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  #1  
Old 06-01-2011, 12:30 PM
youtube/breakingformula youtube/breakingformula is offline
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Default No firewire but I wanna go external. Is a USB Hard Drive worth trying? (Windows 7)

I am getting some serious slow down/freeze up issues and after reading up on this site I realized a lot of it is coming from recording on my Laptop's hard drive

I know you guys said Firewire is the preferred external hard drive.. but I don't have that option.

I just want to know if there is any point buying a USB 2.0 Hard drive or should I just stick with my onboard and try to find other ways to speed pro tools up?

Here are my specs

ProTools 8 M-Powered
M-Audio Fast Track Ultra 8R

HP CQ61-420US Notebook
AMD Athlon II Dual-Core M320 @ 2.1 GHz
3 Gigs Ram
Windows 7 Home Premium 64 Bit

In your general troubleshooting guide I disabled "Desktop Composition" (Which was handy, I was kind of bugged that when I disabled it manually on my own, Protools would just restart it when I ran it :P thanks for the help)
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Old 06-01-2011, 12:40 PM
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DigiTechSupt DigiTechSupt is offline
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Default Re: No firewire but I wanna go external. Is a USB Hard Drive worth trying? (Windows 7

USB drives are actually recommended for Windows 7, while FireWire drives are not.

A better option would be to get a second internal SATA drive.
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  #3  
Old 06-01-2011, 01:10 PM
youtube/breakingformula youtube/breakingformula is offline
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Default Re: No firewire but I wanna go external. Is a USB Hard Drive worth trying? (Windows 7

Thanks man that helps me a lot :)

any specs on the drive that i should consider when buying?

or would be ok to pick up a cheaper one
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Old 06-03-2011, 08:51 AM
RichrdC RichrdC is offline
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Default Re: No firewire but I wanna go external. Is a USB Hard Drive worth trying? (Windows 7

DigiTech, What issues can one expect to encounter when using firewire external hard drives and a laptop, since that is my setup at this time? Also, what usb slot card is supported by ProTools...
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  #5  
Old 06-04-2011, 04:38 PM
Julia B Julia B is offline
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Default Re: No firewire but I wanna go external. Is a USB Hard Drive worth trying? (Windows 7

No Firewire, but I NEED to go external. I'm quickly running out of HD space. I have a USB 7200 RPM 1.5 TB Glyph drive arriving Monday where my sample libraries are going have to go. I have Komplete 7 arriving as well. I have 85 GB free space on my system drive and I need 90 GB just for Komplete. The engines will go on the system drive, but I need to put my samples on the Glyph.

For M-Powered PT 8.0.4 cs2 will this cause any issues? Windows XP SP3. And due to a lot of stuff on the main USB bus, I've got an "I/O Future" High Speed PCI USB 2.0 host controller. 5 port. PU520

Basic sys info in signature.
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Model : Intel(R) Core(TM)2 Quad Q6600 2.40GHz
IDC : 4x 32kB, Synch, Write-Thru, 8-way, 64 byte
L2 : 2x 4MB, ECC, Synch, ATC, 16-way, 64 byte line sz, 2 thds sh

Mainboard: DFI Inc. INF P35-R
BIOS : Phx Tech, LTD 6.00 PG 03/11/2008
Bus(es) : ISA X-Bus PCI PCIe IMB USB i2c/SMBus
MP APIC : Y
Tot Mem : 3.25GB DIMM DDR2 (WinXP)

Chipset: Intel P35/G33/G31 Proc
Front Side Bus Spd : 4x 266MHz
Mem Bus Spd : 2x 399MHz

(C:) : (250GB, SATA, 8MB Cache)
(D:) : (250GB, SATA, 8MB Cache)
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Old 06-04-2011, 09:13 PM
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Default Re: No firewire but I wanna go external. Is a USB Hard Drive worth trying? (Windows 7

Quote:
Originally Posted by RichrdC View Post
DigiTech, What issues can one expect to encounter when using firewire external hard drives and a laptop, since that is my setup at this time? Also, what usb slot card is supported by ProTools...
Typical symptoms - various drive related errors (9073 and 9129 mostly), extended delays before recording starts after pressing record/play (we've seen delays up to 10 minutes, and it usually errors out after that..), corrupted audio files, etc.

I really don't recommend it.

Generally speaking and brand name USB card will work. We don't test them specifically, but I haven't heard of any rampant problems with a particular brand.
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Old 06-06-2011, 06:15 PM
banjo71 banjo71 is offline
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Default Re: No firewire but I wanna go external. Is a USB Hard Drive worth trying? (Windows 7

I've been using Maxtor, works great.
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  #8  
Old 06-07-2011, 11:19 AM
RichrdC RichrdC is offline
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Default Re: No firewire but I wanna go external. Is a USB Hard Drive worth trying? (Windows 7

Thanks for the advice all...... I've had a couple session expierience the delay to recording after hitting the REC key, and wondered about maybe just inadvertantly clicking on something to cause that problem.. Now I know what was happening... Have gone USB for the external drives... Thanks again
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