imPORTant

(Originally posted June 25, 2014)

You should listen to this song while reading this post because I was listening to it when I wrote - it's awesome and you're welcome!

Anyway :) after buying a USB device not long ago I realized something; I don't really remember the specs of the laptop that I use everyday. I know I looked it up when buying it but after that I totally forgot. Not until adding a new peripheral or wanting to install a new software do I actually think about what I got running under the "hood" of my laptop. I'm pretty good on laptops (and all my electronics) and don't feel the necessity to buy the latest piece of technology that comes out every three months. Every since learning what ROI means I like to get my monies worth out of everything I own and then some!

I bought Pro Tools to be able to record small gigs on my existing laptop without having to invest in an elaborate system. I have Pro Tools at home on my G5 but it is older (ROI!!) and isn't compatible with my laptop. I got Pro Tools Express which is good enough for what I intended. So in addition to Pro Tools I also needed an external hard drive to record on. Recording to the same hard drive that Pro Tools is running on (your system drive) is not a good idea. So, after purchasing Pro Tools and a external hard drive I started to think about my USB ports. My laptop, an HP ProBook 4530s has four USB ports. After exploring device manager I learned I have three USB host controllers. The USB host controller is the interface that transfers data from the motherboard to the USB device.  I have three host controllers and four ports so two of the ports are sharing one host controller. I wanted to know which ports were on the same host controller so I could decide which USB devices would be OK sharing the same bandwidth. Also, three of the ports are USB 2.0 and the other is USB 3.0. All of this was important to know since I have to plug in the Pro Tools interface, external hard drive, an ilok, my wireless mouse receiver and most likely a flash drive. To figure out which port was which I plugged in a flash drive, checked where it showed up in the device manager and took note of  it. Then I unplugged the flash drive and moved it to the next port and repeated this for each port. Now I know which ports are on the same USB host controller. Identifying which port is USB 3.0 is easy - it's blue.

So what should I plug into each port and why is what I needed to figure out. Here is what I came up with:

USB 3.0 port - external hard drive

USB 2.0 port # 1 (shared host controller) - mouse receiver

USB 2.0 port # 2 (shared host controller) - USB hub with iLok & flash drive

USB 2.0 port # 3 - Pro Tools Mbox

Using the above connection scheme works! My laptop performs well and I am able to record and playback audio in Pro Tools without any issues. How did I come up with this? Well first I knew the specs of what I was plugging in. The Mbox with two audio inputs doesn't use much bandwidth but I wanted it separate from anything else. The little things like my mouse, the iLok and flash drive would not have any issue sharing bandwidth since they are not using a lot of resources. The hard drive I would be reading and writing audio from I wanted to be as fast as possible and definitely not sharing any bandwidth with anything else. I have a USB 3.0 hard drive and use that on the 3.0 port.

So far so good! That isn't all the factors involved with a well running laptop; maxing out the memory and keeping the system clean also play a part. In addition, I have had great results with the last couple laptops I've owned by partitioning the internal hard drive immediately after purchase and keeping things organized.

Here are some good resources:

Using Pro Tools with external hard drive via protoolsproduction

Optimizing Pro Tools using an external hard drive via recordingrevolution

USB system architecture via usblyzer

Why partition hard drive via Ethan Winer website

Free (for home use) PC partitioning software that I use via EaseUs

Happy Computing!