Firewire external drives

[cleantone]

Alright, I have a 100gig 7200rpm but I don't think it's cutting the mustard in the multitracking speed dept.

According to MOTU tech support (whom I barley trust) it would seem to be the reason I start getting sluggish when tracking 16 tracks at 48k 24bit for long periods of time. I need suggestions of some screaming external firewire drives for this purpose. Close to the $200 is comfortable. Close to 100 gigs is wanted. I plan to use this current one for storage only now.

Whats are you folks using? Anyone track 16 tracks for 2 hours plus? I need dependable, fast and affordable.

Whatcha got?

Whats the "oxford 911 chip" deal? It's good I take it?

RSVP

[Steve Smith]

As far as i understand, an internal 7200 rpm drive will outperform a firewire drive all day long.. dependant of course on the particular drive.. did you try asking over in software tools and computers as well?

[cleantone]

I'm heading over there now. My problem is that I got one of the "lets get rid of these fast" G4's in november and it has an 5200rpm drive I think.

[Steve Smith]

try adding a wastern digital internal "special edition" ( it has a *8 meg whatever as opposed to 4 meg..) hard drive internal.. it will def be cheaper, and will out perform a FW drive IIRC

[Tubelover]

Originally posted by Steve Smith
As far as i understand, an internal 7200 rpm drive will outperform a firewire drive all day long.. dependant of course on the particular drive.. did you try asking over in software tools and computers as well?

Definetly true, IDE-100 drives run internally will transfer faster that the 40 MBS limit of a Firewire drive.

[cleantone]

Well, this is to be used in conjunction with my dual MOTU 896's and my TiBook laptop. So I guess thats not an option.

[Steve Smith]

Fair enough, Firewire would be the option for a powerbook for sure.

for a desktop, you can get a 120 gig western Digital SP edition at Mcrocenter.com right now for $209 USD.

[Kent]

The Oxford 911 chip is a controller chip that 'translates' or 'manages' the information that is flowing between your Firewire bus and the ATA/IDE drive that is inside of your Firewire drive case.

There is no such thing as a true Firewire drive... yet. They are all ATA/IDE drives that are stuffed into a case that connects to your computer via Firewire. The controller chip is just one of the many places, or opportunities, your data has to slow down. Currently, the Oxford 911 chip has the fastest throughput, so you will definitely want one of those chips in your Firewire case.

At storage sizes of over 100 gigs (actually it comes into play much earlier) the fastest possible 'seek' times go down as well as some other aspects of performance. It is not an overly dramatic amount, but when using Firewire, every little bit counts. One reason is that the drive needs to quickly scan where it is gonna put all of your precious data before it starts recording. When the drive is huge, it looks at all of that space and then picks a spot. This is one of the reasons I like to work from single, and/or multiple, smaller drives. 9 gigs seems fine to me. That said, many audio software programs allow to tweak settings to cut down on this 'scanning' time.

With a Powerbook, you will have to get an external Firewire drive. Unless you want to go the expansion chassis route; which kinda hampers the whole portability thing, doesn't it?grggt

You could always 'roll your own' by searching for a Firewire enclosure with the Oxford 911 controller and then sticking in an ATA/IDE drive that has the fastest quoted 'seek', 'sustained write', 'sustained read', 'burst write/read' specifications that you can get a hold of. You might also want to ensure that the drive is relatively quiet. I find the grinding/writing/reading noise of Hard Drives to be quite irritating after the first 30 seconds or so. The Firewire drive will likely be right next to you and your laptop and you'll get to listen to it sing its little song for hours and hours on end.

In a pinch, you could also allocate just a few of your tracks to the internal Hard Drive. Not the best of practices, but it'll give you just that little-extra-more when you are in a crisis situation.

Good luck,

Kent

[cleantone]

So should I just bite the bullet and get a Glyph drive? I can use this one I have as storage or tracking smaller amounts.

Does anyone have experience with Glyph drives? I used them in projects before but never for my own set up. Are they worth it? Any good retailers for a fair price?

With the logic of the post above should I get a 40gig as opposed to the 80 or 120?

muco thanks thus far guys!rollz

[Steve Smith]

I have been using the 120 gig drives from OWC with no problems.

Glyph seems a tad bit overpriced? I am sure they do what they do very well, but that seems alot of cash..

[Mats Olsson]

There was a blurb in Pro Sound News (European ed.) about a new (80 & 120) fw drive from Quantegy that looked quite intresting. Good specs and no wall wart. Each drive package includes a transport case with room also for cables, backup media and documentation. No price qoute but they said it would be "agressively" priced.

/Mats

[Dave Martin]

This brings up an interesting question - a friend told me yesterday that the ATTO SCSI card is not on the approved list for Pro Tools 6 on OSX, and it's not even on the 'to be tested' list. Is Digi getting away from recommending SCSI drives for their products?

[Steve Smith]

I sure hope so Seriously, I have had no need for SCSI in about a year here. Not a hiccup on FW.

[Fuzzy Logic]

Originally posted by Mats Olsson
There was a blurb in Pro Sound News (European ed.) about a new (80 & 120) fw drive from Quantegy that looked quite intresting. Good specs and no wall wart. Each drive package includes a transport case with room also for cables, backup media and documentation. No price qoute but they said it would be "agressively" priced.

/Mats

I just used two 80 gig drives with good success. very cool package indeed but a little pricy. i paid around 300 bucks.

[Musiclab]

I use an adaptec 39160 card w seagate cheetah ultra 160 lvd drives. I use firewire for backup only. Short of fibre channel I thinks its the best way to go.
More pricey than firewire but way cheaper than fibre channel