Firewire800, ATA100, or ?? to replace SCSI Audio Drives?

[DBorgers]

This is my first post here. I've spent 2 days online trying to find answers tomy situation. Man, it's a jungle out there as far as anything definitive.

I'm a writer/producer here in Nashville.

My question is based around the system I have at home for recording/overdubbing my projects:

G4 FW800 1.42ghz dual
2 gig ram
Maxtor ATA133 130 gig (on the internal ATA100 bus)
IBM ATA100 60 gig (on the internal ATA100 bus)
2 Cheetah UltraSCSI drives and Adaptec PowerDomain 29160N PCI card
OXX 10.3.9
Cubase SX3
PCI-324 and 2408 MK2
UAD-1 Studio Pak x 1 (buying a 2nd UAD card this week)

Currently, I have 2 UltraSCSI drives via Adaptec PowerDomain 29160N - one for samples and one for audio in current projects. Cubase is on the System Disk.

As Adaptec no longer support drivers beyond Mac OX 10.3.9 and I'm moving to Tiger 10.4.6 and so I need to get new hard drives or a new SCSI card for my audio drives. With SCSI on it's way out I think I need to change the hard drives for my audio - especially since the ATA100's and SATA's are so dollar friendly per gigabyte.

I use VSTi's quite a bit, The Grand, Battery, Reason, Groove Agent, Core Drummer, etc.

HERE'S MY QUESTION = Will Firewire 800 be suffiicient for audio drives? Are ATA100 7200rpm drives enough? I only record 2-8 tracks at a time max, but use all 24 channels of bus out via PCI-324 to my O2R via ADAT optical with 24-48 tracks of audio running at the same time - sometimes I print VSTi's.

What would be your recommendations for new drives for recording audio. Firewire 800?, Firewire 800 RAID (2 drives)?, SATA?, or are ATA100 drives fast enough at 7200rpms for that many tracks?

A know SATA (with a PCI card) is an option, but if I can free up another PCI slot by not having to go the PCI SATA card route to free up PCI bandwidth for my PCI-324 and UAD cards I'd rather do that.

Any experience anyone can share about performance of FW800 and ATA100 drives in DAW use would be very helpful and appreciated If I have to I'll get SATA, but if Firewire800 or a Firewire800 2 disk RAID setup would be enough I'd rather do that. Thanks all

Danny Borgers
_________________
G4 FW800 1.42ghz 2 mg ram
120 and 60 gb ATA100 Internal Drives,
2 UltraSCSI Drives via Adaptec 29160N
OSX 10.3.9
PCI-324 2408 Mk2,
Yahama O2R
Cubase SX3
VSTi's:
The Grand, Battery, Groove Agent, Virtual Guitarist, and many more
Reason 3.0
CoreDrums
Korg and Roland sound modules and other stuff

[Frodo]

Welcome to the world of not having enough slots! This has been one of my pet peaves with Apple for some time, and will be a major point of focus when the Intels make their debut.

I've got a UAD-1, a PCI-424, and one slot open which was being reserved for a second UAD or a TC Powercore, but VI's are demanding bigger and more efficient hard drive expansion.

One slot left on G5. What to do? What to do?

First thing is that you will have to do is to tighten up on your decision about getting the second UAD-1 card. That alone will narrow things down greatly. If your need for the second UAD-1 outweighs all other upgrades, then your only options would be FW.

ATA/SATA, imho, performs tons better, but if PCI is not an option, I'd recommend the new Glyph Quad drives-- they have a variety of connectivity and will be quite useful when you choose to upgrade to a later model computer that makes use of USB2, eSATA as well as FW400 and FW800. Just putting these drives on different busses improves performance greatly. The Glyph Quads are designed for high rotation for heavy A/V use, and they are among the quietest, most durable, and cost effective out there.

The thing about FW at any speed is that the bus can get clogged if more than one other drive is atteched in a series. Problem is that there is only 1 FW800 port to work with, if I recall. Chaining FW drives forces a lot of data up and down that bus, and it can get tricky.

There are pros and cons on both sides, but as an exercise, make a list of all of your needs and rate them in order of priority from 1-10. That might be quite revealing and will facilite which route to take.

[DBorgers]

Thanks for the input. I did want to point out that I currently have a G4 FW800 Dual 1.42 with 4 open slots.

I have 4 internal drives and will need to replace the 2 SCSI.

The connectors from the motherboard to those bays says ATA66, so I don't know if those buses will be good for more than storage or perhaps putting samples in.

If ATA100 is fast enough, couldn't I use one of the drives on the main ATA100 bus for audio only and get a lot of tracks? Just wondering.

Otherwise, it's buying another PCI card to run drives off of when what I'd really like to do is load up on UAD cards there. The FW800 is a really fast computer. I am waiting to see what Apple comes up with post DualCore. I can't go through the down time waiting for products to work correctly with new technology. Plus, Apple will be unveiling yet another NEW type of G? in the very near future, so I didn't want to drop multiple thousands on a new one yet.

Anyway, I appreciate your respone a lot. Nice to get feedback from real world users. Thanks.

[DBorgers]

PS Is an ATA100 RAID 0 a viable option on the ATA66 bus on the G4 1.42? Is it actually an ATA66 bus or is it an ATA100 bus? I can't find anything on it and I've been looking for 2 days.

Thanks

[Frodo]

Okay. I'm trying to get a picture of what you've got. You say that you've got four open slots, but my notes were based upon the pci options you'd already mentioned:

2 x UAD-1
1 x Audio card
1 open slot

Is that accurate?

If so, I'd recommend getting an ATA/SATA pci controller with a faster bus to replace the SCSI connections to go in the extra slot. There are SCSI-to-ATA/SATA adapters available, but I've never tried them.

As far as ATA66 and ATA 100, all I really know is that you can only go as fast as the slowest compontent. For example, an ATA66 drive on an ATA100 bus will run no faster than 66. An ATA100 drive on an ATA66 bus will run no faster than 66.

With a faster pci ATA/SATA controller, you can add better/faster drives. Give this a peak: it has a variety of features for different purposes, and seems quite flexible in terms of PCI/PCIx, ATA/SATA applications.
http://www.sonnettech.com/product/tempo-x_sata44.html

That accounts for your four slots, and it gives you 2 UAD-1's plus addresses the SCSI replacement. Of course, one option would be to expand your FW800 setup by using an FW800 card. If you are running audio, this should be fine. I, for example, and running large VI libraries and have found SATA more reliable with scooting the data up and down the pike with fewer clogs.

It doesn't sound as if you have to really sacrifice one of your desired upgrads for the other. There is some consideration which ought to be given to the cost of current upgrades in advance of getting a new computer. Granted, down time is expensive and must be factored into the equation, as you mentioned. At least UAD has some sort of PCI upgrade path when you're ready to move to PCIx or PCIe later.

I'm also wondering about your computer's 33 Mhz speed on the 4 pci slots. Computers which came out just months after yours boasted slot speeds of 2 x 100 and 1 x133 Mhz. Data on your pci slots will be limited to 33 mHz, so you may be able to avoid a little overspending on upgrades that exceed your computer's specs.

This is just for the record:

Power Macintosh G4 (FireWire 800)

CPU
CPU: PowerPC 7455
CPU Speed: 1.0 GHz/2x 1.25/1.42 GHz
FPU: integrated
Bus Speed: 166 MHz
Data Path: 64 bit
ROM: 1 MB ROM + 3 MB toolbox ROM loaded into RAM
RAM Type: PC2700 DDR
Minimum RAM Speed: 333 MHz
Onboard RAM: 0 MB
RAM slots: 4
Maximum RAM: 2.0 GB
Level 1 Cache: 32 kB data, 32 kB instruction
Level 2 Cache: 256 kB on-chip, 1:1
Level 3 Cache: 1 MB DDR SDRAM per-processor, 1:4 (2 MB for 2x 1.42 GHz)
Expansion Slots: 4 64-bit 33 MHz PCI, 1 4x AGP (filled)

Video
Video Card/Chipset: ATI Radeon 9000 Pro
VRAM: 64 MB
Max Resolution: all resolutions supported
Video Out: VGA/DVI, ADC

Storage
Hard Drive: 60/80/120 GB
ATA Bus: Ultra ATA-100
Optical Drive: 32x/32x/10x/12x CD-RW/DVD-ROM

Input/Output
USB: 2
Firewire: 2
Firewire800: 1
Audio Out: 2x stereo 16 bit mini, Pro Speaker
Audio In: stereo 16 bit mini
Speaker: mono

Networking
Modem: 56 kbps
Ethernet: 10/100/1000Base-T
Airport Extreme: optional card
Bluetooth: internal support

Miscellaneous
Codename: ?
Gestalt ID: 406
Power: 338 Watts
Dimensions: 17" H x 8.9" W x 18.4" D
Weight: 42 lbs.
Minimum OS: 10.2.3
Maximum OS: 10.4.6
Introduced: January 2003
Terminated: June 2003


Notes
The 1.0 GHz model used 266 MHz PC2100 DDR SDRAM, had a 133 MHz bus, and used a 64 MB NVIDIA GeForce4 MX graphics card. The dual 1.42 GHz model included a 32x/16x/8x/8x/4x CD-RW/DVD-R drive.

Introduced in January 2003, The PowerMac G4 (FireWire 800) was primarily a speed bump of the G4 MDD line, although it did include several architecture enhancements. The most exciting new features were the inclusion of a single FireWire 800 port, internal support for the BlueTooth wireless standard, and support for the AirPort Extreme wireless networking system. AirPort Extreme was the Apple moniker for the 802.11g standard, which supported speeds of up to 54 Mbps and was backward compatible with existing 802.11b/AirPort devices.

The PowerMac G4 (FW800) represented the fastest and least expensive line of PowerMacs Apple had ever introduced. The 1.0 GHz model, with 256 MB of RAM, a CD-RW/DVD-ROM drive, a 60 GB hard drive and a 64 MB NVIDIA GeForce4 MX graphics card, sold for $1499. The dual 1.25 GHz model, with 256 MB of RAM, a CD-RW/DVD-ROM drive, an 80 GB hard drive, and a 64 MB ATI Radeon 9000 Pro graphics card, sold for $1999. The high-end dual 1.42 GHz model, with 512 MB of RAM, a CD-RW/DVD-R drive, a 120 GB hard disk and a 64 MB ATI Radeon 9000 Pro graphics card, was a modest $2699, making it the cheapest high-end Power Mac ever.

The PowerMac G4 (FireWire 800) was discontinued in June of 2003 and was replaced by the PowerMac G5.

[DBorgers]

Thanks again for your response. I know it takes time to write all that....and I really appreciate your doing so.

I had a Dual 867 MDD with this same SCSI card in it and got 70+ tracks counts. Mostly I want to make this work until Apple sorts out what they're doing in a few months.

All the best

[Frodo]

Hey DB--

Let's hear it for "copy/paste"!!

Understood. I'm playing my cards carefully right now. I made it as far as the G5 2.5 dual as of last year and am in a holding pattern for the same reasons.

If you got 70+ tracks on the 2x 867 MDD, you should have no problem with faster drives getting at least 48 if not 70+ like before.

But it seems as if your four slots are going to give you all that you hope for with your current setup. Let us know how it goes!

[DBorgers]

Thanks again Frodo

Ya, playing back audio isn't the real problem, it's that with the UAD card added to my PCI-324 AND SCSI I think my PCI bus is pretty maxed out. I'm hopint this 1.42 will help with the faster bus (and ram).

If i can get another year out of this new computer with everything working by then hopefully the Apple and PC worlds will know what's gonna be the standard for peripherals and the like for at least another 3.

Stay gold,
Danny

[Frodo]

Cheers, D!