Ableton Forum

Hi

As my Powerbook is now full..........I'm looking to get an external harddrive for storing my wavs and to use with LIVE.

Can anyone tell me from experience if this will cause problems?
And is it better to have the wavs I'm accessing and using in Live in a live application actually saved on my powerbook?

sorry for silly questions.........

thanks
tania

if i was you i would move all your audio files onto the new drive ,live will not find the wavs when you open but live asks you if you want to find the new location of the files .it takes time but it's worth it.

I think she wants to know if there is any lag in performance when accessing multiple clips from a firewire400/usb2 drive?

would be curios to know this too as Im thinking of going for an internal drive cased in usb2 box.

i am using an hd in a usb enclosure ,it work perfectly .even a usb 1 enclosure works perfectly .

i'm using a laptop to make music. the RPM of laptop HD is too slow for live. this soft is playing your files directly from the HD so fast RPM is essential.
i was having access time problems with this system, causing audio drop outs during reproduction.
so i bought a Lacie external HD (250G, 8M cash,7200 RPM, USB2) and now everything is solved ! even if it's an external device, the access time is faster. live can access files faster.

Tania Mann wrote:Hi

As my Powerbook is now full..........I'm looking to get an external harddrive for storing my wavs and to use with LIVE.

Can anyone tell me from experience if this will cause problems?
And is it better to have the wavs I'm accessing and using in Live in a live application actually saved on my powerbook?

sorry for silly questions.........

thanks
tania

um word to the wise, always keep at least 500 megs free on your osx hard drive
otherwise you will notice slowdowns. osx needs space to manage it's virtual memory.

MrSleep wrote:I think she wants to know if there is any lag in performance when accessing multiple clips from a firewire400/usb2 drive?

would be curios to know this too as Im thinking of going for an internal drive cased in usb2 box.

in fact a firewire drive with a 7200 rpm hdd in it will actually be faster then
the stock internal drive on the powerbook!

i want a little bus powered lacie, but they are so expensive.

The only issue I've seen when using an external drive is moving data (writing) from place to place on the external drive can be slower.

Tranferring from internal to external, reading from external to application, writing from application to external (rendering) are fine and possibly faster, because you are dedicating a device to storage and OS swapping/housekeeping is minimized..

Tania
I use an external firewire drive with my powerbook and m-audio fw410 and everything is purring. It has helped me increase track count and, best of all, everything is finally all in one place.

like everyone said...

but when you want to move your live sets and sound folders to the external drive, it's best to think before you act. so make appropriate folders, and then open all your live sets and save them as self contained in the new location. might seem a lot of work, but it will save you the frustration of having the 'removed file message' over and over again. eventually it will save you lots of time.
afterwards, just trash the sets and sounds on your internal (if you're sure all sets are complete).

Hey guys

Thanks again for the feedback - it is very much apprec

As my Powerbook only has 1 firewire output and this is being used for my external soundcard, I was thinking of getting a Lacie 160 GB 7200 rpm USB 2.0..............so I'm glad someone has had positive feed back with this one

thanks again to all who relplied

Ok I'm really excited - it's always fun buying new equipment
I opted for the LaCie 250 MB with triple interface
So I can use USB on my Powerbook and can use firewire on my G5
Perfect!

Tania Mann wrote:Ok I'm really excited - it's always fun buying new equipment
I opted for the LaCie 250 MB with triple interface
So I can use USB on my Powerbook and can use firewire on my G5
Perfect!

a silly question leading to another:
is it possible to have the hard-drive connected to 2 computers at the same time?

peeddrroo wrote:

Tania Mann wrote:Ok I'm really excited - it's always fun buying new equipment
I opted for the LaCie 250 MB with triple interface
So I can use USB on my Powerbook and can use firewire on my G5
Perfect!

a silly question leading to another:
is it possible to have the hard-drive connected to 2 computers at the same time?

no, don't ever do this, you run the disk of damaged the drive and the drive enclosure.