KVR Audio

kara · Post by **kara** » Wed Sep 12, 2007 9:05 am

I have an external TOSHIBA 120 GB USB2 hardidsk where all my samples are stored.
Works fine here

k

fandango · Post by **fandango** » Wed Sep 12, 2007 9:37 am

Thanks for all the advice guys. Some great info in there. I'm on PC and don't have plans to install a firewire card, so I think it'll be USB 2.0 for me.

There's a nice 500GB USB2.0 external drive that I think will be good for EWQLSO Gold and some of my choir libraries. I guess I'm a bit worried about it being nicked if I lug it around, but at least I have the original CDs packed away at home.

Should I be looking for a minimum RPM? The one I'm looking at is 7200.

Sascha Franck · Post by **Sascha Franck** » Wed Sep 12, 2007 11:33 am

fandango wrote: Should I be looking for a minimum RPM? The one I'm looking at is 7200.

7200 should be fine, I think the quality of your USB controller is much more important.
And when it comes to drives used for samples, seek times are almost as important as overall speed.
Personally, I have a mixture of pre-configured drives that I bought for cheap and some that I bought the case and drive separately. The latter seem to perform somewhat better. When you buy a pre-configured drive, you never know what disk model they slap into it.
In other words, I'd try to get a quality drive first. Seagates seem to be great for SATA solutions while Hitachis seem to win in the IDE category. Shouldn't matter whether you go for IDE or SATA since the USB bus will be slowing them down anyways.
In addition, I'd get a quality enclosure, the ones from ICY are what I can recommend. Reliable build quality as it seems.

AKJ · Post by **AKJ** » Wed Sep 12, 2007 11:58 am

Sascha Franck wrote: Shouldn't matter whether you go for IDE or SATA since the USB bus will be slowing them down anyways.

well, if you get a case with eSATA connection (also available with the Icy Box) it will not slow it down at all.

Sascha Franck · Post by **Sascha Franck** » Wed Sep 12, 2007 1:18 pm

AKJ wrote: well, if you get a case with eSATA connection (also available with the Icy Box) it will not slow it down at all.

Sure. But you need a PCMCIA slot then.

AKJ · Post by **AKJ** » Wed Sep 12, 2007 2:37 pm

usually yes, but some newer models already have an integrated one.

remo · Post by **remo** » Sat Sep 15, 2007 10:38 pm

I'd go for eSata as well, but if you only have firewire or USB2.0 it should be sufficient. I think seek time is more critical in this case than raw speed. 100MB/s on a HD is rather theoretical though...

zai · Post by **zai** » Sat Sep 15, 2007 10:43 pm

Since harddrive price has been dropping like crazy, I would "recommend" that you get "another" harddrive for back-up before using it as your sample library harddrive.

Zai

grymmjack · Post by **grymmjack** » Sun Sep 16, 2007 12:48 am

fandango wrote:Thanks for all the advice guys. Some great info in there. I'm on PC and don't have plans to install a firewire card, so I think it'll be USB 2.0 for me.

There's a nice 500GB USB2.0 external drive that I think will be good for EWQLSO Gold and some of my choir libraries. I guess I'm a bit worried about it being nicked if I lug it around, but at least I have the original CDs packed away at home.

Should I be looking for a minimum RPM? The one I'm looking at is 7200.

whatever you do, do NOT buy Bytecc enclosures. i've had 4 of them and every last one of them fails within 4 months. i think it's the shoddy PSUs in them.

other than that, be careful of eSATA drives from maxtor - they go to sleep after a while and take a few seconds to wake up. not exactly great for disk-streaming rompler action.

hi btw.

jeffn1 · Post by **jeffn1** » Sun Sep 16, 2007 2:25 am

grymmjack wrote:
fandango wrote:Thanks for all the advice guys. Some great info in there. I'm on PC and don't have plans to install a firewire card, so I think it'll be USB 2.0 for me.

There's a nice 500GB USB2.0 external drive that I think will be good for EWQLSO Gold and some of my choir libraries. I guess I'm a bit worried about it being nicked if I lug it around, but at least I have the original CDs packed away at home.

Should I be looking for a minimum RPM? The one I'm looking at is 7200.
whatever you do, do NOT buy Bytecc enclosures. i've had 4 of them and every last one of them fails within 4 months. i think it's the shoddy PSUs in them.

other than that, be careful of eSATA drives from maxtor - they go to sleep after a while and take a few seconds to wake up. not exactly great for disk-streaming rompler action.

hi btw.

Yeah, my Seagate seems to do that too.

jeffn1

Touch_the_Universe · Post by **Touch_the_Universe** » Sun Sep 16, 2007 2:32 am

Make sure you have backups. External HD are extremly flimsy. If it drops a mere 3 feet and hits hard ground, it is entirely possible to lose access to all data.

Sample libraries on an external hard drive. Bad idea?