Can I isolate all of my recording software and projects on an external firewire hard drive? Would there be any performance advantages? Disadvantages? Thanks!

M

Which model of computer are you the happy user?

In a general manner, you can move the audio file in a FW drive. Now, an internal SATA or IDE drive would be better, as one sound engineer here did some teste and found theere a tiny differences other files recorded on a SCSI/IDE/SATA drive and the same over FW. But this is a very professional issue important for high end needs. For the common guys, it's ok, and a lot of pro are happy using FW, especially when recording with a laptop.

Now, for your software, it's different, your apps should be in the apps folder of your user account. and some may have troubles (may is important) if installed elsewhere. If you need to move your apps around, have a system install handy on a FW drive with your apps on, and move the drive around and boot from it. The real issue i'd see would be the swap file on the FW drive, but telling the system to move it's swap file elsewhere is a matter of one restart.

In short:
- your audio YES
- your samples YES
- Your apps, only with a system on the drive and booting from it.

I have an lampshade iMac 800MHz G4 15" with 778M of RAM.

Would it be any advantage to set the hard drive up as a bootable drive and keep everything there.

I ask because as I keep multipurpose computers for several years, they tend to accumulate crap and slow down. I was thinking that it might be one step away from getting a dedicated music system.

M

You're talking about windows systems…

Keep your system on the internal drive with the apps, you can even change the internal drive to use a faster one (expensive so do it only if you can/need it really) but record on another drive, it'll help a lot the iBook. Else you'll encounter the track limit sooner just because of the internal drive.

To boot from an external drive won't give you much benefit, the important is to reduce the strain caused by the system/app needning access to data on the internal drive and the needs of the sequencer to access audio file at the same time. Keep them separate, and you'll be happier.

If the external drive is big, make at least 2 partitions, so it'll be easy to copy to partition B/reformat A/copy back to A (instant optimisation

Windows systems? No way, I'll never go to the dark side!

M

Hmm...

I have a friend that has a LampShade iMac 1Ghz...
He uses it for video and he seems to have issues sometimes with the FW acting up on him...
Not that it's broken - It just times out if the throughput gets too heavy...
His solution was to go with a MASSIVE hard drive (200Gig I think)...
Using the LampShade you probably will take a hit with the FW if you're recording audio on it...

Here's what I do with my Mac when I need drive space...
- Keep your primary audio software on the main drive
- Record your audio into a "project folder" keeping all audio files and the main program file for your software in the same folder...
- Ond folder per song/project
- I have a folder in my "music" folder next to iTunes called "PrimaryMusic"...
- All my Logic Files and projects are there...
- Once you've recorded your song - you can more easily edit and playback the song on a FW drive...
- You can transfer your audio song/folder to the FW drive as a backup to save drive space and it should "play" just fine...

Lastly, the only thing you really can do is "TEST!" to be sure it will work with your system!...
FW enclosures for hard drives are relatively cheap right now...
Dig out an old 10 / 20 gig 7200 RPM hard drive somewhere and stuff it into a FW enclosure - Plug it in and TRY it...
Make a song folder on that FW hard drive and start slamming some audio to it...
If it works - You'll be set...

Hope this clears some things up...
Good Luck...

Riverdog

Thanks!

M