Special Edition External Hard Drive Advice

[vivaknievel]

Hello, everyone!

I've yet to install my Special Edition.  I'm waiting to get another external hard drive, but am torn on what to get.   I know that I need at least 80 gigs for SE, but since I am running other softwares, such as Pro Tools LE and Ableton Live, I'm trying to figure how many drives and/or what size is ideal for this new upgrade.

I am running:

MacBook Pro (2.4 Ghz Intel Processor, 4GB RAM, OS X 10.5.1, 160 GB internal drive)

Pro Tools LE 7.3.1

I have one 250 GB drive, which has stored my Pro Tools and other audio sessions up til now, along with word processing, video, audio and graphics files.  But it's upgrade time, so I am planning to purchase at least one more drive.  Should I get one large (ie. 500GB drive) to run both Vienna and Pro Tools sessions on, and to store audio, or should I ideally purchase more than one drive of smaller sizes?  What capacity would you recommend?

Ideally, I just hope to be able to store and work from sessions as needed, without corrupting files and/or running into other problems, as well as leaving myself with options to backup both those sessions, custom presets, and finished stereo audio tracks.

Thank you for any input you can provide.  I appreciate it! 

[cm]

welcome vivaknievel,

Pro Tools points to a possible firewire audio device - i would not recommend to use firewire harddisks and firewire audio side by side.

i would also not recommend to stream from and record to the same harddisk - this would kill any performance.

 

since you have a macPro why don't you use additional internal drives? they would be connected via sATA (less CPU load, better performance)

 

the difference i noticed lately (1 TB seagate) was 72 MB/s internally and 26 MB/s via USB2 or firewire from the same drive.

christian

[vivaknievel]

Hi, Christian!

Thanks for the fast reply and warm welcome.  :) 

Yes, you are right... my Pro Tools MBox interface is run from Firewire.  I appreciate your recommendation to not stream from and record to the same disk... I definitely would have made a big mistake there.

I have the MacBook Pro, laptop, though, so it's impossible to install additional internal drives.  I have three USB hubs, one Firewire 400 input and one Firewire 800 input, so I'm hoping that between those, I'll be able to find the ideal situation for working with Vienna SE and ProTools at the same time.  From what you've said, I understand it that I would need at least two drives - one to store the Special Edition installation on by itself with nothing else and a second drive to record the Pro Tools sessions to?  And so my actual stereo mixes could also continued to be stored on that same drive with the Pro Tools sessions?

Thanks again for your input!

- Jaye 

[cm]

ooops, i should try to read better .... not sure if your macBook allows independant access of FW400 and FW800 .... sometimes it woks reliably and sometimes not.

but a good option would be to get an sATA card for your PCIe 34 slot and connect an external sATA disk

paul also is using an external USB drive for the samples up to a certain extent without problems on his macBook Pro (eg. the SE demo works in this config without problems)

christian

[vivaknievel]

Thanks very much, Christian!  I really appreciate it!

- Jaye 

[jstaczek]

I'm using an external eSATA drive on my Macbook Pro in the PCI Express card slot for the SE samples. It works great. Allows me to use a Firewire audio interface (Lightbridge) to move 32 channels of audio off the laptop. Jason www.chromasound.net