Tips on most economical FW external sample library drive?

[bongo_x]

If you do all your work off internal drives and just back up to external drives then you won't have a problem with speeds. It will all be faster and you won't interfere with your FW bus.

BTW, the rear FW ports on my G5 went out (they do that) so I've just been using a FW400 card in there for the last couple years with no problem. I don't use a Liquid Mix though. I wanted one, but the whole firewire thing seemed complicated from what I read.

If you're going to use the external drive for samples AND backup then partitioning isn't a bad idea. I do it because it's simpler to clone a volume to another volume instead backing up to a folder on another volume.

bb

[KEVORKIAN]

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

Definitely. The eSATA drives are essentially identical to your internal drives performance-wise. (This obviously is dependent on the quality of the card you choose).

If using the eSATA drive as an audio drive would be helpful to you then I think that is the way to go. No substitute for fast access to your data.

[James Steele]

Thank you again for all the suggestions. I'm trying to digest this all, in the context of my typical projects, etc. Again, I'm wondering what would happen if I the Liquid Mix and an external drive (for my VI sample libraries) were on the same FW bus? If I was never loading samples into my VIs at the same time Liquid Mix was doing its thing, I might be okay? Although the time to load my sample libraries may take LONGER than they currently do loading from my internal drive? But then I can keep the PoCo (after reinstalling the software I removed in my haste!)

Or I get the eSATA card, use the external drive the same way for samples and backup, but it will be faster and no chance of interference with LiquidMix, and continue doing audio on my second internal drive. But I do give up the PoCo, which I was already resigned to.

I'm beginning to think I just got carried away here... sigh...

[Shooshie]

Figure out the method that is most easily going to transition you into a Mac Pro. I'm not holding a complete set of data here, but my intuition says go with the eSATA. You can later add that drive internally in the Mac Pro, or you can get an eSATA card for the Mac Pro and continue running it externally.

Sorry to hear of the hardware incompatibility. That's a bummer. It's happened to me with cheap PCI cards for Firewire. I finally got a name-brand one (can't remember who made it now), and some of the problems I had with it went away. That was with my old G4 years ago, and I don't remember much about it now. I do remember that with the cheap card, if I opened System Profiler and went to the Firewire section, the computer crashed instantly!

That PCI stuff will mess things up if it's not right, but they get by with substandard stuff, because for most people, it'll never be applied to something that causes it to crash. They'll run hard drives ok, and people do not realize they've got a ticking bomb in there, waiting for the wrong instruction set, and POOF! I wish I knew what to tell you, but I think the eSATA would be the more recent and probably more viable option. Be sure it doesn't say "WINDOWS ONLY" like one I saw at Fry's a couple of months ago.

Shooshie

[KEVORKIAN]

Getting the eSATA card is the more performance oriented idea:

I have a Sonnet eSATA card and it is excellent. I believe that Sonnet and Firmtek get some of the best reviews for their cards. Sonnet is always updating their drivers but the cards are on the expensive side. If you are going to do it I would encourage you to get a Sonnet.

Meanwhile you can't put this card in a PCIe slot and you won't recoup the value if you sell the G5 with it so it's not a great investment if you don't think you will keep your G5 for at least another year.

Getting the firewire card is the most cost effective idea.

You can get an inexpensive and compatible card for little money and your original plan will remain intact.

Here is another question for you: What kinds of sample libraries are you using??? Drum libraries like BFD, AD and Superior are loaded into RAM so these could easily share a bus with your LiquidMIx. However, Drumcore and Kontakt libraries still do a lot of disk streaming so disk performance there is key.

[James Steele]

Getting the eSATA card is the more performance oriented idea:

I have a Sonnet eSATA card and it is excellent. I believe that Sonnet and Firmtek get some of the best reviews for their cards. Sonnet is always updating their drivers but the cards are on the expensive side. If you are going to do it I would encourage you to get a Sonnet.

Meanwhile you can't put this card in a PCIe slot and you won't recoup the value if you sell the G5 with it so it's not a great investment if you don't think you will keep your G5 for at least another year.

Getting the firewire card is the most cost effective idea.

I may have a line on a LaCie eSATA card for about $17... same price as the LaCie firewire card approved by Focusrite. If that comes through, then cost effective isn't part of the equation any more.

You can get an inexpensive and compatible card for little money and your original plan will remain intact.

This is true, but now different if I can get the eSATA card for essentially what I was going to pay for it, but you go on to make another good point...

Here is another question for you: What kinds of sample libraries are you using??? Drum libraries like BFD, AD and Superior are loaded into RAM so these could easily share a bus with your LiquidMIx. However, Drumcore and Kontakt libraries still do a lot of disk streaming so disk performance there is key.

My sample-based VIs are as follows:

• MachFive 2
  Ethno 2
  UVI Workstation/Plugsound Pro
  Drumkit from Hell Superior (earlier version - I deleted it due to space issues on current drives)
  EZ Drummer
  Addictive Drums
  Kontakt 3.5 (incl. Steven Slate Drum EX)
  DrumCore3 (used mostly in MIDI mode however)

So most of my VI's load into RAM and not so much streaming, but again eSATA would load them faster too, yes? So if I can score an eSATA card for same as the FW card, seems like eSATA is no brainer. On top of it, if I can get the eSATA card for an extra $17, I have to ask myself if I should let $17 stand in the way?

I'm leaning toward the eSATA option. I can say this though: my current FW card is definitely incompatible. Some good suggestions were made in the other thread and I tried them a little while ago to no avail. This cheapo Chinese card just isn't happening in terms of Liquid Mix (big surprise that!).

[James Steele]

The thing that's going to drive me nuts either way is that the drive and enclosure will arrive tomorrow, but the eSATA card will mean an extra few days. Since the enclosure is FW400/FW800/eSATA, I could conceivable move the sample libraries there and get it all set up attached by FW800 couldn't I? Then when I put the eSATA card in when it arrives, I could hook up the drive that way, and since the volume name will still be the same, it should work and all the VIs still know where the libraries are?

[soloact]

This isn't what you asked for because it certainly isn't the most economical, but it's been fantastic in my PPC G5. At the time it was the least expensive of the internal SATA expansion products.

From this page
http://www.maxupgrades.com/istore/index ... uct_ID=135" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
And this is the package I got (listed near the bottom of the page)
SZ-MCCPUBAY3AL7
Definitely worth the investment.

BTW, that page is really hard to find on their site, but I believe they still sell the product.

A couple photos -- this shows two drives installed, I put the aux. fan in, but haven't needed to hook it up. It bolts down with one screw. The site shows brackets with two arms, this one has only one per HDD, which is different, but no problems since 2007.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/virtualeri ... 7/sizes/m/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

This is with fans installed. The space is just big enough to pull it off. In the PCI bay you can see two of the open ports on the 4 port SATA card.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/virtualeri ... 0/sizes/m/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

[KEVORKIAN]

The thing that's going to drive me nuts either way is that the drive and enclosure will arrive tomorrow, but the eSATA card will mean an extra few days. Since the enclosure is FW400/FW800/eSATA, I could conceivable move the sample libraries there and get it all set up attached by FW800 couldn't I? Then when I put the eSATA card in when it arrives, I could hook up the drive that way, and since the volume name will still be the same, it should work and all the VIs still know where the libraries are?

Absolutely. You can get set up and it won't matter what bus protocol you use to connect the drive as they all show up in /Volumes according to OS X anyway.

[KEVORKIAN]

So most of my VI's load into RAM and not so much streaming, but again eSATA would load them faster too, yes? So if I can score an eSATA card for same as the FW card, seems like eSATA is no brainer. On top of it, if I can get the eSATA card for an extra $17, I have to ask myself if I should let $17 stand in the way?

Great! If you can mitigate the cost factor, then I think you are right to go for the eSATA card. If your Mac is aging you will benefit most from squeezing every last drop of performance from it as possible while you still have it, and eSATA pays nice dividends in that regard.

The eSATA drive will definitely load the samples into RAM faster than FW 800.

[James Steele]

This isn't what you asked for because it certainly isn't the most economical, but it's been fantastic in my PPC G5. At the time it was the least expensive of the internal SATA expansion products.

Thanks for the info. It looks like their pricing is still rather high and not something that I could justify now. Besides, I already have an external drive arriving tomorrow. Good information however.

[James Steele]

Doh! I'm wondering something. The cards I've been looking at are PCI and my G5 has PCI-X slots-- 2 @ 100MHz and 1 @ 133MHz. I know that they're backward compatible with PCI apparently. Any reason I'd want to spend more for a PCI-X eSATA card? Would it make any difference as far as how quickly data would be read from the drive?

[James Steele]

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.

Thanks again for this advice. They are indeed quiet. I bought the one at the link... didn't know they had silver enclosures... would've liked that but the black will do fine. Also, don't know if you'd like this, but I did make a PNG graphic that you can paste into icon for drives/partitions using this enclosure:

[KEVORKIAN]

Thanks James! That image is perfect.

I'm sorry I didn't mention the other color to you, I thought you might see it on the site but in any case, it's the same enclosure.

[James Steele]

Thanks James! That image is perfect.

I just used a JPG on Rosewill's site and then used the Magic Wand in Photoshop to select the white are outside the enclosure, Invert Selection, Copy... paste into new graphic and Voila! I'm using the silver version for my icon anyway since i have a solid black desktop.

I'm sorry I didn't mention the other color to you, I thought you might see it on the site but in any case, it's the same enclosure.

No worries, actually as it turns out the black version works nicely because I can set it out on my workstation desk and it just blends in. I do like the enclosure very much and I really appreciate the advice. It's ridiculously quiet!! As I said, I can set it out on the desk, which gives the benefit of being able to see when it's accessing-- which I like. Also, gotta love the cool blue drive light. See pic below: