External Harddrive

[joker]

I already used Search and couldn't find what i was looking for.

I was wondering if external hard drive, could be used as regular hard drive.
I am a music producer and i have large quantities of music samples and virtual instruments;

These sample libraries and instruments take up a lot of space, so i was wondering if i could the following.
Install the application on my internal hard drive and use these samples/instruments which are stored on the external hard drive;

Thank you in advance.

 

[Samstoned]

thats what I do with movies
I edit movies and such make special intro's After effects
all backed up on external drives

 

[joker]

but when u editing it, do u move it on ur internal harddrive ?

 

[N3051M]

if you want to..

although its better copying (just whatever files you're using) it to your project folder so in case you don't have your external hdd you can still work on the project.

some daws let you work off the hdd itself.. what program are you going to be using?

 

[joker]

thats the thing, i dont want to copy the files from ext. hdd to internal to work with files. i want to use it straight from ext. hdd.
i have no idea what client to use for that, i dont even know how those appz are classified.

for me purpose of buying hdd, is to use that space as if it was my internal hard-drive, but with advantages of plug-and-play and safety of data.

 

[SNGX1275]

Yes. Except you probably don't want to go with USB because it is going to be slower. Maybe not much, I don't remember the details. But there are eSATA drives (external SATA) that should be just as fast as internal.

I wouldn't install the program to the drive. The program will still have to be installed on the computer you are using on, so it doesn't care if it is C:\Program files or G:\Program Files. If you install it to the external and move it to another computer it won't run unless the program has also been installed on that computer. Installing to G (or whatever the external gets assigned) will work if you install it on both machines to that drive, but it is just simpler to install to C.

Once you have the external hooked up, the programs don't know/care that it is an external, it is just a drive to them, so you can work with your files on the drive without any problems.

Externals are just internal drives in an external enclosure. So their reliability isn't going to be any higher, so it is always a good idea to have backups of important data.