Ableton Forum

Hey,

I'm looking at getting an external hard drive for use with my laptop. I'm using Live primarily for live (dj for want of a better word) sets where at the most i will have 4 tracks playing simultaneously. My laptop only has USB 1.1, would this be sufficient for playing max. 4 tracks? Also, is there any downfall in plugging an external hard drive into a USB hub, which will also have a midi keyboard and a usb mouse plugged into it?

I was also considering getting a firewire or usb2 pcmcia card, but my limited understanding of these things thinks that if im using a echo indigo dj card in one slot, i cant have another card in the other slot. is this correct?

Any help would be well appreciated....

Dave

USB1.1 is too slow for any sensible disk use (ok for slow copying, that's about it).

If you have 2 PCMCIA slots, then you can use 2 cards. Best bet is to get a firewire card, or FW + USB2. Adaptec cards are pretty solid. Just make sure they will both physically fit, with cables attached, as the Echo has that 'big lump'.

Hey Husker, thanks for the reply.

To follow on, is anybody using a pcmcia card (firewire or usb 2.0) in conjunction with one of the echo indigo pcmcia cards? I'm trawling the internet trying to find a slim one without the 'lump' on the end. Any recommendations?

Dave

Sorry, yeh forgot the Adaptec has the 'lump' too...

Try the ADS Pyro, has dongle and cable..so should play nice with the echo. Not used one myself though so can't vouch for the drivers, etc.

i just got a lacie 7200 rpm external mobile drive, and so far i'd recommend it thoroughly. you can power it off of USB but transfer data over 4 pin firewire - handy if you're on pc and only have a built in unpowered 4 pin firewire plug. firewires better as it seems to use less cpu overhead to do data transfers than usb 2, and reportedly it has better sustained transfer speeds (which you want for streaming files). if you're happy to use a powered drive look into getting a lacie d2 firewire 800 drive and a firewire 800 pcmcia card, as they have freakin' ridiculous transfer speeds (they claim better than twice standard firewire, but thats prolly marketing hype).

cheapest option is to build a drive into a casing yourself though....

you're probably aware of this, but in case you're not i thought i'd better make sure that you know that the pcmcia cards don't power anything externally ie you'll have to plug the drive into the wall (or have a usb powering option) to power it if you use a pcmcia card.