External hard drive for laptop use

[Guest]

Archived from groups: rec.audio.pro (More info?)

Can anyone recommend a reliable, quiet external hard drive for use with
location laptop recording. Mostly live to 2 track using Wavelab. Is USB 1.1
ok or should I go for Firewire 400 ? Or perhaps even further to FW 800 and
USB 2.0 (have no ports for these latter two on current laptop however). I'm
considering the 120 Gb Ice Cube Generation 2.
Link is: http/www.frequency.com.au/sales/hard_drives/ice_cube_drives/
It's attraction is the lack of a cooling fan as additional noise generator,
but is this likely to affect its reliability ?
Thanks for any advice,
Ray


---
Outgoing mail is certified Virus Free.
Checked by AVG anti-virus system (http/www.grisoft.com).
Version: 6.0.734 / Virus Database: 488 - Release Date: 4/08/2004

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: rec.audio.pro (More info?)

<< Can anyone recommend a reliable, quiet external hard drive for use with
location laptop recording. Mostly live to 2 track using Wavelab. Is USB 1.1
ok >>

No. Well, for 2 tracks it's OK, but too slow for multitrack work.

<<or should I go for Firewire 400 ? >>

Yes, there are dozens of Fire Wire drives that work well. The Acom drives are
cheap & quiet. La Cie is relatively quiet. EZQuest are bulky & noisier, but
contain the power supply (no wall wart.) For real portability, you can get a
micro size laptop drive in a small bus powered (no power supply needed)
enclosure, very tiny & very quiet, although these mostly top out at 5400rpm.
Or, since you're only doing 2 tracks, you can just use the internal drive on
your laptop.

<<Or perhaps even further to FW 800>>

Not necessary at all, especially for 2 track work. I have recently pulled over
a hundred tracks simultaneously from a Fire Wire 400 drive.

<<and
USB 2.0 >>

About the same as Fire Wire 400, but less common, at least for Macs.


Scott Fraser

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: rec.audio.pro (More info?)

In article <41170130_4@news.chariot.net.au>,
"Ray Thomas" <rthomas@chariot.net.au> wrote:

> Can anyone recommend a reliable, quiet external hard drive for use with
> location laptop recording. Mostly live to 2 track using Wavelab. Is USB 1.1
> ok or should I go for Firewire 400 ? Or perhaps even further to FW 800 and
> USB 2.0 (have no ports for these latter two on current laptop however).

The IDE drive in your laptop might be faster than any of these, and
should give you less CPU overhead than any sort of FW or USB drive. USB
1.1 is really really slow and might cause dropouts or other transient
problems. Further, if your audio interface also uses the same bus,
there won't be enough bandwidth to do both.

If I were you, I'd upgrade the internal drive to a large, modern 5400 or
7200 RPM IDE and record straight to that. Back at the ranch, you could
transfer that audio out to an external drive and not worry about how
fast the transfer goes since the performance has already been captured.


Best of luck,

Monte McGuire
monte.mcguire@verizon.net