KVR Audio

fandango · Post by **fandango** » Tue Sep 11, 2007 10:20 am

After installing EWQLSO Gold, I don't know if I can be bothered going through the process of dragging 10 odd DVD's worth of files manually.

I was thinking of storing the actual libraries on an external drive and then plugging in the drive as needed.

I don't use DFD, as I have 3Gb of ram which seems to be enough, but am I missing any good reasons for not using an external HD?

dougsyo · Post by **dougsyo** » Tue Sep 11, 2007 11:07 am

I have a laptop with a relatively slow internal drive. An external USB2 or FireWire drive will most likely perform better and hold more.

The only down-side I've experienced is "not wanting to bother with the external drive" now-and-then (this is less of an issue with a desktop PC, as opposed to a laptop that's used in multiple locations each day). My solution was to have my preferred samplesets (DimPro, a few ST2 and K2) on my internal drive.

I later switched from a 3.5" drive to a 2.5" drive. The housing size went from a thick paperback book to a cigarette case. 100GB+ 7200RPM 2.5" drives are available now, it used to be they were limited to 5400RPM and 80GB. It's more convenient, but I still don't use it all the time (nor do I have to).

Doug

AKJ · Post by **AKJ** » Tue Sep 11, 2007 11:32 am

get an external hard drive case with eSATA out and, if your computer doesn't have it, a card with eSATA in and it will be as fast as if it were internal.

speiliologist · Post by **speiliologist** » Tue Sep 11, 2007 12:15 pm

good idea. must do it someday

Sascha Franck · Post by **Sascha Franck** » Tue Sep 11, 2007 4:56 pm

I have my samples shared on the internal (250GB) drive of my laptop and an external drive.
All the most important ones are on the internal drive and I try to remember to move things I'm using more frequently from the external one (which usually are "still to be explored" samples) to the internal one as well.

loachm · Post by **loachm** » Tue Sep 11, 2007 5:57 pm

...good idea since many laptops still use HDs with 5.400 rpm - you'd better want to use an HD with 7.200 rpm...

Sascha Franck · Post by **Sascha Franck** » Tue Sep 11, 2007 6:20 pm

loachm wrote:...good idea since many laptops still use HDs with 5.400 rpm - you'd better want to use an HD with 7.200 rpm...

I'm actually not too sure about that - guess it's more or less up to the controllers. For instance, on both my Samsung laptop and the Macbook, the internal (5400RPM) drives seem to perform just as good (if not a tad faster) as the external USB drives I have (several of them, some cheap, some expensive, but all 7200RPM ones). The Samsung is IDE (PATA that is), the Macbook SATA. And at least the Samsungs USB controllers seem to work extraordinarily well, yet there's not exactly a performance plus.
Anyways, to me it's more a thing of convenience rather than about performance. I need to have my most important samples with me all the time, so I keep them on the internal drive. I actually don't need that much space for recorded audio files because I'm not working on too much songs at a time, so I usually move all but the most recent songs onto one of my external drives to keep enough space for my samples - which are a lot more important to me.

Fwiw, the best drive performance seems indeed to be possible using some eSATA adapter (via PCMCIA or ExpressCard), but that never seemed to be a very comfortable solution to me, especially since my mobile needs are rather high these days (I'm not at home for around 100 days a year), let alone the Macbook doesn't have any card slots.

jeffn1 · Post by **jeffn1** » Tue Sep 11, 2007 6:50 pm

AKJ wrote:get an external hard drive case with eSATA out and, if your computer doesn't have it, a card with eSATA in and it will be as fast as if it were internal.

I did this with the Seagate eSATA drive. I was concerned about the long seek time, but it seems to working well. I think there is only a delay in initially loading a sample, but once it its loading, I don't think there is a problemw ith the seek time (all the stats of the drive indicate it is very fast).

By the way, 3gb of ram is not that much to use this library. I am pretty sure you will still need to use dfd to get much out of the library.

One day when 64 bit processing really arrives, we will be able to have hundreds of gigs of ram. Ahhhh, what a wonderful world this would be.

jeffn1

spuddle · Post by **spuddle** » Tue Sep 11, 2007 7:35 pm

I have had no problems with streaming samples off my WD Mybook Pro 500gb

Like others, I have the (smaller and most used) sample sets stored internally and then larger ones go on the external. I was running QL Choirs without a hitch off the Mybook.

I would advise that Mac users go with a Firewire drive and PC/Windows use USB2.0, at least it has been a nightmare trying to use a USB drive on a Mac as I've found so far... Not sure what works best for Linux.

koolkeys · Post by **koolkeys** » Tue Sep 11, 2007 8:15 pm

I do the same as dougsyo. I put almost all my samples on my external drive. That way no matter which computer I use the samples are all there. But when I'm just tinkering around, I like to have samples available without hooking things up. So I store essential files on my internal drive. A decent piano or two, a few drum kits(like the Jamstix ones or whatever), and a few others. That way I can alway fire it up. But when it comes to real work, I go to the more detailed sample sets(larger pianos, etc.) on the external drive.

Brent

Sascha Franck · Post by **Sascha Franck** » Tue Sep 11, 2007 9:08 pm

spuddle wrote: I would advise that Mac users go with a Firewire drive and PC/Windows use USB2.0, at least it has been a nightmare trying to use a USB drive on a Mac as I've found so far... Not sure what works best for Linux.

I think this is somewhat changing these days. My Macbook, even if falling quite short on the number of USB ports (just 2, pah!) is working quite well with all my USB drives (I think they're 8 by now), so the old (and wellknown) problems of Macs and USB seem to be fixed with Intel machines.
And then, most decent PC laptops come with 6pin FW400 connectors nowadays as well. Even my over 2 year old Samsung has got one already.
In general, at least with PCs, USB seems to perform just as good as FW, so I'd always go for it - the cases are cheaper and you usually have more ports.

koolkeys · Post by **koolkeys** » Tue Sep 11, 2007 9:28 pm

My 500GB drive is USB and it works fine. I do have the 6-pin FW port, but my audio interface is FW. Besides, I hate plugging things into that. I'm always afraid it's going to snap off.

Brent

ohm · Post by **ohm** » Tue Sep 11, 2007 9:53 pm

for a couple of years, consumer harddrives have been faster than the usb 2.0 interface, so it's better to look for firewire / eSata when purchasing a new external drive. On the other hand, usb 2.0 is 25-30 megabytes per second so it's fast enough. Recent harddrives are approacing transfer rates of 100 megabytes per second though, so there'll definately be a diffence when loading large projects.

koolkeys · Post by **koolkeys** » Tue Sep 11, 2007 9:59 pm

Yeah, I think when it comes time to get a new drive(not for a while) I'll go the eSATA route. I'll have to get an eSATA card for my laptop though. Don't they make those?

Brent

ohm · Post by **ohm** » Wed Sep 12, 2007 7:21 am

koolkeys wrote:Yeah, I think when it comes time to get a new drive(not for a while) I'll go the eSATA route. I'll have to get an eSATA card for my laptop though. Don't they make those?
Brent

Yeah, I've seen quite cheap eSata controllers for the cardbus interface (50$ range), just keep in mind that your laptop most likely only has one cardbus / pccard slot so perhaps firewire is a better solution for a laptop (can be used for audio interfaces as well)

Sample libraries on an external hard drive. Bad idea?