usb vs firewire???

[lucas12347]

Hello Hello,

I'm looking to replace my clunky external drive with something a little(physically) smaller and easier to get around with (and dear god no more wall wart power cords). I know I have to have a 7200rpm hdd, but is firewire absolutely nessacary ? I only record one track at a time, and usually less than 10 tracks by the time my song is done.

The only reason I ask is that i'm about to move to the other side of the country and i really want to get this sorted out before I leave which leave's me with future shop, best buy, et al. I've been able to find firewire drives in the 500mb to 1tb range, but the drive speed isn't fast enough. I can find usb drives with the right drive speed, but no firewire support :P Just can't find anything that meets all the criteria. any help would be greatly appreciated

[mindnoise]

the problem is FireWire will work as expected.

USB might or might not work with a usable performance.

Most ext. HD with a OXFORD 924 chipset have FW AND USB and eSATA anyway.
so it´s kind of a non-issue what to buy.

try www.otherworldcomputing.com
or search for OXFORD 924 on ebay.

best

[lucas12347]

oook, so i should stay away from usb altogether.....guess i won't be figuring this out before i leave...

[necjamc]

USB HDD are plain and simple, a headache with Pro Tools. I would google Firewire hard drive enclosures for the country you are going to. They let you put any internal SATA hard drive in them and then get an enclsure that suits your needs. http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16817392026
Like this one. Of course you have to provide the hard drive. A wd caviar black is perfect.

[boohowdy]

Don't skimp out on getting an External firewire drive for audio. Just because a USB drive is faster doesn't mean you can assume the bandwidth will remain constant during data xfer.

Like the above poster said, you can get Ext HDD's now with all connections ( Fw/USB/Esata. If you went with a USB only you're really going to screw yourself.

Trust me, Pro Tools is extremely sensitive and unless you want to spent hours cursing them and your computer I would stick with what they suggest.

[lucas12347]

i didn't plan on going usb only, i was just wondering if it would work, but i guess it won't :P i think i'm just going to wait til the big move is over to replace the drive

[lucas12347]

i probably shouldn't use anything less than 7200 rpm either, right ?

[necjamc]

Originally Posted by lucas12347

i probably shouldn't use anything less than 7200 rpm either, right ?

Anything less than a 7200 RPM is not really worth it. It may work but not very well.

[sunburst79]

Originally Posted by lucas12347

i probably shouldn't use anything less than 7200 rpm either, right ?

That is correct.