfer speed, without periodic decreases in performance, Firewire is the winner.

Well yes. but how well will it perform with your audio interface and the HD on the same buss?

 

[reshp1]

Well yes. but how well will it perform with your audio interface and the HD on the same buss?

It works fine, I know lots of people that run it that way. I had to use the USB2 port on my laptop because I needed the firewire for my interface and I was getting random buffer underflow errors. Daisy chaining the HD to my interface actually worked a lot better.

 

[Purpleb]

Ok guys its been awhile,
Well I have 3 hard drives now. One internal which is my main, one external which I use as back up, and I just got another internal so I can just use it for audio/music.
2 things I wanted to know in lamens terms:

1. I have not hooked up the second internal drive yet, I wanted to know is there any walkthroughs or faqs on how to do it, including the bios and all that?

2. I have protools and reason, I just want my new internal drive to be used for music, do I install xp on it? How do I set it up to be used just for music?

I know it is probably really easy sorry if you guys can point me in the right direction that would be great

 

[Purpleb]

Ok I just installed the second hard drive as the slave w/the jumper settings.
Started comp xp said it had new hardware on the start bar that was it.

Do I have to install and operating system to this drive?

Or how can I make it run smoothly w/pro tools?

 

[NeedThesaurus]

Here is a article on installing a second hard drive.

http://www.g4tv.com/screensavers/features/29084/Add_a_Second_Hard_Drive.html

 

[Purpleb]

Ok Cool thanks
I just installed the second hard drive and it is showing up in my computer now.
How do you run pro tools from it?