hard disk getting very hot

hard disk getting very hot, would a USB2 harddisk work ok with audio?

my computer (laptop) slows down after an hour or 2 recording into ableton. (i have to get the hoover on it to suck out the heat)

is USB2 fast enough to work with (for example) 8 stereo tracks?

Yes it should work fine. My old laptop(4 years now) had an early dodgy usb2 chipset and never gave me an end to problems with peripherals, but if yours is reasonably new there shouldn't be a problem. You'll get 8 stereo tracks easily and a lot more besides.

When you say slowing down, what do you mean? Are power mangement options kicking in? If so turn them off in control panel. If your laptop is overheating its probably a good idea to take the case off and give it a good clean, esp. the heatsink/fan. I find I have to do this every 18 months or so.

  ۞ Syntheme ۞ said:

hard disk getting very hot, would a USB2 harddisk work ok with audio?

 

my computer (laptop) slows down after an hour or 2 recording into ableton. (i have to get the hoover on it to suck out the heat)

 

is USB2 fast enough to work with (for example) 8 stereo tracks?

I seem to get slowdown too with Ableton but its probably 'cause i'm browsing and doing other shit at the same time so pc just gets slow. Mind you sounds like your problem is slightly different. I'd probably recommend firewire harddrive as oppose to usb. Me personally after I read an article it convinced me that for hardcore external units such as soundcards/harddrives etc that firewire is the way to go.

thanks for your replies.

It's like an overheating setting for the cpu is triggered when the temp goes to 44 degrees C. My energy saving settings are set to keep the processor at full speed all the time.

I tried opening the computer. I took all the screws out of the bottom, but still couldn't get to the fan area :&

I need to use the hoover on it quite a bit, but i can't hear the music while it's on.

It seems to be happening more since I put another 512Mb of ram in (upto 1gig).

The latop is resting on a block of aluminium, which draws a little bit of the heat away, but the fan doesn't seem to blow the heat out particularly fast.