Ableton Forum

couple HD related questions

1. Suppose this situation
I buy an external HD that has two Firewire 400 outputs. Would it be possible to connect the single external HD to two laptops? Would each laptop be able to access the external hard drive at the same time?

2. Correct me if im wrong, but I believe that an internal hard drive, @ 5400 disc speed, would still have a faster transfer rate than an external HD @ 7200 rpm connected via Firewire 400/800. true or false?

3. Does a BUS powered external HD have a slower transfer rate than an external HD that is self powered?

thank you for the help. Im out of space and need to make the call, would like to buy the best possible product, and not waste my time/money. Brand suggestions would be appriecied. Im looking at the ROCSTOR brand as of now....

I cannot give you much answers but between an internal 5400 and a 7200 plugged via FW 800 you can hardly find the difference.

For sound purposes (loading multisamples etc.) a FW 800 is just great!

-my humble opinion .

I don't really know all the answers to all your questions but the bottom line is you want the best/fastest external hard drive you can get. As far as I know Glyph hard drives are the best you can get for audio/video purposes. I have a 250 GB Glyph GT050 7200 rpm firewire 400 external drive now and I love it. Super durable and super high quality. Im about to get the 500 GB Glyph GT50Q which has a firewire 800 port on it. (It also has 400, usb 2 and a eSATA connections as well.) So check them out you can find them here http://www.sweetwater.com/c774--External_Hard_Drives

If you plug a second computer into a firewire port wouldn't that form a host-to-host connection? I don't think the second host would become a master for the firewire bus, but I don't really know the answer.