External Drive Question

Hi,

Please excuse the very basic nature of my query but I'm new to Mac and Logic 8, having been recently seduced from the Dark Side of PC and Protools. I was told that the best thing to do is use and external firewire drive to run my sessions from, so that is what ive done. However, when i try to save the session on the external drive it saves the audio and audio instruments but not the actual Logic Session file. Is there a setting I need to change, or is this something to do with the drive itself? Ive updated the drive firmware etc and , as i say , it saves the audio etc but Logic comes up with a message saying it cannot be saved as "whatever name i try"??

I would be super grateful for any help , as I'm blown away by the software otherwise!!

When you save a file for the first time, or when you use the "Save as..." command, you should see a dialog box asking you where you want to save the file and giving you a selection of options about whether to copy audio files, instruments, etc...

Your external FW drive should appear on the left side of that dialog box. If you select it, there's room on the drive, and you're not using the name of a file that already exists, it makes no sense that you can't save your session there. In order for others to understand exactly what you're asking, you need to be specific about the error message you're receiving and the exact steps you perform that produce it. This is an elemental function, and for it not to work would be extraordinary.

As for using a FW drive, it's a good archiving medium, but even FW800 is too slow for any high-bandwidth data capture. I don't know what Mac you're using or what expansion capability it has, but a good internal SATA 2 drive is faster than any external FW drive, if you can incorporate one. It's also advisable to record to a drive other than the boot drive.

Hope that's helpful.

Homina... Since you'r on that...

I have a Mac book pro with a 100G, not much space so I Record on a fW drive. But you say it's better to record on an internal drive other than the boot drive. I did make a second partition on the laptop drive, one for system and one for music data. Is this will do the same as having a physicaly separate drive ?

thanks

Partitions that exist on the same physical drive are subject to the same access limitations as a single partition. All the administrative overhead is still there, regardless of volume structure. You need to keep apps and data on separate drives for best performance.

It's not that internal drives are always faster than external ones. SATA2 is faster than FW800, and most newer Macs use SATA2 internal drives. ATA/IDE drives don't come close to FW800. I don't know what kind of drive is installed in your notebook. If it's SATA2, it'll be faster than your external FW drive. Whether it's worth your trouble to boot from a FW drive is your call. Those are the realities, however. Regardless of the bus they're on, you've got to have fast drives to start with, 7200 rpm or better to work with audio. High-quality audio and video require high sustained bandwidth. Slow drives simply cannot handle it.

Hard drive platters are used from the outside-in. This means that data can be accessed faster for the first 50% or so of a disk's capacity, because the physical locations of the data are moving faster and are more accessible. That's something to bear in mind as you prepare your equipment for a session. Also, the block-size your drive uses can have an impact on its speed. Most computer use involves relatively small files, which are efficiently stored in correspondingly small data blocks. Uncompressed audio and video are better served by larger block sizes. Utilities exist to alter a disk's block size, but drive speed and used capacity probably have a greater impact in most circumstances.

A RAID might be the best option for your notebook, given its physical limitations. I don't own a notebook, so can't say what's available. I'd be surprised, though, if you couldn't obtain a RAID for one. If I were using a laptop, I'm pretty sure that's what I'd be doing. A decent RAID is nearly as fast as the very fastest SCSI, which will meet the requirements for even uncompressed HD video.

A RAID? Wow, hold your horses. That's like recommending a Boeing 747 to someone looking for a way to drive 5 miles. A RAID is definitely overkill and will most probably be slower in your situation. I won't go into details as to why, but trust me, you don't want a RAID, and you don't want to start messing about with utilities that change the block size (on this we agree).

And no mikee, a partition is definitely not the same as a 2nd internal drive.

Depending on your needs (as far as track-count and disk streaming), I would recommend:

1) Just record the audio on your internal drive.

2) Record to the external FW drive.

3) Get an eSATA card and an external SATA 2 drive.

4) Get a Mac Pro with a couple of internal SATA 2 drives.

5) OK if really that's still not enough, THEN you can start considering a RAID. But again, it's not necessarily going to give you more tracks (depending on various factors).

Well, you're up early, aren't you?

As I said, I don't use a notebook as my primary platform. I have owned one, however, and found it was very limited WRT expandability and peripherals. 250 gb seems to be the current ceiling on MBP internal drives, of which there can be only one. As audio storage goes, that's small. Since peripheral connections are limited in practice to FW as an alternate boot/storage drive, and given FW's marginal performance as a high-bandwidth protocol, I suggested something better.

An eSATA card is certainly another alternative. It makes available MUCH larger hard drives, at real-world speeds that will probably suffice for most things as long as the user is diligent about keeping his drives optimized. Should've mentioned it myself, in retrospect.

However, I also made it very clear that IF I were in the poster's situation, I'd be using a RAID, and I would. I can think of no way an eSATA system would match, let alone beat, a striped RAID, and very probably a mirrored one if it were properly configured. At least the performance differences I've observed have been starkly in favor of RAID. Since I began using a RAID I have not experienced a single speed-related problem, even in capturing raw digital video. That's a very refreshing change, one that I would not hesitate to recommend to anyone contemplating an existence in a high-bandwidth data environment.

I presume anybody who's popped for Logic 8 is relatively serious about giving it a workout. My recommendations were made accordingly.

thanks Homina and David.

I will consider your advices.

For now, I have my internal drive (7200) split to system drive and music data where my samples are stored and I record my audio projec and files to a FW 800 lacie.

Thanks.

Mike..I agree with David..There's really NO need to partition your internal drive. It's still the same physical drive. On my MBPro..I replaced my internal drive with a 250 gig (5400 rpm) one and loaded Logic Studio on it. I use an external FW 400 drive for all my Logic Project files/recording audio.

here's a link to the MacBookPro drive replacement:

http://www.mcetech.com/msperformance/

Keep in mind that when you're recording audio to your internal drive, you're asking it to do a lot of work. It doesn't matter how fast it is, if it is having to handle running the system, running the app, running the plugs, streaming your samples, playing back audio, and recording audio, it's going to be less powerful an option than recording (and playing back) your audio on the external.

When I added an external FW drive to my MBPro set-up, and started recording audio to it, the performance improvement was really remarkable. Even a USB2.0 external for this is an improvement. It frees up the internal to do what it's really dedicated to: running your system and apps. And it will increase the life of your internal drive (a pretty crucial thing), since you're not forcing it to work so hard.

And then when I upgraded to an eSATA external through the ExpressCard port -- WOW! That's the route I'd suggest, what with the ExpressCards being available now for just $29, and eSATA external drives costing about the same as FW options now. Get a 7200rpm, 16MB cache, quad-interface (eSATA, FW800, FW400, USB2.0) and you'll be set for whatever comes your way. I'd recommend OWC or G-Tech as quiet, yet stable and high-performing options.

Best of luck!