Typically, they use slower drives in those prefab external drives. What I did was to grab a usb hdd cradle/enclosure, and use desktop hdd's for recording. The specs on those drives are much more up front.

That's actually a good idea. I've got a good one I recently bought when I lost my main pc. To copy over my data. I'll give that a shot and see how it works.

If anyone has successfully used a flash/thumb drive or 5400rpm external drive successfully, it would be good to know.
Thanks

Mine is an i7 system, also using a 512GB SSD (in may case M.2) system - I find the speed of the thing is perfect for DAW things, I have everything on that (my worry is beginning to run out of space on it ), we're talking DAW system here, my work projects reside on a fast HD, just as a storage medium - not worried really about how fast I can load/save a song.

I may need to think about getting a 1TB M.2 (or higher performance type) to have everything residing on it. I wouldn't recommend a thumbdrive for actual development, but certain as a means of backing up DAW system and projects.

Just my opinion, FWIW - prolly, I'll get lots of ppl trying to set me straight - such is the nature of the kind ppl on this forum

So leosutherland, you have an I7 with a 512GB SSD as your C: drive?
Are you using this main system drive for music development or do you have a secondary data drive in your system?

Also, how many GB of ram do you have if you don't mind me asking?

Yup all on the C drive (D drive for the storage of songs, libraries and stuff are all on the C drive). Memory 16Gb (per my sig ) on main machine, not sure how fast the memory on my MSI is, but never had problems with it.

EDIT: sorry, SSDs on both machines are Samsung 500GB

OK. So you have S1 installed on C: but load/manipulate/save the songs on secondary D: drive. That's how I originally had it.

OK taking this post and your question about more RAM I think I see what you are dealing with here...

If you are having dropout issues while recording, I would be looking elsewhere for the cause. An SSD-only system is actually as good as it gets. An external HD is not going to solve your dropouts and neither is more RAM. That sounds like a buffer size issue or latency caused by other drivers/processes on your laptop running. Have you run latencymon to test your system? Maybe you are trying to record with CPU-intensive plugins inserted on other tracks?

Also, what i5 processor do you have? There is an enormous difference in performance between the current 8th-generation and even the previous 7th-gen. (My 8th-gen i5 outperforms most 7th-gen i7's for example.)

What are you recording when this happens? One thing at a time? Multiple tracks? What is your interface?

darrenporter1, thanks for all the good info. Yes, I have 1 SSD and 8GBs.

I have not ran latencymon. But I will as soon as I can to see.

I use mostly Presonus plugins with a few Waves I bought. The most CPU intensive plugin I use is probably Valhalla Vintageverb.

My processor is an I5-1021OU @ 1.60GHz 2.11GHz

I've got a song I was working on when my previous computer died. It's a song with about 25 tracks...drums, guitars, keyboards and vocals.
I've got an Audiobox.
Earlier today I was trying to redo a guitar track. I'd be either playing the song back or actually recording the new track and the computer would like hitch. Kind of like when you're playing a video game your system isn't quite up to snuff for. I figured with me having a SSD maybe it was that the song was on my system drive and the OS was doing something. This happened about 2 or 3 times withing like 30 minutes to an hour. I then got my Sabrent HDD enclosure with my WD 1TB 7200 hooked up via USB where the original song was. I did some more playing/recording on the track using the Sabrent and it never seemed to do it again.
I figured it might be that the song I was working on was on the system drive and the OS was doing something. But using an SSD I'm like you...it doesn't seem like it would make a difference.

I ran latencymon on my Dell laptop and not good news. It has problems handling real time audio. It says one or more DPC routines that belong to a driver appears to be executing for too long. It said it may be related to power management. It recommends disabling CPU throttling.
I had initial fears about using a laptop for S1 for this reason.

I went into the BIOS and there is no setting for this. I've also tried adjusting the power settings but that doesn't seem to help.

I wonder if anyone else has had success using a Dell laptop...maybe adjusting the cpu throttling or solving this problem in another way.

Alas, if I don't find a solution soon I'll have to return the laptop before my return window runs out

Here is a great writeup that I refer people to when it comes to DAW performance. It is written from the perspective of FL Studio, but the non-FL Studio stuff absolutely applies to all DAWs. https://www.image-line.com/support/flst ... pp_opt.htm

But even things about buffer settings in and stuff in FL all have corresponding settings in S1 and/or your interface control panel.

Also, disable your WiFi connector while you use S1 and see if that helps.

With regards to your laptop... honestly, that is not a DAW-worthy CPU. It is built for extreme low-power consumption and its Passmark score is not great to be honest. If you are in your window and you can squeak-out a little more cash you can get a better-equipped computer. The fact that it is a laptop per-se is not the issue... there are LOTS of people who use laptops very effectively without issue. Consider visiting the Dell Outlet store online and you can find something there for a bargain. Now don't get me wrong, you do NOT need an i9 or even an i7... if you got an i5-8400 or better you can get a great computer for home DAW use for not much $$$.

OK I'm gonna be late for work... more later...

I bit the bullet and went ahead and upgraded to an I7-9750, 16GB and a 512 SSD main drive. All problems solved.
But thanks for the help and input...invaluable.

Glad to hear hope you didn't have to pay too much

bluegorilla wroteI bit the bullet and went ahead and upgraded to an I7-9750, 16GB and a 512 SSD main drive. All problems solved.
But thanks for the help and input...invaluable.

Be careful not to fill up your internal SSD with large libraries etc. Plugins are OK to install usually on your C drive but if you are building up large sample libraries etc they should be going onto some other drives. I have got 3 other drives connected apart from the C drive. 2 library drives (1 TB each) and an audio drive as well. You want to keep your audio separate. Those audio projects can build up as well. Any decent 7200 rpm drives will be fine for the other stuff.

Having to pay extra is never good. But it was not too much over the original laptop I bought. I returned the other one.
And yes, I'm going to keep plenty of room on the system SSD. That's a priority.

This new system rocks, but I have a new issue you guys might know how to solve.

There is some process that runs every once in a while (I haven't even been on the computer long enough to get a real feel of how often. My guess is maybe it runs every couple of hours or so. When not playing/recording it's not much of an issue. But when in S1 and playing/recording, the process takes over, the mouse cursor goes to wait for a few seconds and S1 stalls. Then it's gone and everything is normal.
My first thought is to go into Task Manager and set the priority to High. My guess is this process interuption is part and parcel of having a Dell laptop. They like to sprinkle their stuff all over your laptop.
Does anyone know if setting the priority to High would solve the issue? Or how best to fix this?

EDIT: While I was typing the above, I went into task manager and set studio one to above normal priority. And the same thing just happend. I was recording in S1 and the process ran and stalled S1 for a few seconds. So this is twice within like an hour. Too much.

Possibly a pre-installed virus checker doing it's thing?

Good call on the new computer! I was pretty much certain all your issues had to do with that CPU. It may be great for a "glorified Windows Chromebook" but not for serious use at all, such as gaming, video editing or our favorite: recording and editing music. That new CPU will last you a LOOOONNNGGG time in the DAW realm.

Now do yourself a favor... look at Jemusic's signature line and follow the directions for adding your system config to your signature like you see several of us have done. It helps speed-along helping others out when trying to diagnose issues posted here.

run latencymon with your interface hooked up to the PC. Let it run for at least 30 min. It should tell you what processes are getting in the way.

Awesome information!
I actually turned off McAfee while in S1 and I haven't seen it happen again. So I'm thinking that's the culprit. But great info...I didn't think of that. I'll for sure use it if it happens again.

BTW, does anyone know how to (where to go) to enter a signature where I can put my specs in it like other users? I've looked everywhere and can't find where to do it. I know it's probably going to be a DOH! moment.