Hello All, Please forgive such a shameful lack of knowledge....... I am trying to figure out which hard drive to purchase and, how to operate. I have this computer Sweetwater Custom Computing Creation Station 400 | Sweetwater.com It has 2 drives. I am wanting to add a 3rd drive. One drive for programs, another for audio, and a 3rd for sound libraries. It looks like this is what most suggest. From what I have read it looks like using an external usb drive is not ideal for accessing audio or soft synth sounds while recording. However, does this apply to eSATA drives? Which would be better, getting a 3rd internal drive or getn an external ESATA drive and use the eSATA port? If both the same I guess cheaper is better? If internal is the better option (cost and function), is it simple to hook up? Is it simply a matter of properly setting up the drive as say a slave with the jumper....plugging it in and seeing the new drive letter on the PC? Is that it, ready to load samples etc. on the drive? Do I need to format it or do any extra stuff? Anything I should be aware of and look for while installing? Is there anything else on the topic I did not ask but should have? lol Thank you kindly for any help in putting me on the correct path.

I just bought 2 Seagate Barracudas-Yes they are plug-n-play atleast on my windows 7 system.

They come with install software to make install simple if not plug-n-play

http://www.bestbuy.com/si...p=1#tab=specifications

I think you want 7200 rpm, 64 Cache and this one is upto 6gb on the transfer.  

For $110 ya cant beat it

One thing I learned with the big stores is at this time of year the model number means nothing.

The 2 TB Barracuda with these specs are apparently ALL THE SAME regardless of the model number.  

Places like BestBuy have there OWN model numbers put on them to stop the price matching.

eSATA will yield the full speed of the HD
USB3 with a good controller will yield the full speed of the HD

USB3 with the controller integrated into the chipset (Intel Z series motherboards) will top out ~500MB/Sec.
Many eSATA controllers top out at ~250MB/Sec
If you use an eSATA port via the SATA-III controller integrated into the chipset, you can reach speeds up to 600MB/Sec.

No single conventional HD is close to saturating SATA-II (300MB/Sec)... so for single HDs it's pretty much a moot point.  
If you're connecting a fast SATA-III SSD, it makes a *HUGE* difference.
If you're running two/four external drives in RAID-0, the controller (USB3 or eSATA) makes a huge difference. 

Just so you know....from my experience....

The USB external drives will work just fine. I ran a lappy with a 350G HDD in it. I had all my programs on the C drive.... Sonar, and the various synths. 

I installed the sample libraries to a 500G USB external. And one of the programs I use came pre-installed on a solid state 160G external USB HDD.  I ran them all

Since most of the synths DO NOT run the samples from the drive in real time, but they actually load the samples to memory for a given instrument, running from the USB drives never caused me any issues while recording and working on the lap top in this manner. 

I now have a custom built DAW with all the programs and synths on the C drive, the sample libraries are on a second internal HDD and I still use the USB drive but it is a backup/storage drive. 

thanks for all the help everyone.
Greatly appreciated.