FirmTek SATA ExpressCard/34 Host Adapter for MacBook Pro

[amost]

I apologize for the barrage of MacBook Pro threads...but being an internet geek here & trying to learn. Does this look like something to have? I don't know squat about SATA drives. I thought it was pretty much an internal thing. I could use this as a card to hook up a SATA audio drive or am I thinking wrong? Probably not Digi approved but.....


http://www.barefeats.com/hard71.html
http://www.firmtek.com/seritek/seritek-2sm2-e/

[Sergievsky]

Cool, I've been waiting for that. Right now I have the eSATA connected to a PCI card. It did perform slower than the internal SATA I had. I do have another extSATA connected to my PC laptop and it performed really well, so I don't see why this won't perform just as good, especially after the barefeats test. It's really the way to go, HD-wise instead of firewire.

[Jpec]

From what Ive been reading, I think you can even run your entire computer from a external e-sata set up, also I get the impression that if you get a 2 drive rig you can run a RAID. The specs on it are very cool, but my question is an e-sata drive overkill for a audio application? Any thoughts?

[AdamJay]

i think its overkill.

the macbook pros hard disk drive controller is so much more fast than the SATA controllers found on G5's, and of course any 3rd party SATA controllers for G4's.


a 5400rpm drive in the macbook reads and writes at nearly the same speeds as a 7200rpm drive in a G5 tower. So you can imagine how well the 7200rpm macbook pro option performs.

i have the 7200rpm SATA internal in my 2ghz Core Duo MacBook Pro.
i just tested it and i recorded 24bit/96khz, 32 mono tracks, on the internal system drive.
at Level 2 DAE Buffer in PT LE 7.1.1
Disk I/O meter was about 40%

at Level 4 DAE it was about 30%


the age of "you must use an external drive for audio" is over, considering i can do THAT on a laptop.
about the only reason to keep it on an external would be for organizational needs, or scheduled backups without disturbing your system drive.

[Jpec]

What if you stupidly bought the mac book pro 2.18 with a 5200 rpm drive? Like me would this be a solution?

[AdamJay]

Originally Posted by Jpec

What if you stupidly bought the mac book pro 2.18 with a 5200 rpm drive? Like me would this be a solution?

the 5400rpm may cut the mustard.

do a stress test...

load up your most intense project, then add an extra 8 channels of simultaneous recording at the highest sample rate you've been known to record at. See if your HD can hold up to the demands.


Everyone's needs are different.

I personally don't need to track to 32 channels simultaneously @ 24bit/96khz, but i wanted to know the limits of my HD and computer.
The most i've done for a remote live session was 22 channels simultaneously @ 24bit/48khz .
And in the studio i've never done more than 12 at a time @ 24/44. thats only about 1/6th the bandwidth of the stress test i successfullly ran on my machine. Its good to have that kind of headroom.

[dnaflr2]

Originally Posted by AdamJay

i think its overkill.

the macbook pros hard disk drive controller is so much more fast than the SATA controllers found on G5's, and of course any 3rd party SATA controllers for G4's.

I guess it depends on your usage. I am not sure how well the internal drive would hold up with something like BFD running.