Asus laptop-16gb ram, lots of power(3rd or 4th gen Intel i7, not haswell, one before that) dedicated nvidea Graphics, etc, etc.
os drive is  Intel SSD 330 series 180gb. Then replaced optical drive with the sata III 7200 rpm 750gb that came with the Asus. Sonar installed on SSD. Samples on the 2nd drive. Can I put the audio files on the same drive as the samples? Should I partition it first? It's for play back, not recording. I am trying to avoid bringing an ext HD for audio files.
Or is an ext usb 3.0 ssd or sata my only option?
 
Is a fast usb 3.0 flash drive an option for audio or sample files? Like patriot 64gb extreme or something like it
 
Hope this makes sense
Thanks

Not real sure what audio files you are talking about.
 
The reason to partitioning is smaller disk segments to defrag. Since everything you are putting on the drive are write once files, there won't be a need to defrag. Skip partitioning. Unless you are using streaming samples, it does not matter what else is on the drive.

Sorry I wasn't clearer. Perhaps a better way to explain is simply if I want to record on the laptop-where would I put the project folder? I use midi for everything but my vocals and all guitars. Some of my projects are incomplete so they have some midi files in them along side the audio files of my guitars, vocal, etc

If you are not streaming samples, put the projects on the sample drive.

OK Thanks-Actually streaming samples? Not sure what that means-streaming as opposed to using ram?