External Hard Drive

gillesda · Post by **gillesda** » Fri Dec 29, 2006 11:33 am

Hello,

I browsed through the forum, but i didn't find an answer to my question.

I own a MacBook Pro with 2.33GHz Intel Core 2 Duo, 2 gb ram, a 7200 rpm 93 gb serial ata hd, 1 firewire 400 port and 2 usb 2.0 ports.

I just bought a MOTU ultra lite, and i just tried to make a 3 track recording with garage band. The recording session was pretty long, but after only 20 minutes of recording the message came up saying "hard disk too slow". Should i use an external hd to store my recording session?

Considering that my motu works through firewire, should i buy a USB 2.0 hard drive or should i daisy-chain my motu audio interface with an external fire wire hard drive?

in other words, how can i avoid to have the "hard disk too slow" message?

many thanks

Gilles

Frodo · Post by **Frodo** » Fri Dec 29, 2006 12:56 pm

You should definitely record your audio to any other drive but your system drive.

I would also avoid running a firewire interface with a firewire hard drive-- not because they aren't compatible in their own rights, but because audio can clog your fw bus quite easily, esp on long sessions.

I would recommend getting an eSATA bus card, something along these lines:

http://www.macgurus.com/productpages/sa ... o-E34P.php

...and then get an appropriate eSATA drive with an enclosure. Some of these are sold seperately, and some are available with the drive and enclosure. Just make sure that the connections are eSATA, and that the spin speed is 7200 rpm. A 16MB cache is recommended for the best performance, but a drive with an 8MB cache is okay, too.

Of course, someone may suggest just using firewire because they've never had any trouble with it. Firewire bus clog is an eventuality (trust me), so this is my suggestion for avoiding that path-- by putting your external drive and your firewire interface on different bus connections.

jgest · Post by **jgest** » Fri Dec 29, 2006 4:14 pm

frodo,

How does the addition of a firewire based DSP card (tc powercore) play into the signal path in your opinion?
Would it be better to run the Dsp in the same buss as the Audio interface, or the harddrive via card buss slot?
Or should I consider USB 2 (the thought "erks" me a lil........) for the extrnal drive?

Thanks for your input, best wishes for a creative and inpired year

gillesda · Post by **gillesda** » Sat Dec 30, 2006 3:17 am

Ok thanks for your help;

So I understand that an external USB2.0 drive is not recommended? Even if it attains a faster theoretical speed than firewire?

Gilles

Frodo · Post by **Frodo** » Wed Jan 03, 2007 1:59 am

jgest wrote:frodo,

How does the addition of a firewire based DSP card (tc powercore) play into the signal path in your opinion?
Would it be better to run the Dsp in the same buss as the Audio interface, or the harddrive via card buss slot?
Or should I consider USB 2 (the thought "erks" me a lil........) for the extrnal drive?

Thanks for your input, best wishes for a creative and inpired year

Hey j--

Sorry for the delay-- I've been out of town, and it takes a little time to get caught up.

My thought is that with PPC's, at least, it is better to run audio and hd's on different busses if possible. There have been lots of reports of logjam, and almost all of the reports have been from those using some sort of firewire audio interface plus firewire hard drives at the same time. I've never been really fond of firewire overall, except in small doses.

I have a Duende unit on my firewire input-- which shares a single bus with all other firewire devices. In fact, Duende will not mount if there are other firewire devices attached-- not sure if this is the case with TC, or if behavior on Intel Macs is different-- meaning: better.

The other thing about firewire ports and busses on certain Macs is that if they share the same bus, they will only run as fast as the slowest device connected to it. That means if you have 2 FW 400 devices and 1 FW 800 device on a single shared bus Mac-- then the FW bus will only run at 400. My G5 2.5 Dual has one single bus for all the FW 400 and 800 inputs. It's been a pain, so I decided to part ways with FW HDs once and for all.

I also have an eSATA host card in my fastest PCI slot to which I can have up to 20 drives running at once. Currently, I have 5 in a RAID connected. I can't complain at all about the performance-- it's light years ahead of firewire and more reliable-- as reliable as my internal sata drive. SATA is simply better overall.

To answer gillsda's question and yours as well re: USB 2.0--

It's not so much the drive itself as it is the bus clog potential. Loading a ton of FW devices is not as effective as splitting up the data flow across independent busses. Utilizing USB 2.0 in a pinch is worth it where no other options are available. I opted out of USB 2.0 only because I preferred SATA and eSATA performance. But having one or two USB 2.0 drives (good ones) shouldn't hurt anything. I wouldn't add more than that, and if your computer has independent USB 2.0 busses, it is better to use one input per drive rather than piggy-backing two drives together into one port.

There are some cheap entry level USB 2.0 drives out there, so if you are going to go with USB 2.0, get a good one like a Glyph GT, G-Tech, or one of the better Western Digitals. Stay away from budget no-name drives unless they come highly recommended by someone you know and trust very well.

A belated Happy, Productive, and Prosperous New Year to yas!!!

Frodo

sdemott · Post by **sdemott** » Wed Jan 03, 2007 8:48 am

gillesda wrote:Ok thanks for your help;

So I understand that an external USB2.0 drive is not recommended? Even if it attains a faster theoretical speed than firewire?

Gilles

But in real world testing USB 2.0 is slower than FW. The main difference being that FW is a peer to peer protocol while USB requires constant arbitration from the host CPU.

You cold get away with small sessions with a USB 2.0 drive (just keep the sample rate at 44.1kHz), but I wouldn't trust it for large sessions.

I second the eSATA card suggestion. eSATA is the fastest option available. Though a FW card is also a good (and cheaper) option.

Dwetmaster · Post by **Dwetmaster** » Wed Jan 03, 2007 9:07 am

Yeah Esata rule!!!
Got a small esata express card to my Macbookpro at tigerdirect.com for 60$. Also got a Glyph 050Q which has USB, FW400, FW800 & esata. So I'm ready to go anywhere. I recorded 8 tracks, for an hour and a half at a 128 buffer setting using inboard eqs reverb and compression. To monitor from the computer directly. No problem at all...

Frodo · Post by **Frodo** » Wed Jan 03, 2007 10:01 am

Dwetmaster wrote:Yeah Esata rule!!!
Got a small esata express card to my Macbookpro at tigerdirect.com for 60$. Also got a Glyph 050Q which has USB, FW400, FW800 & esata. So I'm ready to go anywhere. I recorded 8 tracks, for an hour and a half at a 128 buffer setting using inboard eqs reverb and compression. To monitor from the computer directly. No problem at all...

Congrats, Dwetmaster!

eSATA is the one of the best things a DAW user can do-- the improvements are tremendous for a modest price.

I'm about to add a pair of Raptor 10k rpm drives in an eSATA enclosure and am looking forward to even faster seek times in addition to smoother data transfer.

Resonant Alien · Post by **Resonant Alien** » Wed Jan 03, 2007 10:47 am

gillesda wrote:Ok thanks for your help;

So I understand that an external USB2.0 drive is not recommended? Even if it attains a faster theoretical speed than firewire?

Gilles

My understanding is that USB is rated at the maximum burst speed, while Firewire is rated at the maximum sustainable speed. IOW, FW can maintain 400 Mbps. USB can have peaks up to 480 Mbps, but cannot sustain this speed. So, in practice USB is slower.

Here is some USB2 vs FW info:

http://www.cwol.com/firewire/firewire-vs-usb.htm

That said, I had trouble in the past when I had a MOTU 828mkII and tried to run audio from a FW drive. Kept glitching until I went back to the internal drive. I have had less trouble with my RME Fireface, but it still happens sometimes. However, some folks have said that this is a problem with the FW bus in the PowerMac G4s, and not necessarily a problem with FW itself.

Rick

Frodo · Post by **Frodo** » Wed Jan 03, 2007 11:39 am

Resonant Alien wrote:However, some folks have said that this is a problem with the FW bus in the PowerMac G4s, and not necessarily a problem with FW itself.

Rick

It's definitely a problem on the G4, but I had the same problem on my G5 as well. Like you, I had to open up the FW bus and get more things on SATA and eSATA drives.

The problems with FW are, for me, twofold:

1. @400, hd's and interfaces choke
2. on certain models, the 800 and 400 ports share a single bus and will default to the slowest device, rendering any 800 devices useless.

If the bus had to be shared, I'd always wondered why 800 was not made the standard pipeline...

Oh, well. One day FW will take its place next to the rotary phone at the Smithsonian. A while back, there was some buzz about a hard drive chip right on the motherboard. That would speed things up nicely!

kgdrum · Post by **kgdrum** » Thu Jan 04, 2007 8:45 am

the solution that has worked for me : i always have (I/O)FF800 on Mac FW port(alone)
1)boot drive SATA 2)samples (2nd internal SATA)3)audio>ESATA (firmtek seritek w/seagate 7200rpm 8 meg cache... (2x2 raid)works well...
i still have 2 fw drives on pci /fw card(different buss)for photo's archives etc...

forsooth · Post by **forsooth** » Mon Jan 08, 2007 10:12 am

hey Frodo, I run a 1 gig G4 TI powerbook with sometimes two Motu 896Ds and a Glyph firewire external drive .............or the same computer with one 896HD and a Digimax Lt with a Lacie external 300 gig firewire drive for all my live recording sessions. The lacies are a mixture of 400 and 800 drives.

Sessions are usually around 2 1/2 hours, laptop set to medium work priority, recording @ 24/44.1

In 71 gigs I have never had a problem with the Motus or the external firewire drives.

The powerbook is only used for tracking, the rest of the work is done on my G5 desktop.

Currently I have 10 external drives daisychained to my G5. The only problems have been running out of storage space!

forsooth

jgest · Post by **jgest** » Mon Jan 08, 2007 10:20 am

Dwetmaster wrote:Yeah Esata rule!!!
Got a small esata express card to my Macbookpro at tigerdirect.com for 60$. Also got a Glyph 050Q which has USB, FW400, FW800 & esata. So I'm ready to go anywhere. .

would somebody be willing to "school" me on ESATA.......with 2 kids under 3, I am already behind the times. Way back when (2004) when at the top of my game, firewire and ata were my drives of choice.

I guess i'll do some research and get up to date with the times.

Dwetmaster · Post by **Dwetmaster** » Tue Jan 09, 2007 6:18 am

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Esata#External_SATA

It's faster than anything else (I think???)

FRODO!!!

HCMarkus · Post by **HCMarkus** » Tue Jan 09, 2007 1:58 pm

Because platter data access/delivery speed is still the controlling factor, real advantages of SATA appear to be:
1. Easy hook up with compact cables... no more ribbons.
2. Cheaper to make, asssemble and install.
3. SATA cables can be run externally to allow hooking up drives in external cases directly via SATA, no need for a Firewire bridge, so no speed bottlenecks. Note eSATA cable length limitations.