external HD and pro-tools.

[anonymity]

This is a stupid question and i know it, but i am new at this and must learn.

my current set-up is 15' G4 powerbook, Digi002, and a 80 Glyph HD. i just got in the Glyph. My question is, "do i drag pro-tools onto the external device and if so which files? Also, do I put all my soft synths and plugins on the external drive as well?"

Thanks for listening to this stupid noob question.

[Joseph Hanna]

No...in this case an external hard drive should only store and in turn playback your sessions. You'll get varying degree's of explanations as to the why's but ultimately the answer is....no.

JH

[lvjazzman]

Yeah, what he said... Keep your applications (protools etc.) on the internal drive, and just save the individual sessions to the Glyph.

[anonymity]

thanks to both of you!! i am less of a stupid noob now!

[Joseph Hanna]

Another thought...

Softsynths especially the samplers are now boasting huge libraries. Some of those stream their samples directly from the hard drive. I've noticed a marked improvement in performance when I use a separate drive for samples only.

I don't want to get into the Glyph power supply argument but here in LA we're seeing 300 gig Seagate drives for $199.00. Makes for a great 2nd or 3rd drive.

JH

[michaelhoddy]

Yeah, the internal Powerbook drive isn't so great if you have a lot of softsynths to stream. I have mine divvied up between the internal drive (for convenience's sake, so I can work on stuff without toting an external drive around just to get sound out of them) and an external drive, for the bigger ones like Ivory that demand huge bandwidth. You can usually move the libraries around as needed without too much effort, as most softsynth plug-ins can have their associated libraries located in a separate place than the actual plug-in.

My Spectrasonics stuff (Stylus, Atmosphere, Trilogy) run just fine off the internal drive, but they also pretty much run from memory, rather than streaming.

FW800 is a good idea if you have an audio drive and a softsynth drive running on the same Firewire chain (which is the case in all Powerbooks). A heavy trackcount and a bunch of streaming synths can gum up FW400 without a lot of extraordinary effort.

[anonymity]

thanks a lot! i have been having a lot of trouble with the soft synths cutting out when playing a lot of chords and when using a big patch.

i am using an ADAPTEC 1394 cardbus for my glyph audio drive and it has three ports. if i were to buy another external for soft synths would it work ok plugged into that? also, what hard drive do you recommend for the soft synths and would i just load the whole soft synth program onto it or just the library?

thanks again. please bear with me. i don't deny my noobness. hehe