So, I've been doing a lot of recording (Logic Studio 9, iMac 2.93Ghz) and have had a significant frequency of hard drive access issues (using the internal drive). The best option is clearly an external firewire drive for audio files. I already have a nice FW800 external that I use as my Time Machine backup. I'd like to use the same drive for audio (with Time Machine disabled, of course). Will it make any difference if I create a dedicated partition, rather than just a folder? Or should I just bite the bullet and buy a new drive?
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Firewire drive: folder, partition, new drive?
- Thread starter salientstimulus
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FWIW, I have a Seagate FreeAgent Pro 500GB drive. I mainly use it for backups on both OS X (Time Machine) and Windows 7/XP (Norton Ghost). I have the drive split into two equal partitions, one HFS+ and one NTFS. I connect the drive via FW400 to my MBP. I also have a RME Fireface 800 connected via FW800.
I do all of my multitrack recording in Cubase 4 under OS X. I'm using the same partition that houses the Time Machine backups. I have had zero troubles even on songs with 30+ audio tracks (44.1 kHz 24 bit) at low latency (about 3 ms).
Granted, Time Machine will eventually fill up the partition, but I still have plenty of space at the moment. Also, I only keep the audio projects on there while they are in progress. I archive them on my desktop PC once they are finished and free up the space on the external drive again.
You can make do without creating a separate partition, as I have. Just make sure you have plenty of free space when you are working on projects.
I do all of my multitrack recording in Cubase 4 under OS X. I'm using the same partition that houses the Time Machine backups. I have had zero troubles even on songs with 30+ audio tracks (44.1 kHz 24 bit) at low latency (about 3 ms).
Granted, Time Machine will eventually fill up the partition, but I still have plenty of space at the moment. Also, I only keep the audio projects on there while they are in progress. I archive them on my desktop PC once they are finished and free up the space on the external drive again.
You can make do without creating a separate partition, as I have. Just make sure you have plenty of free space when you are working on projects.
To me a dedicated external drive is what I would choose. My music is important to me and having anything else on that drive would be unsettling.