External drives as compared to Internal drives

Archived from groups: rec.audio.pro (More info?)

On 17 Feb 2005 10:14:02 -0800, "Paul" <paulc@bms-software.com> wrote:

>I have recently bought a new Tiny Mediabook U64-3700+ of which I am
>awaiting delivery. The one drawback on this system that may affect me
>using apps such as Reason 2.5 Cool Edit Pro
>is the Fujitsu/Toshiba Hard Disk with minimum Ultra ATA/100 interface,
>4200rpm speed, 12 ms Access time, 80GB capacity and 1MB Buffer. If I
>bought an external drive with 7200rpm and connected it via a usb2
>connection would this perform better?

Yes, for 2 reasons. First, the drive will be faster, and second, you won't be
trying to use the same drive for the system software and virtual memory that
you are using for storing your audio data. You might want to be careful about
putting additional devices on the same USB port with the drive, though.

Archived from groups: rec.audio.pro (More info?)

USB 2.0 should be as fast as (if not faster than according to the spec)
Firewire. On the other hand, I tried digitizing some video to a USB 2.0
drive on a G5 the other day and Final Cut would just continually give
up. I tried different USB ports, but none that solved the issue.
Firewire drives worked fine.

Cheers,
Trevor de Clercq

jakdedert wrote:
> "Steve Jorgensen" <nospam@nospam.nospam> wrote in message
> news:bho9115sdu0bfsb14216g9i47ds6bmtt3c@4ax.com...
>
>>On 17 Feb 2005 10:14:02 -0800, "Paul" <paulc@bms-software.com> wrote:
>>
>>
>>>I have recently bought a new Tiny Mediabook U64-3700+ of which I am
>>>awaiting delivery. The one drawback on this system that may affect me
>>>using apps such as Reason 2.5 Cool Edit Pro
>>>is the Fujitsu/Toshiba Hard Disk with minimum Ultra ATA/100 interface,
>>>4200rpm speed, 12 ms Access time, 80GB capacity and 1MB Buffer. If I
>>>bought an external drive with 7200rpm and connected it via a usb2
>>>connection would this perform better?
>>
>>Yes, for 2 reasons. First, the drive will be faster, and second, you
>
> won't be
>
>>trying to use the same drive for the system software and virtual memory
>
> that
>
>>you are using for storing your audio data. You might want to be careful
>
> about
>
>>putting additional devices on the same USB port with the drive, though.
>
>
> Has anybody done this? It would seem to me that the USB port would slow
> down data transfer to the point that the difference in rotational speed
> would be a wash....
>
> jak
>
>

Archived from groups: rec.audio.pro (More info?)

On Thu, 17 Feb 2005 13:56:16 -0600, "John_LeBlanc" <john__leblanc@hotmail.com>
wrote:

>
>"jakdedert" <jdedert@bellsouth.net> wrote in message
>news:906Rd.38$zn1.26@bignews6.bellsouth.net...
>
>> Has anybody done this? It would seem to me that the USB port would slow
>> down data transfer to the point that the difference in rotational speed
>> would be a wash....
>
>Ultra ATA100 is 100 Megabytes/s
>USB 2.0 is 60 Megabytes/s
>
>While neither is likely to achieve its theoretical throughput, all else being
>equal, I doubt there will be instances where a USB 2.0 drive will outperform an
>ATA133 drive plugged into the IDE channel.
>
>Even if the external drive used the 1394b (Firewire 800) interface, it would
>still max out at a theoretical 100 megabytes/s.

Hard drives never max out the Ultra ATA even in bursts unless reading from a
cache, and that's pretty much never the case with audio. The highest bursts
you do get are pretty short because the head must seek to the next track,
giving the USB or firewire bus time to catch up. I think USB 2 has very
little impact on hard drive read/write speed, though I'm sure it adds a tiny
bit of latency.

Archived from groups: rec.audio.pro (More info?)

"Paul" <paulc@bms-software.com> wrote in message
news:1108733237.350415.42160@o13g2000cwo.googlegroups.com
> Thanks for all your advice. I was thinking of trying a 160GB Maxtor
> 7000 "One Touch" 7200rpm USB2 HDD with 8mb cache, 9.3ms access time
> and a sustained transfer rate USB 2.0 - 34 MB/sec selling at £92.81
> inc vat. Does anyone have any opinions re this choice?

My experiences with USB-2 hard drives in the XP context has been positive.

Archived from groups: rec.audio.pro (More info?)

On 18 Feb 2005 05:27:17 -0800, "Paul" <paulc@bms-software.com> wrote:

>Thanks for all your advice. I was thinking of trying a 160GB Maxtor
>7000 "One Touch" 7200rpm USB2 HDD with 8mb cache, 9.3ms access time and
>a sustained transfer rate USB 2.0 - 34 MB/sec selling at £92.81 inc
>vat. Does anyone have any opinions re this choice?

I'm gonna reiterate the suggestion I make for all posts along these
lines: take a look at the LaCie triple interface drives. They have
USB2.0, Firewire 400 & Firewire 800, in a pretty compact package.

I use one at work to back up servers and workstations, and they work
beautifully.

It also gives you the added benefit of not being able to try out
different transfer protocols without trying out different drives. :-)


jtougas

listen- there's a hell of a good universe next door
let's go

e.e. cummings