[LAU] usb-2.0 harddisc

[James Cameron]

G'day Doc,

Adding another disk to a system on which you are slowly running out of
space just makes the problem worse.  You end up with double the amount
of stuff to clean up.

A USB hard disk *may* be sufficient for you, but it will depend on a few
factors;

1.  what data rate you can sustain from the CPU to the disk,

You can measure the data rate using the badblocks command, or by copying
various sized files followed by a sync command.  On one of my old USB 2.0
disks, I can generally get 30MByte/sec.  The modern ones are probably
faster.  Using a journalled filesystem *might* slow things down, but you
get a bit more reliability overall.  The trick is to test it out.

2.  what data rate you need at 16 tracks,

Of course this depends on your sampling rate.  16 tracks of raw audio at
16-bits stereo at, say, 48000Hz sample rate, means 16 x 16 x 2 x 48000
bits per second, which is 3MByte/sec.  Well within my old USB 2.0 disk
bandwidth.

3.  whether the USB is shared with other active devices transferring
data.

If the same USB controller is *also* being used by your audio device, or
some other device involved in the whole situation, then the total
bandwidth may be reduced by that.  When testing, use the other USB
devices to see if they impact the data rate.  Not all USB devices work
correctly.

Another idea ... if you have a network card, consider a consumer network
storage device.  Data rate to a network card is generally more
efficient, though it does depend on the card.  ;-}

Hope that helps.

-- 
James Cameron    mailto:quozl at us.netrek.org     http://quozl.netrek.org/