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Ableton - external HD question
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| Zombie0729 |
Now, i'm in the process of buying a new laptop. Most laptops max HD's are at 100gb's right now.
Granted that is a lot, but i have 120 on my desktop right now and its not enough.
Heres my question, i'm worried that running ableton and all my wav's/mp3s off one HD won't be enough space. Has anyone used ableton with an external HD via scsi or usb and have you had any problems?
i'm wondering because i can see the pros with just the most extensive amount of wav's & mp3s as their database. probably 3 times the size of mine and i'm convinced there is no way they have it all one laptop. |
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| qiushiming |
sure get an external...make sure its usb2.0 or firewire....
i dont see any problem with storing your samples/mp3s on the external and just loading them up when you need them.....unless youre planning on making samples that are gigs in size :eyes: |
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| IDarkISwordI |
Hey. Well, I'd recomend setting aside one for mainly producing and the other mainly for whatever else you use. Personally, I'd recomend the desktop since its more upgradable but since youve said you want a laptop to produce with then happy trails :). I'm saying to choose one or the other for your main producing computer so that it wont matter so much how big the hard drive is. I have a quite a few VSTs and samples on a 40GB partition plus a bunch of wav renders and such on there and I'm only down to 35.5GB. If you plan to use something from EW/QL then you might want to look at a bigger hard drive but you truely need to ask yourself if youll be needing 120+GB for your laptop.
If you decide yes you do, then shoot for a laptop with firewire. USB 2.0 is a great alternative but both have thier drawbacks. Firewire can sometimes be a little slower than USB 2.0 (depending on the device). On the other hand, firewire is great for things like external hard drives because you dont have to install any extra drivers to use it. Plug in ANY firewire device and XP automatically assigns it a drive letter as if it were a hard drive (or really is in this case). Unfortunately, firewire is still a bit in the niche department outside of Apple products. USB is supreme when it comes to peripherals these days and it seems as if firewire is being phased out. As for finding a laptop with SCSI, email me a link if you find one, I'd be very interested ;) [/sarcasm]. If you do find a laptop with SCSI in it, brace yourself for the price ;). Hope this helped.
Cheers,
Zac |
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| qiushiming |
| another good thing about an external is that you can use it to back up all your project files and important things....in case of those *knock on wood* HD crashes..... |
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| IDarkISwordI |
Hey. For me, I backup using DVD-Ram discs. They work just like floppys/cd-rws(formatted) but are much better because the burner does some serious error checking and correcting while writing to the disc. Its a very rare occurance that something on a DVD-Ram disc becomes corrupted. I'd recomend it to those wishing for super safe ways to backup thier project files. Unfortunately, DVD-Ram discs arent supported by every drive (secuirty feature? :P)so you wont be able to carry it around like a firewire harddrive and plug it in where you want. If you need the versatility and size though, definately get an extnernal hard drive. Just thought I'd throw that out there as well.
Cheers,
Zac |
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| qiushiming |
| you really like those dvd-rams? isnt there a limited amount of buring you can do? whats the capacities on those? |
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| IDarkISwordI |
Hey. Yes, I love DVD-Ram discs. The capacity is 4.7GB just like a standard DVDR/RW but also comes in a 9.4GB double sided flavor (as opposed to the double layer DVDR/RW at 8.5GB). As for the life expectancy, they are expected to last a minimum of 30 years and can be written to around 100,000 times (versus the 1000 or so limit with DVDRWs). Thats of course yet to be seen so I nor anyone else can guarentee that but from what my expirience has been with them, I'd recomend backing stuff up to a DVD-Ram over a hard drive any day but, like I said, they arent supported by every drive. One more disadvantage is that they are a little more expensive than DVDR/RWs so keep that in mind. If you want more info on DVD-Rams, check out the Wikipedia article here . The drive I have is a wonderful drive from LG model GSA-4163B . I picked it up off of ZipZoomFly for about $60. Its well worth it to be able to burn to just about all the formats including DVD-Ram.
Cheers,
Zac |
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| Zombie0729 |
| quote: | Originally posted by IDarkISwordI
Hey. Well, I'd recomend setting aside one for mainly producing and the other mainly for whatever else you use. Personally, I'd recomend the desktop since its more upgradable but since youve said you want a laptop to produce with then happy trails :). I'm saying to choose one or the other for your main producing computer so that it wont matter so much how big the hard drive is. I have a quite a few VSTs and samples on a 40GB partition plus a bunch of wav renders and such on there and I'm only down to 35.5GB. If you plan to use something from EW/QL then you might want to look at a bigger hard drive but you truely need to ask yourself if youll be needing 120+GB for your laptop.
If you decide yes you do, then shoot for a laptop with firewire. USB 2.0 is a great alternative but both have thier drawbacks. Firewire can sometimes be a little slower than USB 2.0 (depending on the device). On the other hand, firewire is great for things like external hard drives because you dont have to install any extra drivers to use it. Plug in ANY firewire device and XP automatically assigns it a drive letter as if it were a hard drive (or really is in this case). Unfortunately, firewire is still a bit in the niche department outside of Apple products. USB is supreme when it comes to peripherals these days and it seems as if firewire is being phased out. As for finding a laptop with SCSI, email me a link if you find one, I'd be very interested ;) [/sarcasm]. If you do find a laptop with SCSI in it, brace yourself for the price ;). Hope this helped.
Cheers,
Zac |
Zac,
Thanks for all your input. My main concern was real time play especially in clubs. I do almost all my producing and sequencing on a lovely desktop. However, when i go and play out at clubs I want to make sure there will be no delay or any kind of problems running samples(wav's, mp3's, whatever) from an external HD into ableton.
Does that explain my concern more?
Anthony |
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