External Harddrives Options

[moonboo]

I've heard a lot of talk about using external harddrives for music. My question is what exactly do u use them for. Is it just for all your samples, loopz, etc. or just for everything that has to do with your music production. Also if im backing up my computer, which i assume i should, should i get another harddrive for that aswell.

[chmara]

Kinda Yes -- and I am not trying to be flip.

At present I use three External 250 Gig hard drives and a 250 Gig internal for the work. I mirror most of this stuff on yet another drive.

Drive 1 carries my sound libraries and their wave files.

Drive 2 Carries Loop Libraries

Drive 3 Carries projects

Internal Runs Logic Pro 7.1.1 about 10 Native Instruments packages, SwarPlug, Albino 2.2, Stylus RMX 1.5, Peak 4.1 and Deck 3.5.

The off line mirror catches back-ups and I want to add another drive as I think one of my Fantoms is going on the blink.


The main thing is to pre-think where you want what, retrieval speeds of the drives in DFD situations. I have heard, but not tested, that the new generation of 16 Meg Cache Drives increase speeds significanlly over the 7200 RPM 8 meg cache models.