USB flash drive for laptop audio?

[ofajen]

OK, so I'm thinking of getting a FW interface for my XP laptop for remote recording. Now I may be able to use an external FW hard drive for the audio, but I'm wondering if folks here have had any luck using any of the bigger USB flash drives as audio drives with laptops? An 8 GB flash drive goes for about $100 these days and would avoid any issues with multiple FW units, powering issues, and so on. My plan would be to port the audio back over to the FW drive attached to my studio machine. Any experiences?

Thanks,

Otto

 

[andyhix]

I currently use an external harddrive (can connect via FW or USB) and a Firepod (FW). I use them both regularly with no problems. At my bassists house I used to use the USB for the harddrive (because he only has 1 FW port, which the firepod would plug into) and things were choppy. I then switched to daisy chaining the harddrive through the Firepod, and things run smoother that way.

Bottom line, I think the shortfalls of USB would be a bigger problem than the extra load on the firewire. Plus, regarding power, both units have external power, so the FW is used for data transfer only.

Edit - both computers I've done this with are desktops, so if you are looking for a wireless/portable option, my situation may not apply.

 

[dgatwood]

I
Bottom line, I think the shortfalls of USB would be a bigger problem than the extra load on the firewire. Plus, regarding power, both units have external power, so the FW is used for data transfer only.

Agreed, though you could always do a FireWire flash card reader and use a CompactFlash card or something if you want FireWire performance.

I'd expect a flash drive to be horrible. The USB stick versions don't have very good life expectancy---I've seen some manufacturers' products have a 100% failure rate within the first year. Even if they don't electrically fail, flash parts themselves don't have nearly the lifespan of a hard drive due to write cycle limitations.

Also, performance is likely to suck. The read and write speeds of flash parts last I checked was way short of that of hard drives---like a fifth as fast at writing and slightly slower at reading. Of course, because they don't have seek time, the read performance will probably be a wash for most use (though maybe not for audio workloads). The write performance, however, will probably make you very unhappy.

You'd be much better off with a portable FireWire hard drive. The only places where I'd use flash would be A. environments with poor cooling (my TiVo), B. portable devices that can get bumped around a lot (my iPhone). For computers? No way. Not until they get an order of magnitude more reliable. Computer storage-wise, flash drives are a backup medium for me or a way to move files from one machine to another. That's about it.

 

[ofajen]

Agreed, though you could always do a FireWire flash card reader and use a CompactFlash card or something if you want FireWire performance.

OK, so the USB flash drive for audio is not one of my better ideas!

So, would a CF card in a FW flash card reader, as you mention above, be fast enough for small audio projects on a laptop?

Cheers,

Otto

 

[dgatwood]

OK, so the USB flash drive for audio is not one of my better ideas!

So, would a CF card in a FW flash card reader, as you mention above, be fast enough for small audio projects on a laptop?

Fast enough? Probably. 1x flash is 150 KB/sec., so 3x flash would be sufficient to record one track at 96kHz/24-bit including overhead. Multiply that times the number of tracks you want to record or play and that should give you a ballpark idea of what is needed. The fastest flash parts are barely fast enough for some of my mixes when you consider extra disabled tracks lying around.

Bear in mind, though, that the larger the flash part, the shorter the life of the part. I would not trust flash for recording, period. A bus-powered FireWire hard drive makes a lot more sense, IMHO.

 

[ofajen]

I would not trust flash for recording, period. A bus-powered FireWire hard drive makes a lot more sense, IMHO.

Coincidentally, most of my actual recording is done directly onto a CF card in my MicroTrack, since mostly I record live, mono or 2-track. But that's not the same, I guess. My XP laptop has one of those small format FW jacks that looks like it has four connectors. Will that type of jack support bus-powered devices? I'm suspecting it won't.

Cheers,

Otto

 

[dgatwood]

Coincidentally, most of my actual recording is done directly onto a CF card in my MicroTrack, since mostly I record live, mono or 2-track. But that's not the same, I guess. My XP laptop has one of those small format FW jacks that looks like it has four connectors. Will that type of jack support bus-powered devices? I'm suspecting it won't.

No.............

 

[Trevia]

I tried a project I already had recorded to compare playback "drive" useage in SONAR 6 and the internal drive (a slow 4800 rpm drive by the way) was 4%, usb flash was 6%, CF was 18%. This was a ten track 16/44.1 project.

Was just curious. I don't know what would happen if I tried recording in through USB and recording out throught usb or cf.