FW800, USB2, or PCIe-Internal?

[tommymandel]

I thought I had another free drive bay in my G52.3 DC Tower, but there are only 2.
I bought a 1TB 3.5" SATA drive from OWC.
If I want to keep my old 160GB Boot Drive, the 500GB Drive that I put inside 2 years ago,
AND this new 1TB SATA drive all online, what's my best choice?

Caveat: I use 2 24i/o's with a PCIe424 as the only PCIe card AND 1 Digi002R on one of the standard Firewire 400 sockets. I don't wanna mess with these, as they work great so far.

GOAL: to do as little bandwidth bottlenecking as possible.

CHOICES:

•PCIe card that adds some SATA sockets, with or without power supplies.
•External enclosure using : a)• Firewire 800 b)• USB2 c)• Firewire 400?

I guess I'm asking which are on the same bus as what I'm already using, to avoid that. All I have on the USB bus is the keyboard mouse, and MicroExpress USB MOTU MIDI Interface.

THANKS!

[HCMarkus]

Hi Tommy. I went the PCIe eSATA route when I got my Quad G5 years ago, and it has proven to be a robust and speedy solution. My card is a HighPoint RocketRAID card to which I have four external drives (two dual enclosures) connected. I recommend this approach without hesitation.

My card was the least expensive 4-port PCIe card I could find in early 2006. There should be many more options available today.

[tommymandel]

Thanks for the helpful info, HC. I'll look into such a card and enclosures.
I see that you use Firewire for your audio i/o, (828MkII.) I just wonder if the PCI-e solution that you find optimal might create a logjam on my internal PCI bus, given that I may have the 2x 24i/o's moving 48 channels of 24bit/48k audio in and out at the same time?
However perhaps there's bandwidth to spare.

[tommymandel]

As a more modest solution,
I'm thinking that since the FW 800 port on the G5 is unused, maybe I should just spring for a FW800 enclosure and put the new 1TB SATA drive in that? Is that on a different "bus" inside the computer, or does it share a bus with the FW400 ports? ANy inFo apPreciated.

Thanks!

PS> that would give me the following setup:

160GB internal BOOT disk
500GB internal VI's disk
1TB external FW800 audio/scratch recording disk

(or should the 1TB be internal, and the 500GB VI's disk be the one in the FW800 enclosure?)

[mhschmieder]

Surprisingly, the new answer is USB2.

Yes, you heard me right.

But it depends on the vendor.

I spoke with RME at the NAMM Show, and they built separate proprietary chips for Windows and Mac OS X, for the Fireface UC, that gets past the usual problems with USB on constant data vs. data bursts.

Their PCIe version roughly gains one buffer over FW400; FW800 isn't very useful and can sometimes hurt performance; and the USB2 based Fireface UC shares the PCIe Hammerfall's specs in spite of being an external solution.

The mic pre's are greatly enhanced from earlier models, so even though there are just two of them, they will serve well for quick sessions and for extra inputs (when needed).

Not sure if there will be a full-rack version (they don't have one planned yet). Specs are similar to Fireface 400 except latency etc.

RME folks don't seem to think there is much benefit to FW800 over FW400 in real world situations of recording audio, vs. hard drive access.

I'm having trouble telling whether the goal of the original post is to move the hard drives to another protocol, or the audio I/O, so I'll snippet part of this to post on an RME-dedicated thread just in case.

[HCMarkus]

As a more modest solution,
I'm thinking that since the FW 800 port on the G5 is unused, maybe I should just spring for a FW800 enclosure and put the new 1TB SATA drive in that? Is that on a different "bus" inside the computer, or does it share a bus with the FW400 ports? ANy inFo apPreciated.

I seem to recall that there is actually only a single Firewire bus on G5s, but could be wrong. Frodo?

I don't think you will encounter any bandwidth issues using a SATA card if the Mac has PCIe.

[tommymandel]

Thanks MH and HC.
Yes, my post is more about how to best connect 3 hard drives. So FW800 is not an option, judging by your kind replies. Since I don't need more audio ins or outs, a PCIe SATA card would seem to be best (although not the thriftiest ) solution.

Much thanks.

[kgdrum]

As a more modest solution,
I'm thinking that since the FW 800 port on the G5 is unused, maybe I should just spring for a FW800 enclosure and put the new 1TB SATA drive in that? Is that on a different "bus" inside the computer, or does it share a bus with the FW400 ports? ANy inFo apPreciated.

I seem to recall that there is actually only a single Firewire bus on G5s, but could be wrong. Frodo?

I don't think you will encounter any bandwidth issues using a SATA card if the Mac has PCIe.

yes the FW bus on G5's handles both FW400 and FW800 on 1 bus