Anyone use one for audio?  If so, any recs?
 
Thanks much.
 
m

Never. I use them for archiving only.  I only use desktops.

I do, on a MacBook Pro though, not a PC.

I've experimented a bit and find a 7200rpm USB3 3.5" drive works OK, but I've not tried streaming more than 24 tracks at a time in that setup. A 5,400rpm bus-powered drive can also do reasonably well, again so long as it is USB3. Putting an SSD on a USB connection doesn't make much performance difference to an HDD other than you can't send TRIM commands over USB at all, so the drive may tend to slow down somewhat as it gets used.

It helps if you partition the external drive into e.g. two partitions then use the first partition for audio spooling. That's the partition which will be physically nearest the outside edge of the platters and therefore, because it has the same rotational speed as the inner partition but a greater circumference, have a higher read/write rate.

Unless you have a high track count you might find a USB3 external drive works pretty well but the only way to know is to try one and see.

An SSD connected via Thunderbolt 2 is as fast as an internal SDD, and Thunderbolt does support TRIM.

kitekrazy1
Never. I use them for archiving only.  I only use desktops.

Likewise.
 
And to add, I would NEVER use them for audio, the IO is just too slow

Bristol_Jonesey

kitekrazy1
Never. I use them for archiving only.  I only use desktops.

Likewise.
 And to add, I would NEVER use them for audio, the IO is just too slow

I disagree, I have been using an old 500 GB 7200 RPM Western Digital External for audio for YEARS with no issues. Granted I typically ONLY do digital Audio and NO MIDI, but I do use several plugins and Pro Channel plugins.
 
I guess I am saying, it depends on what you want to do with an external drive. 
 
If you are loading up TONS of Kontact MIDI, then No, I wouldn't use external either.

MIDI doesn't use much hard drive space or bandwidth at all, other than storing the tiny amount of data the MIDI itself consists of. Way back when, before there even was such a thing as a computer multi-track audio system and hard drives were an optional extra on many systems we had capable computer-based MIDI sequencers.

Software synths/samplers that use a huge audio samples library are a different matter.

tlw
Software synths/samplers that use a huge audio samples library are a different matter.

 
Yep, that is what I meant by MIDI.  Please excuse my ignorance since I don't (typically) use them.