Tips on most economical FW external sample library drive?

[James Steele]

Just wanted to know if some of you had any recommendations as to online sources for enclosures and drives. I've been grappling with wanting to add an external FW drive to my aging G5 and free up room. I also have a Liquid Mix and don't think it's a good idea necessarily to share the FW bus, so I realized I have an PCI FW card that I can install if I give up my PoCo card.

Right now I have three slots taken up by MOTU PCI-424X, UAD-1, and PoCo Element.

I only use the PoCo for the Classic Verb plug which Shoosh got me turned on to. It's tough to give it up, but I think it's better for me to give up that slot and free up disk space, not to mention be able to do easier backups.

Also, I want this to be portable to an Intel Mac some day. Another thought was I could maybe get an enclosure that was FW and eSATA? Do they have those? How much more dough? Means I could some day get eSATA card for Intel Mac in the future. I've heard eSATA is faster than FW?

Thoughts? I'm throwing this out there to the brain trust. Thanks!

[Shooshie]

When you go Intel, your Firewire 400 drives will gradually go obsolete. They will still be around for backup purposes, if you want, but you'll use them less and less, I think. Yes, there are eSATA/Firewire enclosures, but harder to find, and an eSATA card is very expensive -- more than most drives! I'd save my pennies for the Intel Mac Pro, and then add internal SATA drives of the 1.5-2TB size, and start making Firewire 800 my drive of choice for external. You can put at least 5 SATA drives inside a Mac Pro, and some have done 6 or more using mods. That's a lot of drive space!

Firewire 800 are the only external drives I have which don't seem to have to play chase with the system. Firewire 400 is too slow. USB 2.0 is MUCH too slow, and USB 3.0 isn't implemented in MacPro's yet, so that leaves Firewire 800 and eSATA. Well, then there's ultra SCSI, but that's for masochists who enjoy beating themselves silly with their own obsolescence.

In other words, don't spend a lot of money making this happen. It's money you're neither going to want nor need to throw at the Mac Pro.

Shooshie

[Frodo]

When you go Intel, your Firewire 400 drives will gradually go obsolete.

Well, now... hang on a hobbit sec....

The post-'08 Macs have gone to SATA speeds with firewire. That means the old 33Mhz (that exists on the '07-and-earlier Intel MacPros you and I have) are now spouting off at 2.6+ Ghz. That's a HUGE jump! I haven't had the pleasure of riding one of these blessed ponies, but for all things cherished that bump in firewire speed is nothing *merely* incremental.

Yeah, Shoosh-- you said it-- fw400 is going the way of rotary phones and dot matrix printers (as if those two weren't many decades apart...)

I only respond to this because of the statement "when you go Intel"... However, I'd add: "when you go Intel" you never go back-tel. So, it doesn't rhyme. Then again, I'm not poet.

Yeah-- if one gets a MacPro, there are two investments for DAW users to be made--- OK--- three:

1. Apple Care
2. More RAM
3. Hard Drives "out the yin-yang"

That the MacPros offer so much SATA right out of the box is amazing. That I've managed to find need for eSATA on a MacPro so quickly is almost embarrassing, but I digress.

eSATA is faster than firewire by a long shot. If you are on a PPC, then eSATA options are not only exponential improvements, they are also cheap as dirt--- very good dirt, mind you, but dirt of the highest quality. I have some of the best of its kind from OWC and have been thrilled with it from day one-- which was several years ago.

James-- if you're going to hang onto your PPC for two more years or so, then I would look into a Sonnet PCI-X card for eSATA and an enclosure from OWC or a place like satasite.com. Otherwise, I'd just say do what you're doing and don't get fancy until you're ready to go MacPro.

However, if you are thinking of buying a MacPro sooner than alter, then don't throw any more money at your PPC now-- just tough it out. You'll be glad you did. Part of the problem is the whole PCI-X to PCI-e transitional expense, which will not be piddly when the time comes.

[newrigel]

Well, now... hang on a hobbit sec....

The post-'08 Macs have gone to SATA speeds with firewire. That means the old 33Mhz (that exists on the '07-and-earlier Intel MacPros you and I have) are now spouting off at 2.6+ Ghz. That's a HUGE jump! I haven't had the pleasure of riding one of these blessed ponies, but for all things cherished that bump in firewire speed is nothing *merely* incremental.

Yeah, Shoosh-- you said it-- fw400 is going the way of rotary phones and dot matrix printers (as if those two weren't many decades apart...)

I only respond to this because of the statement "when you go Intel"... However, I'd add: "when you go Intel" you never go back-tel. So, it doesn't rhyme. Then again, I'm not poet.

Yeah-- if one gets a MacPro, there are two investments for DAW users to be made--- OK--- three:

1. Apple Care
2. More RAM
3. Hard Drives "out the yin-yang"

That the MacPros offer so much SATA right out of the box is amazing. That I've managed to find need for eSATA on a MacPro so quickly is almost embarrassing, but I digress.

eSATA is faster than firewire by a long shot. If you are on a PPC, then eSATA options are not only exponential improvements, they are also cheap as dirt--- very good dirt, mind you, but dirt of the highest quality. I have some of the best of its kind from OWC and have been thrilled with it from day one-- which was several years ago.

James-- if you're going to hang onto your PPC for two more years or so, then I would look into a Sonnet PCI-X card for eSATA and an enclosure from OWC or a place like satasite.com. Otherwise, I'd just say do what you're doing and don't get fancy until you're ready to go MacPro.

However, if you are thinking of buying a MacPro sooner than alter, then don't throw any more money at your PPC now-- just tough it out. You'll be glad you did. Part of the problem is the whole PCI-X to PCI-e transitional expense, which will not be piddly when the time comes.

Exactly, The UAD's I had were PCI and I took a depreciate on trade ins for the new ones...
But for my external I have the OWC Mercury Elite Pro and you have ALL options with that enclosure... the FW 800 speeds on my Nehalem are pretty indistinguishable from the internal SATA's (except the SSD RAID of course) so if you go that route now, you'll be able to use it in future boxes. It comes with ALL the different cables too so no need to buy any cables. OWC has some good deals running now too Jim. The new MP's are coming and I'd love to get one but I'm going to wait till next year it seems now... but I haven't even seen the overload dialog since I've had it so...

[KEVORKIAN]

Among other things, I have 4 of these $70 Rosewill enclosures:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... -_-Product

They have USB 2, Firewire 400, Firewire 800 & eSATA ports. Plus they are cool and quiet and very well built.

You have to pick the drive though and I recommend the $90 1TB Samsungs for reliability:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... -_-Product

So for $160 you have a nice solution that can go wherever is needed.

[James Steele]

Thanks for the info. Just discovered my card is only FW400. I hope the G5 can do 800? Can't check it right now.

[James Steele]

I thought I might have gotten lucky and could not give up a slot since my G5 also has a FW800 connector on the back but I'm afraid all the built in connectors (2 x 400 and 1 x 800) share the same port?

If so I guess the solution will be to connect the external FW800 drive to the built in port on the back and then install the FW400 card (3 indepenent ports) and connect Liquid Mix to it. I can also put my Canopus ADVC-100 on there as well as a backup drive for Time machine on another maybe? Well seems giving up the PoCo and Classic Verb is a price I can pay I suppose.

[James Steele]

Among other things, I have 4 of these $70 Rosewill enclosures:

Thanks... I went with your advice and ordered that and the Samsung. Reading about the Samsung has got me wondering if I might not be better off taking out the 250GB drive I have as my internal audio drive and putting it in the enclosure and then turning the 1TB Samsung into my audio drive? Seems like it's a higher performance drive and might be best used or that??? Thoughts?

Thanks for the suggestions, all. So as it stands the Liquid Mix is going to the PCI-X FW 400 card as well as the Canopus, both with their own ports, and the external FW800 drive will attach directly to the Mac. So long as I don't have a FW400 drive attached to the Mac, the bus should operate at 800 speeds, AFAIK...

[KEVORKIAN]

Thanks... I went with your advice and ordered that and the Samsung. Reading about the Samsung has got me wondering if I might not be better off taking out the 250GB drive I have as my internal audio drive and putting it in the enclosure and then turning the 1TB Samsung into my audio drive? Seems like it's a higher performance drive and might be best used or that??? Thoughts?

I have used the same Samsung drive for audio in the past and it was seamless so I'd say go for it. I have 2 of the 10k Velociraptors in my Mac Pro and honestly there is not a big performance difference between them and the Samsung.

Thanks for the suggestions, all. So as it stands the Liquid Mix is going to the PCI-X FW 400 card as well as the Canopus, both with their own ports, and the external FW800 drive will attach directly to the Mac. So long as I don't have a FW400 drive attached to the Mac, the bus should operate at 800 speeds, AFAIK...

Yes, you should get 800 speeds this way. Sounds like you arrived at the best plan!

[Phil O]

FWIW, I have a Samsung as my main audio drive that has been working flawlessly (and very hard) for about 4 years now. It runs cooler than the WD that shipped with my Mac, and is very quiet.

Phil

[MIDI Life Crisis]

... "when you go Intel" you never go back-tel. So, it doesn't rhyme. Then again, I'm not poet.

How about:

Going Intel rings the PPC death knell.

-or-

Intel iGents have intelligence.

<groan...>

[KEVORKIAN]

Going Intel rings the PPC death knell.

-or-

Intel iGents have intelligence.

<groan...>

MLC.. you should drop this over in tha BPM forum.

[MIDI Life Crisis]

I would but I'm not into Big Pud Muffins...

[KEVORKIAN]

[James Steele]

Hmm. What to do... What to do? Part of me is wondering if I should just get another Samsung and have both the audio drive and the sample library drive on both on newer drives?

Also should I partition the audio drive or not? I always thought it was best to leave it as one physical volume? Because I had also thought that if I keep things as planned with the Samsung 1TB drive external, I could partition it for part of it sample libraries and the other part for Time Machine back up. Hmmmmm....