Ableton Forum

I use a laptop PC with a pcmcia firewire adapter with two 6 pin sockets. My FW 410 goes in one of the sockets and I am thinking of getting a Lacie 80GB 7200RPM firewire diskdrive which will plug into the other socket.

Anybody experienced with this kind of setup? will it work out OK or will the firewire drive interfere with the operation of the 410?

I intend to use the Lacie mainly as a home for Ivory Piano (40GB).

Any advice much apreciated.

anybody ? nobody ?

I would use the PCMCIA for soundcard and the internal for HD or other way round, just make sure that M audio gets TI chipped one. Still better, call m audio support, what do I know ?

thanks for the info. i'm not sure if either firewire port has a TI chipset. I think I'll suck it and see. if it doesn't work well the Lacie will come in handy for backups and general stuff.

I have this setup and I can't use the lacie through the pcmcia card, even with the m-audio not plugged in. Its really wierd.

well, i took the plunge and sent off for a copy of ivory and an 80Gb lacie to install it on.

once i got ivory set up to suit my sysrem - ie not going straight for the 10 layer bosendorfer - it all seemed to work perfectly, i was well happy - ivory 1.5 is amazing .

so i invited a mate round for a jam. plug in the guitar, sounding nice, now join in on the piano... arrrggghhhh, whenever ivory reads from disk, the guitar sound gets shreaded in a really nasty way, like the sound gets 'torn'.

it seems as if it's only ok as long as the fw410 and the lacie are transferring dats in opposite directions.

so now i'm seriously considering ebaying the 410 and writing it off as an expensive mistake.

or maybe i should keep the lacie for backups and try a usb2 disk drive.

decisions, decisions...

Are you using PCMCIA for both ? Then forget about it. Right now your HD and 410 sharing the band They must be on separate FW then it should be OK. I am sure about it since we talked it with Ableton/M audio man on a workshop, so it is his solution what I am saying.
If I was in your situation I would get the 2,5 HD with one of those compact 10$ USB2 boxes, I had the 3, 5 FW HD and sold it, the bloody thing weighted more then my notebook (with PSU).

thanks for the advice and info.

i think i'll give the 410 another chance and try with a usb 2 hard drive.

I'm running a M-Audio 410 and 200 GB Lacie off my LaCie PCMCIA card with no problems.

My laptop is a Vaio.

no way can your pcmcia handle hard drive and audio at once!

It can as long as there is no much traffic, keep it in mind Siddhu that it may choke anytime when there is more data flow, it is like 2 lane road, once you get some trucks and buses going it will be the end. BTW Vaios mostly use TI chip- the 4pin FW- ideal for M audio.

I cant - at the moment I have my EXT HD on the 4 pin iLink and the FW 410 on the PCMCIA.

When I put them both on the PC card I get crackles

I've even tried daisy chaning and they dont like that either

In my experience they've had to be seperate.