using an external drive?

  • Thread starter Thread starter JesseP
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JesseP

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Hello!

Im fairly new to Home Recording considering ive only done a couple songs at home before. I use a Macbook Pro with Logic Pro 8 and a Mackie Interface/preamp and an external firewire drive which i would like to use.

My question is this...do you use the drive just as a place to save files from your workspace or do you actually install and run your recording software from the drive itself? I have wondered this for a while but just never got around to posting the question so I havnt been using the external for my last couple projects.
 
Install your programs on the internal drive, where the OS is.

Use the external drive to save/store your projects.

With Firewire drives, be careful if you have your interface and the drive connected to the same FireWire bus as that may have performance implications although YMMV.
 
noisewreck said:
Install your programs on the internal drive, where the OS is.

Use the external drive to save/store your projects.

With Firewire drives, be careful if you have your interface and the drive connected to the same FireWire bus as that may have performance implications although YMMV.
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Awesome Thank You!

I have an extended firewire port, i guess thats what its called? it needs to be plugged in but can link 5 firewire ports to the one in my laptop. What should i keep an eye out for? What is YMMV?
 
JesseP said:
Awesome Thank You!

I have an extended firewire port, i guess thats what its called? it needs to be plugged in but can link 5 firewire ports to the one in my laptop. What should i keep an eye out for? What is YMMV?
Click to expand...

Keep an eye out for disk activity hiccups (not being able to play all the audio parts, etc), studders, increased CPU load.

YMMV = Your milage may vary. In other words, you may or may not have any performance issues :)

If it's a FireWire 800, then you'll likely be fine as it has more throughput.
 
noisewreck said:
Keep an eye out for disk activity hiccups (not being able to play all the audio parts, etc), studders, increased CPU load.

YMMV = Your milage may vary. In other words, you may or may not have any performance issues :)

If it's a FireWire 800, then you'll likely be fine as it has more throughput.
Click to expand...

I just gave it a quick test run. Seems to work fine. The port on my laptop is firewire 800 but the rest of the firewire jacks on my equipment are all 400 so i just use a 400 to 800 adapter.

Thanks again!
 
Firewire 400 is plenty for most home recordists unless you're recording like 100 tracks or something. I've recorded 16 tracks to an external firewire drive with no problems.
 
Yeah don't worry about coming close to the firewire bandwidth. We did the math and determined you'd have to be tracking something like 170 simultaneous channels at 44.1/24 before it would be a problem. (at 400Mbps)
 
Haha sounds like i should be alright then considering im limited to 8 inputs anyway.
 
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