If you want to do music production on the go or you need to download and store a huge number of audio sources, you may need an external hard drive. This post from MiniTool Partition Wizard talks about the best external hard drive for music production.
Do You Need an External Hard Drive for Music Production?
Music production refers to the editing, recording, and mixing of audio and MIDI signals on a computer or other equipment. Music production allows people to use elaborate techniques and unrealistic sounds to create songs impossible to originate live. Nowadays, the music production work is usually done in DAW (digital audio workstations).
In general, if you are not a professional music producer, you don’t need an external hard drive for music production. Nowadays, most PCs come with 500GB storage, which is enough for occasional music production work.
However, if you are a professional music production, you need external music storage devices. In general, music production needs around 240GB SSD storage to install DAW software and software effect plug-ins. It also requires a huge amount of HDD storage to install some VST instrument plug-ins and store downloaded materials.
In order to follow the trend of the times or cater to the aesthetics, professional music producers will download new audio sources. Therefore, the internal storage is not enough for music production and external music storage devices are needed.
In addition, if you want to do music production on the go, external hard drives can help you prepare a variety of excellent audio sources and store your sudden ideas anytime and anywhere. Then, what’s the best external hard drive for music production?
Review Of The Top 7 Best Hard Drive For Traveling
4 Best External Hard Drives for Music Production
1. Samsung T7 Portable SSD
- Capacity: 500GB, 1TB,2TB
- Interface: USB 3.2 Gen 2
- Speed: up to 1,050 MB/s read speed; up to 1,000 MB/s write speed
With the pocket-sized, slim, and lightweight body, T7 fits comfortably in the palm of your hand. The high read and write speeds allow you transfer massive files within seconds. This SSD is ideal for pulling up samples and tracks quickly. In addition, The T7 is compatible with PC, Mac, Android devices, gaming consoles, and more.
2. Samsung Portable SSD X5 Thunderbolt 3
- Capacity: 500GB, 1TB,2TB
- Interface: Thunderbolt 3
- Speed: up to 2,800 MB/s read speed; up to 2,300 MB/s write speed
With Thunderbolt 3 ports, The X5 can elevate your storage tasks to ultimate heights on PCs and Macs. Actually, this SSD is designed for tech savvy professionals who want to render or compile high resolution contents faster than ever. Therefore, it’s much faster than the speed you need for just music production. But the usage experience is definitely awesome.
3. Samsung T5 Portable SSD
- Capacity: 245GB, 500GB, 1TB,2TB
- Interface: USB 3.1 Gen 2
- Speed: up to 540 MB/s transfer speed
If you think the above external drives are expensive, you can consider Samsung T5 portable SSDs or other SSDs with the same speed. These SSDs are slower but cheaper.
4. WD Elements External Hard Drive
- Capacity: 1TB,2TB, 3TB, 4TB, 5TB
- Interface: USB 3.0
- Speed: up to 540 MB/s transfer speed
WD Elements external hard drive is an HDD that offers storage up to 5TB. It can help you store a huge number of audio sources. But please note that its speed is very slow and don’t edit music on it.
The best external hard drive for music production should meet most of your demands like price, speed, capacity, etc. The above drives are just for reference and you should choose one according to your real needs.
About The Author
Position: Columnist
Linda has been working as an editor at MiniTool for 5 years. She is always curious about computer knowledge and learns it crazily. Her articles are simple and easy to understand. Even people who do not understand computer can gain something. By the way, her special focuses are disk management, data recovery and PDF editing.