Firewire Drives and MOTU Hardware

[Resonant Alien]

Also posted on the Hardware board, but thought I would try here also. I just bought a LaCie external FW drive (has both 400 and 800). I'm using an 828mkII (FW 400) and DP4.5 into a PowerMac G4 Dual 1.42 GHz "FW800" machine.

Using the drive as a backup on drive works fine, but when I try to record to the drive in real time (or play back DP audio), I get digital screech!

This doesn't appear to be a DP issue because it does the same thing with iTunes (playing back through the 828).

Is anyone successfully using a FW drive with an 828mkII and if so how? Is there some problem with running the 828 FW interface and trying to record to a FW drive?

I have tried both the 400 and 800 FW connections on the LaCie.

[Babuska]

[QUOTE]Originally posted by Resonant Alien:
[QB]Also posted on the Hardware board, but thought I would try here also. I just bought a LaCie external FW drive (has both 400 and 800). I'm using an 828mkII (FW 400) and DP4.5 into a PowerMac G4 Dual 1.42 GHz "FW800" machine.

Using the drive as a backup on drive works fine, but when I try to record to the drive in real time (or play back DP audio), I get digital screech...

I have not used my LaCie FW for recording, only for backups, but sometime ago I bought a 76Gb WD Raptor, and it clearly made my system more stable. Maybe 7.200 RPM FW drive is not adequate, for the digital audio? If you can‘t solve your problems with it, I highly recommend Raptor. It will improve your systems performance, and it is not expensive, because it is a SATA drive.

<small>[ January 06, 2005, 05:02 AM: Message edited by: Babuska ]</small>

[ElGato]

I'm using the G-RAID 500gb FW800 with great results - even with numerous 5.1 surround tracks @ 24/48.

ElG

[Resonant Alien]

ElGato,

What Mac are you using? G4 or G5?

[jcfeli]

Likewise, I have obtained LaCie digital screech when using a LaCie FW drive on my G4, DP 4.12 and 828. The problem is clearly with the FWdrive's streaming rate -- I was unable to stream a Synthogy Ivory virtual piano until I temporarily loaded the three pianos (12GB, 11GB and 7GB) onto my G4's stock hard drive.

Finding that this worked marvelously, I instantly purchased a WD Raptor 76GB, and realized that I also needed to purchase a PCI adapter to accept SATA on the G4. Specifically, I bought a SIIG high speed PCI-to-Serial ATA host adapter for the PowerMac G4. Works great.

Cheers.

Joe <jcfeli>

[adidas1]

What Lacie firewire drives are you using? Lacie d2 or Bigger Extreme series? Lacie's website has a performance chart showing the Lacie D2 outperforming Bigger Extreme.

[bralston]

The problem is not the Lacie drives...or firewire drives in general. 7200 RPM drives are very adequate for digital audio and video. The problem is the combination of using a firewire audio device recording onto a firewire drive simultaneously. Think of where the audio has to go. Into the firewire audio device...into Digital Performer, routed back out the firewire bus (controlled by the computer's CPU) to the firewire drive...all instantaniously. With every track...the CPU has to devote more attention to the firewire bus and if the firewire drive is daisy chained with the 828mkII on the same firewire port from the computer...there are bound to be problems.

Internal drives are not using the firewire bus at the same time as the 828mkII. So...they do just fine. Firewire drives being used with PCI audio cards will do just fine as well. The 828mkII with a firewire drive will do OK to a point...but with all that data, the firewire bus (with the CPU controlling it) just will not be able to handle any more and hiccup.

<small>[ January 09, 2005, 01:52 AM: Message edited by: Brian W. Ralston ]</small>

[Resonant Alien]

Yeah - I guess I thought the 800 and 400 FW busses on a Mac were different busses, but apparently not

[ElGato]

Hi Resonant -

I'm using a G4 1ghz dual processor. And yes, absolutely keep the Firewire drive on a separate PCI bus. I have Medea's FW 800 card, and the G-RAID 500gb is connected to that. No probs so far.

[SoulAmp]

I logged in here to see about adressing some issues I am encountering. first I was using a G3 500 Mhz iBook with a 828 and firewire Maxtor 250 gig HD. I had been able to record and playback 12 tracks of 24 bit/48 Khz audio in OS 9. I made the move to OS X when I swapped out the iBook for a G4 powerBook Ti 400 Mhz. Still I was able to record in OS 9 using the firewire drive and 828 together. The issues occur when i went to Audio Desk 2.0 and OS X.

First I ran out of processor power. And I started having drop outs in recording. So I bought a Dual G4 1.24 GHz.

Now I am very pleased with the performance I can do what ever mixing I want and the box can handle it.

Here is what I am running into. The Dual G4 is a FW 800 MDD model. I cannont playback tracks from the firewire drive without out dropping audio and then 828 freezing. I found there was a firew bug related to a Oxford Chip set in the Maxtor Firewire drive. I loaed the new driver from Maxtor that is said to address issues but still playing back audio from the firewire drive causes the 828 to drop and freeze.

So I am using the firewire drive as backup only at this point. I have a 80 gig and 20 gig ATA100 7200 rpm drives and two small 4 gig older drives striped in the new box. So runing from internal disks is fine. My big concern is the reliability of the backups.

There most certainly is an issue with firewire devices and certain macs...I'll keep rsearching.

Macintouch has a big section on the Panther Firewire Bug. Just google that and it will come up. That bug was associated with a Oxford 911 and 922 chipset used in FW 800 and 400 devices. Plugging ion these drives effectivly wiped out the drive on some devices. People lost backups and data.

Many of the devices have firmware updates check Macintouch.com for a list of effected devices and Panther.

[DCD]

When i had my Dual 1.42 PowerMac G4. I bought a Belkin PCI firewire card. I never ran into any problems. It was a quick $30 solution. Ran my Motu of the G4 firewire and my hardrive off the PCI firewire card.

I've had good luck with ADS Tech hardrive kits. I rather pick my hard drive and drop it in the kit. That way I can just change out the hard drive itself when i accidently buy a new one when i'm at the store. Good luck.

D

[Mungojeff]

If you are using a laptop with one firewire port and two USB 2 ports, obviously you can't use a PCI firewire card. So, any advice on the best way to run an external drive to record audio if your firewire port is already taken up by an audio in card?

[sdemott]

Originally posted by Mungojeff:
If you are using a laptop with one firewire port and two USB 2 ports, obviously you can't use a PCI firewire card. So, any advice on the best way to run an external drive to record audio if your firewire port is already taken up by an audio in card?

I have a FireWire PCMCIA card to add a 2nd FireWire bus to my PowerBook. Works fine on even 24/96k projects. Unfortunately, only the 15" and 17" PowerBooks have a PC-card slot...which is the reason I went for the 15". I knew a PC card slot was a necessity.

Also - be sure you do not enable journaling on the external drives (or any audio drive for that matter). Journaling will slow the read/write time as it needs to "archive" all changes made to the filesystem for recovery purposes. You can check to see if it's on or off, and toggle the setting, using Apple's Disk Utility.

HTH