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  #11  
Old 04-30-2013, 07:46 PM
TruestPain TruestPain is offline
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Default Re: External storage systems Questions????

John thank you for the specifications and examples of such that I would be looking for and/or should look for when purchasing.
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  #12  
Old 05-01-2013, 06:51 AM
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John_Toolbox John_Toolbox is offline
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Default Re: External storage systems Questions????

One more thing, for busses like Firewire, Thunderbolt, etc. you need to add up the number of devices on the bus to determine how much bandwidth each device will actually have available. So as an example, if you have 4 drives daisy chained on a FW800 bus, and all 4 are reading/writing simultaneously, each drive theoretically will only have 1/4 of the available bandwidth, or 25 MB/s. However, if you have 4 drives connected, but only use one at a time, the one drive you are using will operate closer to the 100MB/s bandwidth of the bus.

So while the speed of thunderbolt seems oversized for a single SATA II SSD, it will work great with 4 SATA II SSDs, since each SSD should theoretically have around 300MB/s of bandwidth available.

Keep in mind that I don't have any real world experience with thunderbolt, so I'm just going by what I have read about it. There may be limitations I'm not aware of. But it is definitely faster than anything else, other than PCIe.
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If a MIDI event triggers a sample of a tree falling and there's no one there to hear it, does it make a sound?
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  #13  
Old 05-02-2013, 06:01 PM
TruestPain TruestPain is offline
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Default Re: External storage systems Questions????

I do have a PCIe connection I believe.... I'll have to go back and look but i'm certain I do.
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  #14  
Old 05-02-2013, 06:21 PM
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Default Re: External storage systems Questions????

There are different speeds of PCIe slots, but it's not really going to make a huge difference unless you are using a lot of drives and a very expensive PCIe card. For example, you can put a FW800 card in a PCIe slot, but it's not going to be any faster to connect a single drive to it than it would to connect a single drive to the built in FW800 port on your computer. However if you have 2 FW800 drives, and connect one to the PCIe card, that would be better than connecting 2 FW800 drives to the same port, assuming both drives were going to be reading and writing simultaneously.

Don't get too hung up on having the fastest possible hard drives. You just need to understand what you're buying and how the other components in the chain affect each other so that you don't spend money on something you don't need.
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If a MIDI event triggers a sample of a tree falling and there's no one there to hear it, does it make a sound?
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  #15  
Old 08-07-2013, 01:32 AM
bgeorge03 bgeorge03 is offline
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Default Re: External storage systems Questions????

Can I use a single 7200rpm USB 3.0 external HDD to both record Protools session and for the Native Instrument samples? Is it better to go for a 126 SSD in an external container or 7200rpm 500gb USB 3.0 HDD?
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  #16  
Old 08-07-2013, 03:13 AM
Bill Denton Bill Denton is offline
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Default Re: External storage systems Questions????

Quote:
Originally Posted by bgeorge03 View Post
Can I use a single 7200rpm USB 3.0 external HDD to both record Protools session and for the Native Instrument samples? Is it better to go for a 126 SSD in an external container or 7200rpm 500gb USB 3.0 HDD?
NO! You should not have anything on your PT audio (session) drive but PT audio (session) files! Especially not VI samples!

If you can not have a "dedicated" drive for VI samples you should put them on your system (OS) drive.


That's what I get for posting before I've had my Cheerios...I had this bass-akwards in my original post. Here's the corrected version:

As far as Firewire vs USB drives, Avid now recommends Firewire drives for Macs, USB for Windows...
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Note that all opinions, observations, whatever, in this post are mine, unless I'm being mean or am wrong, in which case it's somebody else's fault. I do not work for Avid (their loss)...my only relationship with Avid is that of a customer (when I'm not too poor to buy stuff, like now)...and that hot administrative assistant...that's more of a "thing" than a "relationship" (that should keep them guessing for a while...)

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Last edited by Bill Denton; 08-07-2013 at 06:04 PM. Reason: Posting before I've had my Cheerios
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  #17  
Old 08-07-2013, 09:12 AM
Ferrante Ferrante is offline
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Default Re: External storage systems Questions????

Quote:
Originally Posted by Bill Denton View Post
As far as Firewire vs USB drives, Avid now recommends USB drives for Macs, Firewire for Windows...
From Avid's page:
FireWire (1394) connection of audio record/playback drives should not be used on Windows 7 machines.
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  #18  
Old 08-07-2013, 09:16 AM
bgeorge03 bgeorge03 is offline
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Default Re: External storage systems Questions????

If I am going to use a single external HDD for Protools session data, what should be the size of the external HDD. Can 64gb or 128gb enough? How about using external SSD or USB3 fast Pendrive for recording Protools sessions? Also, can I use the external HDD to store other documents (not the samples) so that I can use the external HDD space fully or should I have to have only the Protools session data.
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  #19  
Old 08-07-2013, 06:11 PM
Bill Denton Bill Denton is offline
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Default Re: External storage systems Questions????

Quote:
Originally Posted by Ferrante View Post
From Avid's page:
FireWire (1394) connection of audio record/playback drives should not be used on Windows 7 machines.
Thank you for pointing out my error...I have corrected my original post.

I found the info you posted: FireWire (1394) connection of audio record/playback drives should not be used on Windows 7 machines in the disk requirements for PT 10, but I could not find any information at all for PT 11.

Have you been able to find any drive requirements for PT 11? If so, could you post a link?
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Note that all opinions, observations, whatever, in this post are mine, unless I'm being mean or am wrong, in which case it's somebody else's fault. I do not work for Avid (their loss)...my only relationship with Avid is that of a customer (when I'm not too poor to buy stuff, like now)...and that hot administrative assistant...that's more of a "thing" than a "relationship" (that should keep them guessing for a while...)

Just rockin'...what more is there?

Bill in Pittsburgh
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