Adding External Drives to Macbook Pro

[BrentWoody]

Greetings,

I am running DP6, along with various virtual instruments, on a Macbook Pro 2.2 Core 2 Duo with 4G RAM (the max on this machine) and a 320G HD, 10.6.3. I want to add two external drives, using the internal drive as the boot and application drive, one drive with instrument samples, and one with DP6 projects. My question is, what is the best/fastest/most reliable way to do this? Is it to add a PCI card to the MBP and connect to an ESATA drive (if so, which card and which drive)? USB 2.0? Firewire? Etc. Any input is really appreciated.

Thanks!
Brent

[jweisbin]

Does your Macbook Pro have an express slot? The newer 15" models don't, only the 17" models do. If it does, then you can get an express card SATA adapter and use that to connect external SATA drives. However then you will lose the use of that slot for other things, such as the UAD2/laptop card. Because I use one of those, I use external firewire 800 drives made by OWC instead. I find them fast enough for my needs. In fact, when I am traveling, I use a tiny little 500 GB 2.5" "pocket" drive via USB 2.0 to stream libraries from, and it works fine.

Having said that, if you want the absolute fastest performance possible, then the SATA card connected to an external striped RAID box would be the way to go. Not so easy to travel with though.

[Frodo]

Indeed-- the beauty of the MacBook Pro over the MacBook is that the MBP has a card slot.

Go here and scroll down for a diversity of options, whether FW or otherwise:

http://www.sonnettech.com/product/macbo ... index.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

There are also other companies that make similar products, so please know that I do not endorse Sonnet nor work for them in any capacity. I will say that Sonnet's stuff has always been Mac-friendly without fail in my long miserable history of hardware disasters.

The options need not be limited to firewire. If you "dare", going the eSATA route will likely render better results simply because of the better performance specs.

Highly recommended:
http://www.sonnettech.com/product/tempo ... ess34.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Just sayin'. Not preachin'.

[HCMarkus]

Hobbits never preach, they just speak truth. SATA is the way to go. Save that Firewire bus for your audio i/o.

[jweisbin]

Indeed-- the beauty of the MacBook Pro over the MacBook is that the MBP has a card slot.
.

The newest model 15" MBP's do not have card slots, they have SD slots. Be warned.

[Frodo]

Indeed-- the beauty of the MacBook Pro over the MacBook is that the MBP has a card slot.
.

The newest model 15" MBP's do not have card slots, they have SD slots. Be warned.

OMG-- you are absolutely correct in this. Things are suddenly "different" in a way that I'm no longer sure about.

I consider myself duly warned.

[jweisbin]

There's also this option, if you don't mind having to use an external DVD drive:
http://eshop.macsales.com/item/Other%20 ... DDAMBS0GB/

[BrentWoody]

Thanks, everyone, for the replies and the helpful information. My MBP does indeed have a slot and I do use Firewire for my audio i/o. So, I think eSATA is the solution.

Thanks.
Brent