External hard drive and laptop questions

Hello,

I need to buy a laptop for when I'm traveling and I intend to put Logic Pro X and a few other needed programs on it. I'm not sure the best way to store the Sample Libraries. I have about 300GB worth of libraries. Should I buy an external drive and access it for the samples?

A 500GB SSD drive runs about $200 on Amazon and should hold everything, plus some additions in the future. If I go that route, I could purchase the Macbook with a 128gb drive and only keep programs on it.

I guess the question is, would it be wiser to buy a bigger hard drive internally and keep the samples on the internal? Is that the preferred way of doing this or is an external drive smarter?

Thanks for the help. I figure many of you have laptops and I appreciate any comments you may have.

Daniel

 

I could also go with USB 3.0, which is way cheaper. Right now, my samples are on a fusion drive, so I'm sort of clueless on how fast the drive needs to be to work smoothly with Logic.
Thanks

 

Depends how much of a power user you are. Sample libraries *greatly* benefit from SSD's, so if you have the budget to put the samples on an internal SSD, that would be my first choice. USB (even USB3) might be somewhat slower. I'm not yet clear on how USB3 might affect seek times, which is one of the primary stats that results in effective sample streaming.

If you're not a power user, you might find that an external drive works just fine.

 

Thanks for the help. I'm sure it's always better to go bigger on the internal when possible, but that sure drives up the price.

If anyone else has input or experience, I would certainly appreciate it.