Only have one hard drive on my computer and projects and sample libraries are getting bigger, so guessing I need a second hard drive? will this increase performance quite a bit? should I put all my sample libraries on it? should I put my actual song/projects on it? if so, should they both be running of the same second hard drive? will am external usb drive give me good enough performance, or should it be an internal one? Thanks so much for any info on this

Consensus is 3 hard drives is best. one for OS and programs, one for Audio/projects and one for samples. So if you can afford it add a couple of drives if you want to optimize performance.

thanks for the info, can anyone help with the other questions I posted?

The sample drive location depends a lot on how the samples are being used. Basically there are applications that load a subset of the sample library into memory and serve them up from there, and applications that do real time streaming of the samples from the hard drive as they are called. The former benefit more from more memory, and not much from the location or speed of the drive they are loaded from, the latter from a dedicated ultrafast hard drive or SSD.

In a two drive system, the second drive should have the audio/project data recorded to it, as this is mission critical. If you flub a sample load, you can usually get a do over, freeze some tracks etc and not lose any irreplaceable data. Live recording of a performance is a one shot deal.

I like my os , sonar, project files and vst's on one drive.
sample libs on the other.
 
you can always use on hd and take your projects to an external or second HD.
imo theres no need to have more than 10 project files (CWP) on one HD.
if you need more 20 tops. anymore than that,swap them out.
I never have more than 25/30 GB of projects on one hd.

thanks for the tips USB drive?

I have an external USB 3.0 WD drive @7200 RPM.
Used to use it when I was using my laptop for recording.
No problems at all. It works just as well as an internal drive.
It was also only connected to a USB 2.0 port so I'm guessing that if connected to a USB 3.0 it would be even better.

Mike 

I only use external drives for backups, but in that role at least USB 3 is many times faster. If you need to go external use either USB 3 or eSATA over USB2.