Using an external hard drive to store and run virtual instruments

The thing you have to watch out for with external hard drives these days is that many of them can't guarantee a spin speed. For optimum audio use you need to be looking at 7200rpm speeds, but few of the big name externals (WD, Seagate etc) advertise the spin speeds on their products any more. They used to. Steer clear of any "green" models that have variable spin speeds to save energy.
 
Take a look at this old link to a discontinued Western Digital drive, and note the stated spin speed of 7200rpm:
 
http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/522052-REG/Western_Digital_WDH1U10000N_1TB_My_Book_Essential.html
 
Now let's look at an equivalent model as is offered now:
 
http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/841444-REG/Western_Digital_WDBBEP0010BBK_NESN_1TB_My_Passport_USB.html
 
No mention of spin speed at all. 
 
It's worth shelling out more for the hard drive if you can, models like Glyph and LaCie offer spin speeds of 7200rpm and are thus more suitable for audio. Some people will tell you to steer clear of LaCie, but I have no experience of them. 
 
But if you get a decent external HD with a good spin speed, you'll have no problems at all and you won't lose any performance over using your internal drive. In fact for things like recording audio and streaming samples, you'll see better performance than you would if you were using your laptop's internal system drive. Sonar will have no trouble at all finding the VST's, you just specify the path to the external drive in the VST settings. 
 
 

Thank you for the information and suggestions. I really like the look and specs of the Glyph GPT50 USB 3.0. I live in Japan so I'm currently in contact with Sweetwater to see if I can get one shipped over here. There are apparently a few resellers here, but they're nowhere near where I live, and I can't find Glyph products on their website. 

ProjectM
I bought a new WD MyBook the other day and the geek I spoke to gave me a good advice:
 
"If the external HDD require its own power supply, it's a 7200RPM disk inside. If it runs on bus power, it's no more than 5400RPM, probably no more than 4800RPM" - even when it's USB3 and they brag of high speeds.
 
But if your VSTs load their samples into RAM, a fast disk might not be required but the samples may take a little longer to load. But if your VSTi's stream directly from disk, you should definitely get a 7200RPM disk to avoid glitching and other troubles.

I'm not sure if that's strictly true - there is a lot of emphasis on "green" hard drives these days which save power by offering variable spin speeds. Take the internal Caviars for example, the green ones doesn't always give you 7200 despite being internal. And I believe most of the big selling externals have this green power BS as well.....the way I look at it is, if they were guaranteeing a spin speed of 7200rpm then they would advertise that obvious selling point. But over the last few years they have stopped advertising the spin speed.

Paul P

scook
You could buy an enclosure and hard drive separately; allowing you to use the make and model of hard drive you want.

Yeah, and then stick in a 10,000 rpm Velociraptor or two.
 

With the exception of the Velociraptor part that's exactly what I did as well - one eSata and one USB external 7200 rpm drive, with the eSata serving for samples/audio and the USB for backups.

Apparently with your laptop you can put in a second internal drive?
 
http://www.aliexpress.com/item/Hard-Drive-2nd-HDD-SSD-Caddy-Bay-For-ASUS-N56VZ-N56VZ-DS71-N56VZ-ES71/621045199.html
 
Otherwise swap out your hard drive with a larger new one (clone old to new).
 
Then again what is using up all that disk space? Surely there is other stuff that could be moved offline. ?
 
 

CakeAlexS
Apparently with your laptop you can put in a second internal drive?
 
 
 
Otherwise swap out your hard drive with a larger new one (clone old to new).
 
Then again what is using up all that disk space? Surely that's other stuff that could me moved offline. ?
 
 

I actually wasn't aware that my laptop could accommodate another drive! Thanks for that info. I know I can expand my 12 GB of RAM up to 16 GB as well. Maybe I'll just do both at once.

My disk space is mainly being taken up by Cakewalk Projects (audio), as well as music files. I can't move my music files offline because I have them synced with iTunes and my iPhone. I have another laptop, an ACER, that I use for work. I'm considering moving all of my music from my ASUS to the ACER and just sncying my phone to that so I can clear up a ton of disk space. Maybe that will be my project for tonight :)