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I have a Mac G4 - 800 mhz - OS 10.2.8 - 1 gig ram and the standard 60 gig HD that came with it. DP 4.5.2 runs OK on it but a bit sluggish. I have considered ,after doing a bit of research and collecting opinions, that separate hard drive to run only DP and reason on would be a good idea , and then DP would not need to compete for CPU power against the system.

So I am wondering, I want an external HD, is there a specific brand that is recommendable? how many gigs should I shoot for? is 9700 RPM (i think) a decent speed - most seem to be that?

Originally posted by Slickie:
I have a Mac G4 - 800 mhz - OS 10.2.8 - 1 gig ram and the standard 60 gig HD that came with it. DP 4.5.2 runs OK on it but a bit sluggish. I have considered ,after doing a bit of research and collecting opinions, that separate hard drive to run only DP and reason on would be a good idea , and then DP would not need to compete for CPU power against the system.

So I am wondering, I want an external HD, is there a specific brand that is recommendable? how many gigs should I shoot for? is 9700 RPM (i think) a decent speed - most seem to be that?

That speed should be fine (more than you need). I run audio from a lowly 60GB lLacie FW drive, but I'd avoid the Lacie utilites.

Why areen't you going for an internal drive? Easy to install (relatively) and you usually get more bang for your bucks. Faster than an external and easier to deal with (unless you plan on bringing files around to different studios...)

Hi Slickie. Most boxed drives you see in stores these days are 7200RPM with an 8MB cache. Here's what I'd do in your situation:

1. Grab Xbench and test your current drive (it's a very easy utility to use and gives a reasonable idea about drive performance as well as performance of other aspects of your system).

2. On the Xbench site, look up performance results for external Firewire drives and see how these compare with the result from step 1.

Using info from the above, you'll be able to make a better decision. Xbench isn't a be-all-end-all benchmark, but enough people are using it that it's useful for making comparisons.

Regarding moving the DP application itself to a separate drive, I really don't think that's needed. Rather, you want a separate drive to hold your DP projects where DP will read/write audio. You want this drive to be as fast as possible, but given your system is an 800mHz G4, you also need to look into whether the drive is the current bottleneck in your system. Most of the time, it is. But, for an 800mHz G4, I'm not sure. For example the IDE controller and bandwidth between the IDE and RAM may be a bottleneck such that adding a faster drive won't result in any improvement. This is especially true for the Firewire bus if you were to add an external drive. If you're also using a Firewire audio interface, then this could be an issue. Are you? If you're using a PCI audio interface, then it's not such an issue.

So, really, you have to look at your system as a whole.

Having owned an 867mhz g4 tower, I know first hand that adding an internal or external drive is all you need to make it usable. The bandwidth of the bus is good enough for a reasonable amount of tracks and effects.I could get 20 or so tracks going with several intense plugins going, and it ran fine. I had two 7200 rpm drives, and ran 4.52 on os 10.3.9. I also had the ram maxed out at 1.5gigs. It was a decent rig, i got rid of it in favor of the portability of a new powerbook.

Thanks Studio615. Good info! I've got an 867 G4 as well but haven't powered it up in a long time. It used to be my main rig (OS9, DP2.7) and I later upgraded it to Jaguar and lent it to a friend so they could have email/web. But, it's back in my possession now so I might revisit it this weekend and see if there's anything I could use it for.

I'll try running Xbench on it's internal drive vs an external Maxtor 250GB FW drive and post results if I get around to it.

awesome, thanks for the replys guys. I recently just reformatted my drive and reinstalled everything. I also bought and ran techtool 4 on it.

Do you recommend a Firewire drive or a USB drive.
I will probably look into LaCie or Maxtor.

So I dont need to reinstall DP on the drive right? I just move all my files thier and start new ones on the drive right?

I'd definitely go with Firewire vs USB (though I've not tried USB 2.0) if you must go with an external drive. Back when I was using a dual 1.4 G4, I bought a Sonnet SATA PCI controller, which was significantly faster than Firewire. FYI:

Firewire 400: 50 MB/s
Firewire 800: 100 MB/s

ATA-33: 33 MB/s
ATA-66: 66 MB/s
ATA-100 100 MB/s
ATA-133 133 MB/s

SATA: 150 MB/s

And, yes, just move your DP projects to the new drive and you're good to go. No need to move the DP app.

<small>[ August 04, 2005, 11:26 PM: Message edited by: qo ]</small>

Hey go, if I remember correctly, the stock drive (60 gig) is an ibm, and it is a 7200rpm drive. I actually sold the computer and swapped it out with my external 40 gig to get the extra space. You should be fine.

I bought a Sonnet SATA PCI controller

go, it this an internal drive?? I thought i researched this and found that my machine couldnt use SATA - could that be - if it is an external - then what type of connection is it to the computer??? The speed of it sounds temping but Im not sure if my mac will take this.

Im also gonna upgrade the OS to the new tiger....do you think that will help or hurt things?

thanks

Hi Slickie,

A Sonnet Tempo PCI SATA controller will definitely work in your machine. Well, I haven't tried it in the 867, but I do use one in a 1.4 Dual. The connections from the drive are:

1. SATA cable to the PCI controller
2. Power cable to the mac's power

There was a warning in the Sonnet documentation not to connect the older internal power cable to the drive while using the SATA power from the controller. But, when I used only the SATA cable, the drive wouldn't work. So, I tried connecting the older mac power cable to the older power connector on the drive and that worked.

My advice, if you go this route, is to try #1 above first. If the drive doesn't spin up, then it's not getting power from the controller (which was my case). Only then, connect the old-style power connector (which is already hanging loose in your mac) to the drive.

Do read both the Mac's documentation for the G4 (especially any sections about the PCI slots) and the Sonnet documentation. Sometimes there are nuggets of invaluable info in these. e.g. in the Sonnet docs for my new controller, they mention that if a 33mHz card is plugged into any of the PCI slots in the G5, then the Sonnet controller's performance will suffer. Fortunately, this is the only 3rd party card in my G5.

I have used about 30 Lacie Triple Drives ( 200 and 250 Gb ) over the last 18 months for my professional gigs. ( running DP, FCP and DVDSP )

Only one drive has given me serious problems, and that confirmed my attitude of always having 2 drives per project, one of them for backup, at least once a day.......

These things are so cheap ( I come from the world of the costs of 2" multitrack tape.... it was not so long ago....)

So... Lacie.... but always buy 2!!! You won't regret it

kind regards

Stephen