External Hard drive

I recently scored a 4 TB external storage device.....How can i incorporate this into my daw to free up some hard drive space on my computer and have it work with my sonar projects? I dont want to just hook it up without getting some advice on how i can utilize this properly with sonar.  Thx, Ken

This is what I have......hope it helps
http://www.buffalotech.com/products/desktop-hard-drives/drivestation/drivestation-duo-1
 
 

I use my external drive solely for backups of project files and sample libraries. Speed doesn't matter for that, just bulk capacity. Although there is no direct benefit to DAW activities, it does provide peace of mind. I only have 1TB, though. If I had a 4TB drive, I'd also be making backups of my entire system on it.

In general, a computer that has access to more than one magnetic drive (physically different drives, not a partitioned one) can perform faster, since the heads are locked onto arms and the entire drive (regardless of size or number of platters) can only read/write one file at a time. This is the same reasoning for the common recommendation of system/program drives being different from data drives. System/program drives should be the fastest drive possible, and often need to read quickly, with less writing (why SSDs excel here).
 
The best advice is what Geoff mentioned. Actually copy/paste a bunch of data to the new drive and see what its actual performance is. You could also copy a few project folders (or even "save as" from SONAR) to it and actually test to see how it performs working on a project that is resident on it.

GUIDANCE REQUESTED

I need to revive my dormant post....
Could someone give a detailed somewhat step by step method on how they utilize their external drive for sonar files to free up c drive disk space. I'm lost on what program files I can move to the external drive, how to direct sonar to utilize this drive.....without sending my smooth running experience into a nosedive. What I need is a tutorial of sorts, and I'm sure many people would benefit from this. I'm running out of c drive! HELLLLP

http://www.howtogeek.com/125923/7-ways-to-free-up-hard-disk-space-on-windows/
 
There may be a ton of crap on your hard drive installed by Windows and other programs. With a single drive, installation programs are not going to give you a choice of where to put that stuff. I ran WinDirStat on my drive and found an 8 GB file that was put there by the driver for a webcam that I had disconnected. Apparently it was trying to start the unconnected camera every few seconds and dutifully logging the fact that the camera was not connected to this log file for months. There is probably an 8GB hiberfil.sys file that is created (and recreated if you delete it) even if you never hibernate your machine. You can disable hibernation and that file will stay deleted.
 
A 500 GB drive is not big by current standards, but it should be able to hold Windows and Sonar without cramping. You can move all your Sonar projects except the one you are working on off the internal drive. There are tons of samples and loops etc. that install with Sonar and only samples that actually need to load in real time need to be on your fastest drive. You can uninstall any of the included softsynths, and any associated sample content, that you do not use. Moving these things can get very complicated because your initial installation tells Sonar etc. that they are still on your C: drive, so sometimes it makes more sense to uninstall, then re-install using a custom installation and pointing stuff you do not want on C: to your connected external drive. Have you tested your external drive as advised above to see if you can run projects stored there?

I took some time to check my c drive to see what files were eating up the most space.
My c drive still has 144 GB remaining but I know the end is nearing with the more time I invest in recording....

Here's a quick rundown of what I have going on....maybe someone can suggest where I can cut out some of the fat.

Cakewalk projects 36 GB
x86 program files 21 GB
Program files 16 GB
Cakewalk content 13 GB
Windows 24 GB
User files 120 GB (the space hog)
(User files sub folders) ⬇️⬇️⬇️⬇️
My documents 10GB
Downloads 47 GB
Desktop 56 GB

Thanks Scook....I will fool with this. Do you think adding another internal drive would be a benefit. I'm trying to add some long term usability to my system since "they" don't offer updated drivers for the VS-700 and Windows 10. It's looking like its Windows 7 for me for a while.

A second internal drive (either a 7200RPM HD or SSD) does give you options. Ultimately though, it just delays the decisions your are trying to avoid and increases the amount of live data to deal with. The external drive is fine for hording. There is a difference between hording (I too like to keep everything) and having everything online all the time. Of course, even the external drive needs a backup strategy if it is a sole repository data.

Weeding through my "downloads" file I took notice to outdated program updates like patches from X1a, X1b, X1c, X1d......I'm using sonar platinum now, can they be deleted? The same for old ez drummer updates. It's only megabytes of files but there are quite a few of them.

Question...I thought I was moving the contents of my downloads file to my external but I copied the folder. Now that it is copied onto my external, can I go through the the file that's on my "c" drive and delete the contents?

Yes sir...thank you!