Tips on most economical FW external sample library drive?

[MIDI Life Crisis]

FWIW, James, I try to think of what needs to be accessed at any given time. If I am scoring a film and the film as well as the VIs are on the same drive, or if the audio and the film, or audio and the VIs are on the same drive, I am concerned that the drive heads will get bogged down with access. I think I may have made a big mistake when my 1TB drive was partitioned to be a boot drive, hold my VIs in another partition and my audio in a third partition. The drive still has the same # of heads, so there isn't much of a difference in drive performance in doing that. I did that so I could dedicate my second internal drive to Time Machine, but now I realize that I'd be better off putting TM on an external drive (even in a USB enclosure) as it is updated incrementally and access is non-critical. Then put drives that are doing the heavy lifting on the faster internal bus. So that's what I'll be doing in the next week; sorting out my HD arrangement to effect those changes. Placing the TM drive on an external bus also allows me to stop TM access if I want to without resorting to disabling it via software. Not a big deal, but I really don't need to back up as often when I'm just snooping around the www.

BTW, I have noticed that when I add VIs to DP that it is getting bogged down and I am getting distortion and delays (but no crashes). I suspect drive head access (due to my lame partition scheme) to be the culprit.

You and I are essentially on identical systems and I too have a ADVC-100 (great minds think alike even if they don't always agree on everything - LOL!)

[KEVORKIAN]

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?

This is a good idea. I use a Samsung for one of my Samples drives and it works just as well as the faster 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....

I avoid partitions these days since the issues with fragmentation are essentially over. No technical reason other than that and if anything a smaller partition should be beneficial in terms of performance, but I don't think you see a noticeable difference.

One thing I would say is that Time Machine is a busy process and I would suggest that you give it it's own volume so that the Samples drive doesn't have to do double duty for the sake of Time Machine.

[bongo_x]

I don't know that FW400 is unusable, I think that depends on what you do. I do whole albums all the time, mostly on one FW400 drive with no problems.

For my personal stuff I work on internal drives and back up to external drives. I my G5 I have one 1T drive now and it works for what I do, but I had 2 smaller drives. For the music you do it seems that one internal system and one internal music drive should be plenty.

Don't forget about how you are going to back all this up. I always have separate external drives for backups and unplug them completely when done. If you have a power surge or your computer catches fire or something, it's not going to do you much good if your backup shares a partition or is in the tower. An external, unplugged drive is not as good as off site backup, but it's not bad and easy to do.

I have a 1.5T drive in this case;
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6817729006" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
partitioned in to 2 volumes for backing up 2 different computers. I've had good experiences with the Acomdata enclosures. I think the drive I put in it is a WD, but I've had a lot of trouble with enclosures and not nearly as much with drives in the last few years. I don't pay that much attention to the drive brands, they're all pretty good these days.

The only drives I've partitioned for the last several years have been backup drives and drives with entirely different OS's on them. There's a performance hit if you do anything at the same time on different partitions.

bb

[Shooshie]

Keep Time Machine separate. It kicks in whenever it wants to (every hour, no matter what), and that might be in the middle of a mission-critical disk operation in DP. Give it space and don't share it with another drive.

Partitioned drives are ok if you won't be needing both partitions at once. Otherwise, bad idea.

If you can use a Wirewire 800 drive, that would solve the problem of what to do with it when you get a MacPro. Or, if an enclosure will hold an SATA drive, then later it could become an internal drive for you, but you still have to buy an eSATA card. Is your G5 PowerMac equipped with PCIe or PCIx? If PCIe, thenyour cards will go right into the MacPro, meaning the investment is not wasted upon switching. Of course, upgrading to a MacPro doesn't always mean you won't use the G5 anymore. You can use it as a Vienna Ensemble Pro host. Or at least Plogue Bidule, if VE Pro doesn't work on a G5.

I'd do one of the following, myself:
• Get an enclosure that runs via Firewire and contains an SATA drive. Do they even make those? Most enclosures used to house (parallel) ATA drives.
• Get a Firewire 800 card (if you don't have a native FW800 port) and buy a couple of FW800 drives.
• Buy an eSATA PCI card and connect it to an enclosure that handles eSATA both in external port and internally (inside the enclosure).

Good candidates for SATA are the Hitachi 2TB DeskStar, or the Seagate 2TB Barricuda. Both have been reliable for me, so far.

As for Firewire 800, it seems the availability for those is diminishing, but the WD My Book series have some large FW 800 drives (1TB and 2TB) that work, but I suggest keeping your eye on them, and if they act strangely, replace them. This has been a line that's plagued by problems, but not all of their drives are problematic. I've had some running for years. Another one died after 1.5 years, was revived by reinitializing it, then it eventually died again. It was one of the first ones, though. The newer ones seem more reliable. Good luck finding a good firewire 800 drive; they're worth it if you can find them, because FW800 is very fast.

Shooshie

[Shooshie]

I don't know that FW400 is unusable, I think that depends on what you do. I do whole albums all the time, mostly on one FW400 drive with no problems.

FW400 is as good as it ever was. It's just that on a Mac Pro, with a bunch of huge eSATA drives, copying large amounts of data (backups or entire drives) back and forth gets tedious when you're accustomed to such speed. FW800 holds its own, and I recommend it. I mean, it's twice as fast as 400! But I still have five 400 drives that are usually offline.

Don't forget about how you are going to back all this up. I always have separate external drives for backups and unplug them completely when done. If you have a power surge or your computer catches fire or something, it's not going to do you much good if your backup shares a partition or is in the tower. An external, unplugged drive is not as good as off site backup, but it's not bad and easy to do.

I recommend keeping the backup drive unpartitioned and able to hold a lot of backups. Internal or external doesn't matter so much to me, as much as huge and unpartitioned. (and reliable!)

I have a 1.5T drive in this case;
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6817729006" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
partitioned in to 2 volumes for backing up 2 different computers. I've had good experiences with the Acomdata enclosures. I think the drive I put in it is a WD, but I've had a lot of trouble with enclosures and not nearly as much with drives in the last few years. I don't pay that much attention to the drive brands, they're all pretty good these days.

+1 on the Acomdatas. Most of my FW400 drives are in Acomdata enclosures. They seem very reliable, and very quiet. They have no fans, being conductive of heat throughout the units, and are well-made. I've never had a problem with them, and I've been using them for at least 5 years, maybe more.

The only drives I've partitioned for the last several years have been backup drives and drives with entirely different OS's on them. There's a performance hit if you do anything at the same time on different partitions.

bb

Yep, I've stopped partitioning drives. I used to do it for organizational purposes, and I still have one drive that has evolved that way from way back, but generally I keep them straight now. But as for organization, that's what folders are for. Besides, all those partitions start to clutter a desktop if you like keeping them visible, as I do.

Shoosh

[bongo_x]

...
• Get an enclosure that runs via Firewire and contains an SATA drive. Do they even make those? Most enclosures used to house (parallel) ATA drives.
...

When I was just shopping a couple weeks ago that was almost the only thing I could find. The one I linked to was one. Technology changes too fast.

I have stacks of drives from 150-250G sitting around. I had various things spread out on them, (systems, samples, projects, backups, etc) and nothing was really fitting like I wanted. I was shuffling a lot of things around, physically and bit-wise. I was trying to figure out what to do with them but couldn't come up with anything. It was cheaper and easier to just buy;

-1T for the internal G5
-500G for the MacBook
-500G 2.5" external for MacBook backup
-1.5T external partitioned to 1T and 500G to backup the G5 and a second MacBook backup.

Now that part of my life is simpler and all of that was just over $400 (2 something for the G5 part). Plenty of room for everything. It was going to be more complicated and expensive to figure out how to keep using my old drives so they're just sitting there.

A lot of you run very complex sampler sessions, but I run mostly audio and some software instruments. I can run all my stuff off the one internal drive and the meter barely moves. With big sessions I run an external drive. I would never need to run more than two drives.

bb

[Nibiru]

I've been using G Tech 500gb G drives for the past 2 years and love em. I've certainly gushed about them before somewhere in here as I recommend them highly.

They have 1 FW400, 2 FW800, 1 USB2.0, and 1 eSATA. I bought a generic $50 2 port eSATA card from Best Buy (installed in a PPC) that works flawlessly. I have my sample library on 1 eSATA drive and my backup drive on another. G Tech are expensive, but built like a tank. They come with Hitachi drives btw.

http://www.g-technology.com/products/g-drive.cfm" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

[wabbitguy]

I don't know that FW400 is unusable, I think that depends on what you do. I do whole albums all the time, mostly on one FW400 drive with no problems.

FW400 is as good as it ever was. It's just that on a Mac Pro, with a bunch of huge eSATA drives, copying large amounts of data (backups or entire drives) back and forth gets tedious when you're accustomed to such speed. FW800 holds its own, and I recommend it. I mean, it's twice as fast as 400! But I still have five 400 drives that are usually offline.

Shoosh

Shoosh, I think the iMac might be a whole bunch different than the MacPro. Although doesn't the MacPro also only have one FW buss as well?

I use DP 7.1 on an iMac (mid 2008). On the 400 fw connection on the iMac I have an Apogee Ensemble and an Echo AudioFire 8. On the iMac's 800 FW connection, I have a LaCie 2Big Quadra. I put all my DP project files on the La Cie drive.

If I run the LaCie as an FW800 drive, the whole audio system falls to it's knees. Playback is best described as staccato. It never seems to peak the CPU meter in DP, oddly enough, but 1 or 2 seconds of good audio is followed by equal amount of silence. I asked about this was told that FW800 drives are being polled at a high rate and that interferes with the 400 side. No idea if that's true or not, but I know my 800 drives won't let the audio interfaces work properly.

To make it work, equally simple, I put a 800 to 400 FW adapter on for the LaCie drive and I can play back 16 tracks while recording 6 new ones. Never misses a beat.

Be nice to have all FW 800, but mixing them on my iMac has me cautious..

[James Steele]

Hmm... well, my 1TB drive and external FW800/eSATA enclosure arrive Monday. I mentioned earlier my plan is to pull out my PoCo Element, and install a multi port FW400 card in it's place. Then put my Liquid Mix and my Canopus box on the card (each with own port) and FW800 external connected directly to my Mac. So long as I don't have any FW400 devices attached to the Mac, it should operate at FW800 speeds.

I guess I'll continue to use my internal WD 250GB drive for my audio projects instead of putting the 1TB in there. Then use the external 1TB drive for sample libraries and backups. I guess I don't really need to partition it, but I always used to do that to sort of keep things organized in my mind. I guess there's not really a point.

I guess for now, I'll continue to work without Time Machine and just manually backup projects after working on them by just dragging them to the external drive.

I guess to get prepped I'm going to pull the PoCo card and swap it with the FW400 card and make sure the Liquid Mix is happy. Goodbye Classic Verb.

[KEVORKIAN]

I guess for now, I'll continue to work without Time Machine and just manually backup projects after working on them by just dragging them to the external drive.

Check out Chronosync for this (it's $40):

http://www.econtechnologies.com/pages/c ... rview.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

It will do file and folder synchronization and backup with verification. You can also schedule it to copy at night automatically or make the copy process a one click saved action

I use it to sync folders and copy data all the time as it's more reliable than the Finder and you can exclude items.

[bongo_x]

I like Carbon Copy Cloner (http://www.bombich.com/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;) for my drive backups,
and Chronosync (http://www.econtechnologies.com/pages/c ... rview.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;) for syncing between computers and backing up specific folders.

I'm sure I could do with just one of them, but it keeps it more organized in my head. They're two of my favorite backup softwares. I like having a full drive clone all the time as opposed to an incremental version like Time Machine does.

bb

[soloact]

I second the CCC, I take two cloned laptops to gigs, and it makes it easy. It also does incremental syncing at the system level.

I've had good success with this one for incremental sync and backup.
http://www.qdea.com/synchronize_pro_x_intro.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
I like how it displays a list of all changed, deleted, and newer files, and the direction indicator shows which files are being synced to which machine which is very handy.

[James Steele]

Well, best laid plans and all that...

I just installed the Firewire card in my Mac and connected the Liquid Mix to it. Ran the Liquid Mix software and it seemed fine. Then loaded a DP project and it seemed okay to, right up until the part that the audio system became active and then the Liquid Mix hardware just locked up frozen. If you have any ideas, I posted a new thread below:

http://www.motunation.com/forum/viewtop ... =1&t=40736" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

[James Steele]

I appreciate all the suggestions, people. THANK YOU!

Well, I'm back to the drawing board now, since the FW400 card that I had had a chipset that must be incompatible with Liquid Mix. I had some issues.

So now I'm wondering if I should:

A) Order a compatible FW400 card and try my plan again.

B) Order an eSATA card, keep Liquid Mix on built in bus

C) Say the heck with it and put my PoCo back in, connect up the external drive that's coming to the FW800 connector, but still having Liquid Mix connected. They'll be sharing the buss, and I'll be getting FW400 speeds, but if I'm always loading VIs while DP is in stop, then it shouldn't mess up Liquid Mix, and how bad will it be really? Although will it load more slowly than it does now when I have sample libraries distributed between my internal boot drive and audio drive?

I'm confused. Arghhh...

And of course, one factor is I don't want to pour too much money into PCI cards for a G5. So getting the cheapest possible COMPATIBLE FW400 card might still be the thing to do. Sigh....

[James Steele]

Well this is interesting. I'm open to suggestions. If I go the card route, I can:

A) Get a Focusrite approved Lacie FW400 card for about $17 shipped.

http://bit.ly/bJBRDY" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

This means I'll use my external samples drive via Mac FW800. Also one port for Liquid Mix and IF I feel like using my Canopus ADVC-100, a separate port for it. (I don't really use it much and probably won't.)

B) I can get the same brand eSATA card for about $34 shipped.

http://bit.ly/dasf1x" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

I suppose that's faster than the FW800, yes? Can you do audio projects to an eSATA drive? That may be the way to go. Please people, help me make up my mind! LOL