Setting up an external hard drive with Live 8?

[deixis]

I've just upgraded my system to a new Macbook Pro running Live 8. I'm a bit new to the world of computer audio as i've always used analogue gear.

My question is regarding the inclusion of an external Firewire 7200 rpm hard drive in to the setup. I've been given the impression that I shouldn't run my audio from the Macbooks hard drive because it runs at a slower speed. This makes sense but i'm confused as to exactly what the process is. IE After Live's installation should I be moving any of its files onto the external hard drive or should I only be worried about the working audio files for each song that I make? Do I need to change any settings in Live's prefs? MY version of Live 8 came with 'Sampler' and an extra instrument disk. Again this all resides on the Macbooks hard drive so should I be thinking about moving any of those files on the external 7200 rpm hard drive?

I'm sure this is probably quite basic stuff to most of you but as I say i'm a newbie to computer audio so any guidance would be very much appreciated. At this stage I am presuming that I install Live 8 on the Macbook's hard drive and only use the external faster hard drive for my working audio files.

thanks!

[Piplodocus]

I depends, as the Macbook Pro might have a 7200rpm drive depending what options you had. Also it depends how many tracks you want to run. 7200rpm drive are better than 5400rpm, but a 5400rpm is still usable depending on the size of your project and number of samples required. What size and type of projects are you doing? If it's a new Macbook pro it won't have slower than 5400rpm. Regardless, you'll still have better performance if your applications and OS are on a different disk to all your audio files.

If you have a large live library too then it's worth putting it on an external drive as you suggest, also for the reason that you'll save loads of hard disk space and you might be able to fill the MBP disk if you have a large enough library, regardless of performance! However, you may not want to take the external drive with you everywhere depending on your set-up.

I don't have a MBP, and I'm on Live 7, but am getting a MBP as soon as I can afford it. This is what I intend to do:

[*] Put the live library and all my samples on the external drive so I have fast access to a large library whenever writing. You can specify the library path in preferences. Then install all your library components and it'll put them there. If you've already installed them, copy the library to the external drive then specify it's path and it should find it.

[*] Put my miscellaneous projects and unfinished stuff on the external drive to save space on the internal and maximise speed when writing/experimenting/mixing/buggering about.

[*] Put the songs I intend to use live on stage on the internal drive ("save copy as"?), then do a "collect All and Save" which copies all the samples used by that project into it so I don't need to use the external drive live.

[*] Then go to my live version and choose lots of the smaller sample files and set the clips to the "RAM" setting. This way the whole sample is played from RAM, and none of them need to be streamed from disk, thus reducing the load on the hard disk. Also I'd "Freeze" tracks I don't need to do anything live with FX/remixing-wise so this reduces general system overhead.

[*] Then play my set while running lots of junk, downloading, running instant messengers, and generally doing stuff that might make the audio skip to see how "safe" it'll be live.

Pros:
This way I get all the performance of the exernal when at home, and all the convenience of less hardware and wires live. And if I really want to I can take the external drive and have no real "cons".

Cons:
The downside of this is if I want to write on the move, I don't have my sample library with me unless I take the external drive. I'm thinking of making a mini reduced library to go on the laptop with just my most used kit or 2 and a small subset of my big sample library. Then I can switch to it if I go somewhere with only the laptop and still want to be able to write. I haven't tried that bit yet though.

Anyone else here change between using a big Live library on an external disk, and a small "on the move" library on an internal laptop HDD? Is it easy to do?