I just bought a LaCie d2 FW external drive with 200GB. I want to use this strictly for recording. Should I partition the drive? How would you recommend that I do so. I was thinking that I could have 4 partitions of 50 GB each (recording, editing, mixing, mastering). However, is that practical? Should I just leave it alone and make 4 separate folders resting in the one big hard drive? Also, I have all my music related apps (protools, ableton, etc.) on my internal drive. Should I put this on the external drive as well or leave them be?

Thanks

If you do decide to partition the drive just make sure the recording partition is the first partition cause as someone pointed out in another thread this part of the drive spins fastest and has quicker access times.

You can make for example 2 partitions, one for work, the other (the slowest) as backup, it'll help you also for the fastest method to defrag: fomat the partition.

You can also add a little partition (a few gigs) with a system to boot/repair in case.

Now leave yours apps where they are. It's the files you work on that matters. Next, remember, RAM is your friend