Trying to find a 7200rpm external hard drive to aid recording

W

wisebaxter442

New member
Hi there,

I've read that it's a good idea to record on to an external as it leaves your internal hard drive free to operate the OS, but none of the popular hard drives on amazon, like this Samsung M3 1TB, tell me if they're 7200rpm or not. I've also been told it's important to buy a drive that transfers data this fast. Are most external hard drive 7200rpm now? I noticed the crappy 250g Seagate I bought about 8 years ago is marketed at being 7200rpm, so if I had to guess I'd say yes.
 
problem with using an eternal drive is that unless it is e-sata or firewire there is significant drop in data transfer rates due to the processing bottle-neck of using usb as your interface to the data buss, so the disk speed is no longer relevant

I take it that you are using a laptop or you would be asking about adding a second drive to your desktop/tower system which is the preferred way forward for such systems
 
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So I wouldn't benefit from having an external, in terms of speed anyway? What about if I use a USB hub with a power adapter, would that eliminate the bottle-neck?
 
wisebaxter442 said:
So I wouldn't benefit from having an external, in terms of speed anyway? What about if I use a USB hub with a power adapter, would that eliminate the bottle-neck?
Click to expand...

no, powering separately will not solve this problem - the problem is at the hardware and software/firmware interface of the comms and data buss protocols
 
Recording to an external drive isn't ideal, but it's better than recording to your internal drive by leaps and bounds... definitely get a dedicated hard drive. I use a 2 TB Glyph GPT50 hard drive... I always use Glyph as my main dedicated drive as they're made for recording by keeping the motor in them quiet so the mic won't pick it up... it's also rock solid quality and has a fantastic 3, 2, 1 warranty. They're kind of on the pricey side but I think it's worth it... another good brand of hard drive is Other World Computing... I have this one as a backup drive
OWC OWCME3QH7T1.0 1.0TB Mercury Elite Pro 7200RPM... in stock at OWC

Mine is the 500 GB version but I'll probably buy another one soon, I've never had any problems with it. Also you can pick up Glyph's at any music store like Guitar Center or Sam Ash which is convenient.

Also lastly, just make sure if you're using Pro Tools that your drive is compatible... I think Pro Tools 9 and lower won't let you use hard drives over 3 TB's for whatever reason... I read about it in some PT forum a while ago... I don't know if they released an update to fix it or not, but just look into it and you should be fine.
 
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Thanks a lot. Both those hard drives are a little out of my price range unfortunately, although I am tempted to go for the OWC one you linked. Would you'd say I'd still benefit from getting just any half decent external to record on to though?
 
Like I said, any drive is going to be better than none... I have just a little tiny 1 TB pocket plug & play hard drive by Toshiba that I use for production, and it's seemed to hold up... I'm not actually recording anything directly to it though I'm just pulling samples off of it for drum editing and all of my beats I make.

I can say that the OWC drives are great though... I've had the same hard drive 500 GB hard drive for 2 and a half years, all through school recording to it and never a failure.

In my opinion, yeah bandcoach was technically correct by saying you're going to get the best performance by actually installing a dedicated drive into your computer tower, but having an external drive will still help greatly...
 
Thanks :) So when I get my hard drive set up - should I store all of my samples on there too, as well as using it to record on to directly? You say you don't record on to yours, but is that just because you have enough processing power to not have to? I read that recording to an external can makes things run smoother.
 
record to your internal drive
- use it as your scratch disk
- see your daws manual for discussion of temporary storage for recording as opposed to permanent storage for audio files and projects
and

store the final project files on your external along with your sample libraries and other vsts
 
I went ahead and bought that OCW mercury Elite Pro. I know bandcamp said that the fact I'm using USB will make the 7200rpm speed insignificant, but will buying a hard drive like this, made specifically for production, give me better results nonetheless?
 
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Good topic. I soon will be getting Abelton Live 9 and mashine Studio. I am also getting a new computer that will come stock with a 1 TB drive. So would it be ok to buy an external drive, and use that ONLY to store sounds (like kits and shit I download from the internet and buy) and then save any actual music I make to my main harddrive?
 
Sorry about the late reply Nautty. You've probably found out the answer to this one by now, but you should use the external to save your recordings to directly and also as the drive that stores your temporary files. You should be able to set all that up in your DAW. It doesn't matter so much with samples or VST's I don't think
 
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