well, an ipod is slow. i dont know the exact speed but i just bought a 750 gigabyte hard drive for my new computer, 7200 rpm, 16 MB cache. it was only like 160 bucks. throw that in a casing and i dont see how there would be a problem?

[quote=tomtom8p]i have been told not to get an external HD for recording onto because it puts to much stress or something on the internal one. /quote]

Are you sure you didn't get the wrong message? DO get an external drive because recording to your system drive is a no no. Now if you are using a desktop you can just get another drive. Laptop: ok get an external.

As far as using your ipod. That just sounds ludicrous.

oops lol that was a typo "not" shouldn't be there. and that's ok but why is it bad to use my ipod,

Speed certainly is in question. You need a reasonably fast drive in order to avoid errors while simultaneously reading and writing to disk. Do you normally store files on your iPod other than mp3s or Mpegs?

ya i did all the time, especially when needed to transfer files from one computer to another

i use my ipod for transferring files as well. it works great but i dont think it would work well for reading / writing when recording. i played a game off my ipod in the past and it would every so often freeze because it wasnt fast.

Well, the only thing to do is try it. You'll find out if it's a good idea or not.

In my opinion the best thing to do is use your internal drive to reocrd onto, but after reocrding transfer it to your external, that can be ipod, or external drive. There are also websites that tell you how two tweak your computer for audio reocrding. By limiting the memory on your internal, it will optimize your system. This website is a good start http://www.pcmus.com/TweakXP.htm
but just search "audio recording tweaks" to get more info.

The point is, its good to have your audio backed up on an external, when you want to mix something you recorded just load it back up onto your computer. So I would suggest getting an external hard drive, that way you have a dedicated source holding all your tracks. Because it really sucks when your computer crashes and you lose everything, fyi, ipods sometimes crash as well.

In my opinion the best thing to do is use your internal drive to reocrd onto,

Here I go, once again parroting Hueseph...
If by internal you mean "system drive", you are mistaken.
You should have a dedicated, separate drive for audio.
There are countless posts on this site that cover harddrives, look them up.
[[url=http://[/URL]="http://recording.or…"]Here's a recent one.[/]="http://recording.or…"]Here's a recent one.[/]

My bad, I did mean a separate internal drive, as in not the same one you have windows on, thats the best thing. I just picking internal, because, you can usually only get a direct SATA connection with an internal drive.

FWIW, I record to external drives all the time. Using USB 2.0, Firewire or eSATA and never have an issue. In a pinch (all hard drives are full- happened only once) I've recorded to my system drive. It was only a few tracks and I won't do it again. It was slow and choppy and seemed to be begging for a crash.

Using the iPod as a recording drive...not a great idea. They are only optimized to provide slightly better than stereo Red Book throughput and would choke if you attempt to record more than a few tracks to it.