basic advice: using a firewire drive with my imac logic DAW

[jasonb]

hi, very basic, dumb question here please.

i just bought a Maxtor 250 GB firewire drive for my iMac (aluminum, 2007), and i'm using Logic Express.

now, i always thought that your music files should be stored on your external drive, right?
when i choose to save a new file in Logic, it seems to choose my Logic folder on my imac hard drive as the destination. i can change this and save to my firewire drive.

should i be doing this?

or... do i save it in my Logic folder on my hardrive and make a BACKUP on the firewire drive?
should it be in both places or just the firewire drive?

also, i looked in Preferences but i can't seem to make the firewire drive a default global destination for all new files. of course, i can choose the Firewire, and a folder within it, but shortcuts are nice.

that said, something's telling me that if Logic by default has a folder on my hardrive that i should be using it still.

confused.1. where do i save my files now? 2. where do i open my files from, once saved? 3. can i choose my firewire drive as a global default?

thanks. i now this is basic.

[davidaltemeier]

1. the external

2. the external

3. i dunno.

Your instincts are right, someone who uses logic will have to comment on #3.

[jasonb]

thanks, Dave. i always assume things are more complicated than they are. the default saving on the firewire is no biggie.

cheers.

p.s. can anyone comment about TIme Machine and saving on my firewire? does Time Machine still make an archive of files not on my imac drive but my firewire drive?

thanks again.

[Swami Digital]

p.s. can anyone comment about TIme Machine and saving on my firewire? does Time Machine still make an archive of files not on my imac drive but my firewire drive?

I don't think so, but it may be wrong. Personally, I only stored my sample libraries and time machine backups on my external firewire drive, and those sample libraries never got into the time machine backups. But I think you can set this kind of stuff in the time machine settings.

-D

[davidaltemeier]

it doesn't back up anything else that's on the same drive.

you can choose to pre/include whatever else you want.

i personally do what Swami does, exclude all the sample libraries 'cause they're huge and i've got 'em all on disc anyway...