Networked hard-drives

fatrabbit · Post by **fatrabbit** » Thu Jul 03, 2008 5:02 pm

If I had a 7200rpm USB Hard-drive, let's call it Bob.

And I wanted to get a Network Storage Adapter, let's call that Steve.
http://www.maplin.co.uk/Module.aspx?Mod ... ve&doy=3m7

Would this be any good for storing samples to use in Ableton/music production?

My default guess is no, because Bob is USB (even though it is 7200rpm) and Steve exists on a network. But then again I wondered whether anyone had any experience of this kind of setup. Maybe the speeds are fast enough?

Otherwise it will only be good for archives and general multimedia (which is no bad thing).

Machinate · Post by **Machinate** » Thu Jul 03, 2008 5:04 pm

what you should get instead is a proper NAS, in other words a case in which you put the drive itself. Then gigabit back and forth, and then you COULD work with the sounds in Live.

fatrabbit · Post by **fatrabbit** » Thu Jul 03, 2008 5:11 pm

Machinate wrote:what you should get instead is a proper NAS, in other words a case in which you put the drive itself. Then gigabit back and forth, and then you COULD work with the sounds in Live.

Thanks, do you have any particular recommendations of units?

Machinate · Post by **Machinate** » Thu Jul 03, 2008 5:15 pm

not in particular, no . "NAS" search at maplin only brings up two NAS enclosures, none of which is gigabit.
this one looks cool though:
http://www.maplin.co.uk/Module.aspx?Mod ... AS&doy=3m7

riotschool · Post by **riotschool** » Thu Jul 03, 2008 6:16 pm

check the devices nethear or iomega are offering. cheap but fast (especially iomega)

adventurepants_ · Post by **adventurepants_** » Fri Jul 04, 2008 2:59 am

youre not going to get anywhere near gigabit speeds, normally you take the top throughput number, and halve it for realistic speed.

If its for home then a NAS will probably be fine and any slowdowns wont matter, and youd be using your local drive anyway for caching any temp files.

I use my NAS (100mb) to stream movies off wirelessly and works ok even at 54mb speed, but multitrack real time audio processing is a bit more demanding.

fatrabbit · Post by **fatrabbit** » Fri Jul 04, 2008 10:22 am

Ok thanks!

dirtybomb · Post by **dirtybomb** » Fri Jul 04, 2008 4:07 pm

you can easily build and configure your own nas with freenas: www.freenas.org

use any old crappy computer you have laying around and throw a bunch of drives in it. it supports hardware and software raid, and has an easy web gui. it also has some nice 'spindown' parameters you can configure that will likely extend the life of your drives.