It would definitely help to get your audio files off your primary drive. Audio files can be relatively large and having them on a separate drive that isn't full of file fragments will help with both read and write times. Don't buy anything less than 7200rpm.

Good luck.

To put it in simpler terms, you always want to be recording to & pulling from, a separate dedicated hard drive for all recording purposes. You don't want to use your system drive for anything other than, your operating system, programs, some long-term storage of files.

In your software you may even need to select your options to direct the software to write to the storage drive, not the system drive temporary file. So set up your software to direct it to your external storage drive as your temporary folder/drive as well.

Drives, like myself are cheap
Ms. Remy Ann David

would a usb 2.0 external HD work in this scenario?or an external firewire HD to a pci express x1 firewire adapter card?(i have no legit firewire input).
or are these to latency ridden and go internal?
My internal hd is pata.
I will be upgrading in the future and i was thinking if i get an external i will use it on next computer also,rather than waste $ on a PATA HD.

"(i have no legit firewire input)."

You stole a firewire input?
Or are you referring to the one drawn on the front of the case?

i wish u would read?
"or an external firewire HD to a pci express x1 firewire adapter card?(i have no legit firewire input). "

its a pci card with firewire inputs

is it worth getting???????????
because now i have PATA hd(internal=lame)

First of all: Internal drives perform noticably better than external FW or USB drives. Even P-ATA ones, that aren't even outrun by the average S-ATA drive, outrun any USB or FW drive. External drives are often used with laptops because most laptops can only fit one internal drive. Sometimes it is an exchange medium between PCs and laptops. There is no need to have an external drive with a desktop PC when it can fit in the case.

Your motherboard doesn't have any S-ATA headers?

If it doesn't and you want to stick to that PC you have two options:

Buy a second P-ATA drive and attach it on the second P-ATA interface.
Good: no extra stuff needed.
Bad: P-ATA drives are on the way out and a tad more expensive than equal (in terms of GB) S-ATA drives.
Buy a PCIe card with S-ATA connectors and a S-ATA drive.
Good: The choice in drives is much bigger and the P-ATA aren't getting any cheaper. It will also fit into your new computer, if you buy one.
Bad: It will cost you an extra PCIe card.

Make sure your PSU can handle another drive!! I try to avoid using exclamation marks, but in this case: a PSU is a very underestimated part of a PC, still. Since you have only one drive in there, it would suprise me if it couldn't handle another one, but check it nonetheless.

shredder88 wrote: i wish u would read?
"or an external firewire HD to a pci express x1 firewire adapter card?(i have no legit firewire input). "

Go, get a sense of humour, re-read my post, and come back. Or do I need to fill it with smilies to make it clearly a joke?

And internal drives are not bad - as cfaalm said.