best ext harddrive for live

Mr Wednesday · Post by **Mr Wednesday** » Tue May 17, 2005 10:05 pm

Anyone know of a good external hard drive to use with live. Is USB2 faster than firewire? (where did i hear that, feels like i'm asking a stupid question) And also, would i use the same external drive to back up my audio files - or should i be buying two external harddrives.....
Regards
wednesday

kennerb · Post by **kennerb** » Tue May 17, 2005 11:00 pm

This n here looks pretty sweet. http://www.sharbor.com/products/GTEN5190056.html

I've read that USB 2 is faster than firewire 400 but I have never seen it work out that way.

basically you want to get a drive that is not too noisy and has a low seek time. You'll also want to make sure that the enclosure is able to ventilate adequately and is pretty quiet.

Personally I like the Lacies, Maxtor external, Hitachi, and Seagate's stuff. But there are a lot of good ones out there.

mikemc · Post by **mikemc** » Wed May 18, 2005 2:44 pm

The firewire designated IEEE 1394b is "Firewire 800". It is fastest, I think you need to make sure your interface will support it, and it's less ubiquitous and so more expensive.

The LaCie has been given high marks by many reviewers, the Maxtor has a very solid case good and has easy backup capability,

For cost savings, you can buy a case and a drive and assemble the two, it's pretty simple, the case should be well ventilated and conducive to cool operation, but as was mentioned quiet.

mers · Post by **mers** » Thu Jun 02, 2005 4:44 pm

I don't suggest lacies hd for pc users, but just for mac users

rsagevik · Post by **rsagevik** » Thu Jun 02, 2005 6:18 pm

I`m using a 300gb Maxtor on PC. Great disc!
I`ve had Maxtors in some of my desktops as well, and they
seem to be long lasting discs surviving loads of beating.

vangroover · Post by **vangroover** » Sat Jun 04, 2005 3:58 pm

i just bought a la cie D2 250 gigger loving itoh i run it on a power book g4.

Tails · Post by **Tails** » Sat Jun 04, 2005 4:36 pm

Look for a drive that runs at at least 7200rpm. Your interface (Firewire, USB, etc.) is the theoretical maximum for how much data you can get out of your drive per second, but you'll almost never hit that maximum wihout a fast (drive speed) drive with a large buffer (8MB+).

Personally, based on experience and what I've read in the past, I like Seagate drives and would not recommend Maxtor or Western Digital. Maxtor may have gotten a lot better recently, but I've had issues with them in the past. Other users here seem to be having better luck, so your mileage may vary...

I have a Seagate 160GB 7200rpm Firewire400 drive that I really like. In the future, I'd like to find something bus-powered though, to make the drive more portable.

cool4music · Post by **cool4music** » Wed Jun 08, 2005 1:21 pm

I personally use the Maxtor OneTouch 250 GB ext hard drive with both USB 2 and FIRWIRE ports... I use it on my laptop's firewire port and it works faster than my internal laptop hard drive.

This drive runs at 7200 RPM and has 8 MB disk cache. I'd recommend a similar hard drive of other manufacturers such as Lacie, seagate, etc along with Maxtor.