External Hard Drive

[Mick Emery]

I have a HP ZX5078cl Laptop. 3.2G CPU (P4) 1.2G Ram. A Presonus Firebox hooked up via Firewire.

My internal hard drive is only 4200 RPM. The fastest that I can put in is still only 5400 RPM.

I'm considering an external Hard Drive 7200 RPM, 200-300G with 16M cache & 8.5ms seek. (Firewire or USB)

I've read that I should have Windows only on my C: drive & all other programs on the external. Does anyone have experience/ideas/input?

Also noticed that my Firewire is IRQ16, IRQ16 is also used by...
Mobility Radeon 9200 (don't know what that is)
NEC to PCI USB Open Host Controller
Texas Instruments Cardbus ( I belive this is my PCMCIA)

Any ideas on what to look for, how to set up, what change etc. would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks,
Mick Emery
:classic:

[dpd]

Operating system and programs on C: DAW sessions and files on 2nd hard drive. I'm thinking either USB or Firewire will work, but kinda thinking USB to ensure no conflicts with the PreSonus Firewire??? I'm not sure I'd worry about the IRQs. I haven't had to on any of 5 ProTools systems (4 LE, 1 TDM) but the PreSonus stuff may be different. What does the manual say?

[TimOBrien]

With my laptop I'm using a Glyph GT050 80gb firewire drive that I bought here at Sweetwater for $200. OS and apps on my internal C drive, recording sessions and data on the Glyph..... (the programs get loaded into memory; you want the intense stream of recording data to go to the outboard drive uninterrupted.)

Absolutely zero problems with it and it's dead silent & very very fast. Well worth the few extra dollars I paid for it (and with the optional rack ears it's taking up no desk space as its mounted in my rack.)

USB data has to go through your processor, not as good for recording. Go firewire and all your data will be streaming AWAY from your CPU.

[Mick Emery]

Thanks for your replies!
Where can I go to find out if my firewire interface would interfere with a firewire external drive?
Thanks,
Mickey
:classic:

[TimOBrien]

Fire off an email to the interface manufacturer or look on their website.

Motu (I use an 828mkII) specifically states that you can daisy-chain up to 3 firewire interfaces and you can connect other devices/drives to it. The engineers who designed your interface will tell you what works.

Firewire by definition is BUILT for daisy-chaining (it was designed as a replacement for SCSI with audio and video work in mind). Up to 63 devices are supported per chain.

[Christoph]

+1 on everything the others said, especially Tim's assessment of Firewire vs. USB. General rule of thumb: Data on fast (possibly external) drive, all the rest on the internal one.
Actually, for any data intensive application, not just audio, adding a second drive will dramatically increase the capabilities of your system. I've done it a number of times over the years on various OSes for fairly different applications with great results. Last time was an aging Mac which couldn't serve as a DAW at all, and after adding a Firewire drive was quite serviceable. You'll be surprised by the number of tracks you laptop will be able to record and play back.

[Mick Emery]

I emailed Presonus to ask about the interface/drive. No reply yet.
However in the FAQ's it says you can daisy chain devices from the back of the interface.
Thanks,
Mickey
:classic:

[Mick Emery]

Presonus says to use the firewire out on my firebox.

I've been told on another forum to NOT get an external over 160G & to have 16MB cache.

Any opinions???

Thanks,
Mickey
:classic:

[Christoph]

I've been told on another forum to NOT get an external over 160G & to have 16MB cache.


The large cache makes sense, although I work successfully with a 8MB cache. That's Mac and GarageBand, however, so take it for what it's worth.

No larger than 160 GB is complete BS. What really matters is average latency, access time, maximum and sustained transfer rate. A drive of any size can give you competitive numbers here. Most 7200 rpm drives should be fine.

Christoph - high performance computing specialist during the day

[MusicCat]

I have a HP ZX5078cl Laptop. 3.2G CPU (P4) 1.2G Ram. A Presonus Firebox hooked up via Firewire.

My internal hard drive is only 4200 RPM. The fastest that I can put in is still only 5400 RPM.


:classic:

Just a note, i have used several 5400 RPM external drives and they all work fine.