What do you use your External Harddrive for?

[KingTrollestia]

I've noticed that a lot of DJ's and artists have external harddrives. And since my friend got me one for Christmas, I wanted to get some ideas on what I can do to get the best use out of it. I know that most people store their samples and their completed songs on them, since it takes the strain off of the internal harddrive of a Mac.

[itroitnyah]

I use mine to skateboard down the local ski hill

All goofiness aside, that's pretty much the idea of an external harddrive. Somebody here could probably give you a long detailed explanation as to why it stress off an internal harddrive, or anything about an external harddrive that I don't know.

[Rainbow_Rage]

when you have multiple harddrives (internal or external) it allows data to be taken from multiple drives instead of everything off of the same one. This will allow things to load faster but once they are loaded to memory there is no difference.

[Navron]

With USB 3.0 now standard with newer computers, most large externals (1TB+) have been taking advantage of the faster transfer speeds.

Because of the size of sample libraries these days, you're pretty much required to own an external hard drive just to store them on, otherwise your hard drive will be full before you know it.

With the transfer speed of USB 3.0 and the storage capabilities of external hard drives, you can own a near limitless number of sample libraries and implement them into your tracks with no delay in instrument loading. A lot of DJs use externals as well to store their song collection.

I use my external for:
- Sample Libraries
- VST Installers
- NI Updates
- Folders containing patches I've made for various instruments.
- Folders for completed songs, WIPs, and Ableton Live performances.
- A Master Project file pre-organized with all the folder tracks, drum panning, and DAW workspace arrangements (Saves time so I don't have to set that up manually each time I start a new song.)

[ChocolateChicken]

Could one also put various plugins on external drives and still be able to use said plugins with a DAW on computer's standard internal drive? I understand that East West plugins take up quite a lot of memory, so external drives seem like the solution to that.

[Rainbow_Rage]

Could one also put various plugins on external drives and still be able to use said plugins with a DAW on computer's standard internal drive? I understand that East West plugins take up quite a lot of memory, so external drives seem like the solution to that.

of course, just make sure your daw is set to search for VSTs on the external drive. Location of a file does not matter, they all end up on the same computer, when a program is running it normally will be in memory anyway

[Captain Ironhelm]

simply for backing up. losing information is not fun.

[Watashig]

Why not just add more internal drives? SATA should run better than USB3, and it has less load on the CPU.

...Unless you're on a laptop :S

[HMage]

I use it to store my time machine backups

I also use it for external sample libraries -- you don't need a fast hard drive to use them in your projects -- I have it on my FireWire 400 and I don't even feel that it's external.

[LoreRD]

Sample libraries, backups and music.

[senntenial]

I use my toshiba 300 gig for my Albion and NI libraries and my other TB external for backups.

[CaptainFluffatun]

Housing my immense amount of Kontakt libraries

[Foxtrot89]

Mine is mostly to house old content. I have three reformats worth of backed up stuff on my external. On top of that, I have a handful of libraries. (Eastwest and kontakt mostly.) libraries are getting damn large these days. 60gb libraries used to be a rarity, now it's pretty common.

[the4thImpulse]

Currently my external is only used for backups. In the future I plan to have a separate hard drive for samples and music (for live performances), preferably an SSD, and another for programs/OS and the like.

[Nine Volt]

I use one for backups, that's pretty much it. It's only a little 16gb flash drive though, so it's pretty much full already.

[Conduit]

Kontakt libraries mostly, but I just got a nice 3tb one thanks to boxing day prices so I expect I'll use it for more in the future.

[MRPPony]

I still haven't decided on whether or not I should spend $500 and build another computer for music only (for the sake of disciplining myself and not mix my music work with my graphics/photo/3D/video production), but currently I have 4 external HDDs: A 2TB in my desktop which I use for raw lossless renders of my video productions/3D renders, another 2TB I use as a backup for my mac only which I have my music for DJing on that and on my mac, a 3TB I use to throw pretty much anything I want to clear up space on my main 1TB HDD, and a 500GB I use to transfer files between mac/pc because they are not friendly towards one another. There are programs to help that but that 500GB I had since I was 15 and its still working so why spend money on a program for something I can do for free, right? Just have to enjoy the slow transfer speed.

[SevenUpPony]

Yea I'm pretty much the same, I store all my excessive cute pony pictures and wallpapers in one folder, random pics in another. Sample packs in another and a whole folder for Kontakt libraries organized by Company etc. Then VST setup copies so I don't lose stuff and I keep MIDIs/stems/Project Files in another chunk of folder. c: Although, I got a 2tb WD External hard drive for Xmas so.... I'll be utilizing that now. :3 But anyways yea that's the basis of what they're used for.

[TheMalenEst]

Use it for backup. I once lost all my files and i wont let it happening again. Use it for other stuff to such as, Pictures, Presets i made, Wallpapers And movies... 130 of them.

[Mondogreen]

My sample library's only about 10GB and I don't even use 40% of it. Some of you sample hoarders should explain yourselves this instant.

[K3WRO]

I use mine to keep all my songs, wav. drum samples and VST presets I make

I also keep some project files in there, so I won't lose them like last time :'<

[indeable]

so i can have a separate bootable copy of my hardrive.

[Sonarch]

lol I use mine to hold all of my music, since it was filling up my hard drive. But my computer isn't very high tech and I don't have too many high-memory consuming files like sample libraries, since I haven't really done anything with my DAW that would warrant me getting them. Not yet.

I'll probably get one when I get a new computer for college though.