Using external hardrives

[smooth55]

So, I have a Firestudio and I also have a 500G USB external hardrive. I want to use the external hardrive for my recordings I bought the FS second hand and so don't have a manual. In looking over the pdf online, I could only find their recommendation to use the FS's second firewire out to connect to an external hard drive. I'd really like to not use my computers harddrive as space is an issue. What sort of options do I have to get this set up working as smoothly as possible. Preferrably, I'd like to run 24/96 for my recordings and I've heard there could be issues with the USB if you tend to run a lot of tracks. I am just starting out with computer recording so I'm a complete noob though I try to read as much as I can here and on gearslutz. I'm still looking for a post that covers this though, so I figured I'd humble myself and ask.

[gee]

once more with feeling.

external all the way. do you have a mac or pc? Firewire/1394 is the best option. USB will be too slow. An inexpensive idea would be to buy a firewire chassis and crack open your usb drive and slap the drive into the fw chassis. find out if its a 7200 ATA drive. if not buy a firewire drive. they are cheap nowadays. zipzoomfly dot com is a great place to get one -i don't work there, but buy tons of stuff there- firewire..errr..1394 on a pc is a pain in the arse.

you definitely want an external if you are doing 24/96. your cpu processor is gonna be cooking trying to run a program, converting audio, and dumping audio to an internal drive. the seek and search is gonna make that chip smoke. plus you can grab it in a flash when your building catches on fire.

on a side note. ive never used firestudio, but you should try to go 24/88.2 it makes the math a lot simpler when you stink it down for the 44.1 CD folk. unless you have myteks or something like that.

[jemsite]

eSATA for external. firewire is dead. you can get 1TB internal sata/300 for $115 and it's certainly the best option (and safest)... glen

[gee]

i wouldnt say firewire is dead. not in nashville. i still use it. tons of others still use it. tons of mac users still use it. there's tons of studios still running on G4s. having more space internally isnt gonna mean anything if your cpu is too slow multitasking. that said-storage is cheap, so why not external.

[smooth55]

Thanks for the input, but I already have the 500gig USB hard drive and if it wasn't so empty I'd consider some of your recommendations. It's 7200rpm. My question was more about if I have to do anything special in my cubase LE sessions to route to my external hard drive other than simply selecting to save on that hard drive. I got the Firestudio with Cubase LE second hand and the manual it has on the disk isn't very helpful with this.

[Darin]

Originally Posted by smooth55

So, I have a Firestudio and I also have a 500G USB external hardrive. I want to use the external hardrive for my recordings I bought the FS second hand and so don't have a manual. In looking over the pdf online, I could only find their recommendation to use the FS's second firewire out to connect to an external hard drive. I'd really like to not use my computers harddrive as space is an issue. What sort of options do I have to get this set up working as smoothly as possible. Preferrably, I'd like to run 24/96 for my recordings and I've heard there could be issues with the USB if you tend to run a lot of tracks. I am just starting out with computer recording so I'm a complete noob though I try to read as much as I can here and on gearslutz. I'm still looking for a post that covers this though, so I figured I'd humble myself and ask.

I have Firestudio I bought new, and it didn't come with a manual. I have 2 separate hard drives, both internal. One for OS one for recording. I was told that running recording software from an external would not be as efficient. Don't know if it's true. So I bought a 500g internal.

[Darin]

Actually I have the Firestudio Tube. Which I just downloaded the manual for.

Here's manual link

http://www.devicemanuals.com/company...s-manuals.html

[smooth55]

Ok, so basically what I've done is set it up so that my Firestudio and Cubase LE are both on my internal hard drive and then when I save, I just save to my external hard drive. So far, it appears to be working fine but I don't have too many tracks or VST's going at the same time either so I'm not sure how this set up will perform as I get into some of the more complex projects I'll be working on. That's the best I could get from the manual I found on Presonus' and Cubase's sites. Is that pretty much what the rest of you guys are doing?
Sorry for being such a noob about this...

[Darin]

Originally Posted by smooth55

Ok, so basically what I've done is set it up so that my Firestudio and Cubase LE are both on my internal hard drive and then when I save, I just save to my external hard drive. So far, it appears to be working fine but I don't have too many tracks or VST's going at the same time either so I'm not sure how this set up will perform as I get into some of the more complex projects I'll be working on. That's the best I could get from the manual I found on Presonus' and Cubase's sites. Is that pretty much what the rest of you guys are doing?
Sorry for being such a noob about this...

I have learned that it really is best to have your recording software, plugins and folder you are writing to while recording on a separate physical hard drive than your OS. That way Windows can do it's thing without interrupting your recording. As far as mixing, I'm assuming it's the same. Of course RAM is also a huge contributor.

[ShredHead42]

Two tips for making your external last a lot longer:

-try as much as possible not to move it (i know, you have to). the more stationary the better

-unplug the power or turn off when you aren't using it.

and be sure you keep your important stuff backed up elsewhere - they are known for randomly crashing!

[smooth55]

Thanks for all the input. What I gather from your posts is if I plan to get deep into plug-ins and a large number of tracks, but want to keep latency down, etc, then I might want to look into another internal hard drive, install cubase onto that drive along with the plugins etc. That way, my recordings write to that hard drive and I minimize the risk of overtaxing my system. My computer is hardly new and I've only got 1 gig of ram in it.
Would be ill-advisable to use the external USB drive as this drive since there are the inherent disadvantages with USB when you start to deal with lots of tracks and plugins?

[robertkoa]

Mastering engineers recommend a sampling rate MULTIPLE of 44.1 K if you are doing regular CDs.

So use 88.2 K or 44.1K or 176.4K.