USB Key or HardDisk?

[darkecho_]

I use my Laptop mainly for audio recording, and I have recently been told that I need to get a secondary harddrive for the sole purpose of writing the streaming audio coming into my computer.

they say to have one drive accessing the program and the normal OS junk, and then to have another drive for storing the audio and the project files, samples, etc... so I got to thinking,
maybe to keep myself more portable, Instead of having an external harddrive that would need additional power cords, why dont I just track my audio to a USB key?

does anyone know what the actual speed of say a 100gb IDE harddrive is (on average) versus a usb flash key? I was thinking that maybe the harddrive would be overal faster and thus, better for this purpose, but then I realized that USB2.0 only allows what, 60 megs a sec to pass through, so if these are both above or near that, it wouldnt matter really, right?

 

[unhappy_mage]

A 2.5" hard drive is another option; several exist which draw power from the USB bus. That'd have more storage space and better speed.

USB flash devices are pretty slow, but for audio it might be fast enough. How many tracks do you record/playback at once, and at what bit depth and sample rate?

 

[chubby bunny]

I could be misinformed, but from the way I understand it, flash devices have a limited write lifespan, so they might not be the best option if it's going to have to deal with a lot of activity.

I agree with the dude above, me-- a drive similar to this one would keep you from having to worry about those external power cords.

 

[darkecho_]

I think that is just the old flash, the new flash stuff I think has such a high write lifetime that it dwarfs harddrives. I think flash is safer to use than a harddrive and will last longer in pretty much every case..

I record at 24bit/44.1

and I am usually not tracking any more than 4 audio tracks in at a time..

actually, I do a lot of VST work, so I guess I just need somewhere to keep a backup of my stuff.