External Drives for Live use?

[Palaver]

I am about to order the MacBook Pro and I am torn between upgrading to the 7200rpm (4-6 week wait due to lack of drives), or just getting the regular 5k rpm drive and an external?

 

Should I wait for the internal, or is it better to use an external anyway? The computer will be for live use, as well as recording. I will be using Ableton and Reason on it. I noticed in my Ableton booklet that it recommended a 7200rpm drive or faster... will the 5K laptop drive cause problems when loading approx. a dozen audio tracks?

 

Anyway, I'd love to hear from the performers that use their computers in the live setting and their experiences with external drives.

 

What external drives are suited towards audio recording/loading? Are there any particular makes suited towards live performance/reliability?

 

So in short:

1) Is it worth waiting for the 7200rpm internal drive on the MacBook Pro?

2) Am I better off using an external/huge storage capacity harddrive anyway (keeping in mind this is for both live and studio use)?

 

Thanks,

Phil

[Rabid]

I got the larger, slower internal drive because music software takes up so much space. For NI Kontakt samples and recording I use and external firewire 800 drive. If I had it to do over I would set that external drive up as a boot drive and install Logic directly on it along with all synths and audio. I still may to it but that it a lot of stuff to install and register again.

[Palaver]

Anyone with experience with external drives and live performance with laptops?

 

-Phil

[Meatball Fulton]

One big advantage of an external drive: get two and if one craps out you have a spare.

 

For that matter make it a bootable drive and have the apps as well as data on it, you could use it with a borrowed laptop in a pinch.

 

Drives have gotten so darn cheap might as well have a couple anyway.