Hard drives

[NK]

Hey guys:

I was just wondering what format of hard drives people are preferring these days. I've had somewhat mixed results with Firewire 800 (in my experience they sometimes just disappear from the desktop with no warning whatsoever). I have a boatload of FW 400 drives, including a brand new double hotswap chassis I just got today from Granite. I love these mechanisms myself, and this time round I got the dual S.M.A.R.T. enclosure (Self-monitoring, Analysis and Reporting Technology) which I have heard nothing but great things about. I'm in the middle of moving all my current work over to these drives/enclosures as I write this, but I was wondering if anyone had started seriously using SATA drives for recording. I've used an additional internal SATA on occasion at studios that (use G5s) and that haven't got a lot of available FW drive space, and that's worked well for me. I'm thinking of possibly getting a Granite dual SATA rackmount unit as well, just to be covered and also depending on what the studios I end up working at have available. Of course, this needs a PCI SATA card adapter, which if you're working on a G5 does end up being a huge pain as you lose a PCI slot. I use my HD3 setup in a G4 with four slots, so this is doable for me, at least at the moment. The benefits of SATA are huge of course - nearly 4 times the data throughput (up to 150MBps) as opposed to 40MBps for FW 400, so I'd imagine the computer would remain really responsive even at silly track counts at hi-res sampling rates.

Anyway, I had a couple of free moments, so I just thought I'd see what other people out there are using for their daily digital audio work.

Neil K.

 

[sorceron]

man, speaking of g5's and sata. i bought mine used and turns out the dude i bought it from replaced the sata drive with an ata using some sort of adapter, the dvd burner isnt an apple, so i get all sorts of problems with it, the ram was not fully compatible either. i was pissed, since then ive replaced the ram and its been smooth sailing. i wish i had the sata drive though. and theres a hack that makes the non apple dvd work with itunes and everything for burning so thats fine, although the drive has problems unmounting sometimes. i plan on just using this single processor g5 until i can get enough money to buy a brand new 2.5 dual. then ill just sell this guy on ebay and put that towards it.

 

[NK]

man, speaking of g5's and sata. i bought mine used and turns out the dude i bought it from replaced the sata drive with an ata using some sort of adapter, the dvd burner isnt an apple, so i get all sorts of problems with it, the ram was not fully compatible either. i was pissed, since then ive replaced the ram and its been smooth sailing. i wish i had the sata drive though. and theres a hack that makes the non apple dvd work with itunes and everything for burning so thats fine, although the drive has problems unmounting sometimes. i plan on just using this single processor g5 until i can get enough money to buy a brand new 2.5 dual. then ill just sell this guy on ebay and put that towards it.

Sounds like something of a lemon to me..

Well, I'd try to make it work until 2007 if you can - that's when we'll start to see some serious MacIntel boxes, in my opinion of course. I'm just hoping they'll still even support PCI by then. Even the new iMacs are PCI express now..and not a new G5 on the horizon, although there are some rumblings that *something* new might come out soon in the G5 world.

Neil K.

 

[Razorjack]

A rackmount SATA R.A.I.D array is the best way to go for serious data, you can get ones with PCI and SCSI interfaces.

 

[sorceron]

Sounds like something of a lemon to me..

Well, I'd try to make it work until 2007 if you can - that's when we'll start to see some serious MacIntel boxes, in my opinion of course. I'm just hoping they'll still even support PCI by then. Even the new iMacs are PCI express now..and not a new G5 on the horizon, although there are some rumblings that *something* new might come out soon in the G5 world.

Neil K.

yea my g5 doesnt even do pci, only pcix. wich sucks cuz i had a card i wanted to use.

 

[NK]

yea my g5 doesnt even do pci, only pcix. wich sucks cuz i had a card i wanted to use.

PCI cards will still work fine in PCI-X slots - they just can't take full advantage of the much greater bandwidth of PCI-X.

Neil K.

 

[sorceron]

PCI cards will still work fine in PCI-X slots - they just can't take full advantage of the much greater bandwidth of PCI-X.

Neil K.

hmm really, for some reaosn it seemed like the slot was different and that the card wouldnt fit. ill have to try again. that would be awesome though cuz im getting sick of using the digi drivers with logic.

 

[NK]

hmm really, for some reaosn it seemed like the slot was different and that the card wouldnt fit. ill have to try again. that would be awesome though cuz im getting sick of using the digi drivers with logic.

Size should be the same, from what I've heard.

Neil K.

 

[Hopkins-WitchfinderGeneral]

Seagate Barracuda 160gb 7200rpm on regular IDE.

You can get em dirt cheap, and they work.

 

[sorceron]

Size should be the same, from what I've heard.

Neil K.

yea your right. i guess theres 2 types of regular pci cards, different volatages or something, one has 3 cuts and one has 2, although they are the same size. they would both fit in a regular pci slot the same, but the pci-x has the cut in place for the higher voltage pci cards wich doesnt allot for the other one to fit it. heh i was looking at the card though and got to thinking... looks like there is nothing going on where the cut would be in the other stlye pci card... hah i dont know if im crazy enough to make my own cut though.

 

[Razorjack]

For external/portable FW/USB drives the Maxtor OneTouch II drives are great (the 'FW400 + USB' or 'FW800' ones with 16mb level 2 cache).

 

[sorceron]

yea your right. i guess theres 2 types of regular pci cards, different volatages or something, one has 3 cuts and one has 2, although they are the same size. they would both fit in a regular pci slot the same, but the pci-x has the cut in place for the higher voltage pci cards wich doesnt allot for the other one to fit it. heh i was looking at the card though and got to thinking... looks like there is nothing going on where the cut would be in the other stlye pci card... hah i dont know if im crazy enough to make my own cut though.

woah actually i take that back, i am crazy enough. i was bored tonight and i knew i would never use the caard again if it didnt fit in a g5 so i took a knife to it and cut the notch in it. and i works! great trick to know.

 

[NK]

woah actually i take that back, i am crazy enough. i was bored tonight and i knew i would never use the caard again if it didnt fit in a g5 so i took a knife to it and cut the notch in it. and i works! great trick to know.

Are you serious? Haha! Well as long as it works I think that's great news. I'd have never thought it would have.

Neil K.

 

[James Murphy]

I've had somewhat mixed results with Firewire 800 (in my experience they sometimes just disappear from the desktop with no warning whatsoever). Neil K.

hey Neil, i've been using a LaCie Bigger Disk Extreme 500GB drive with the FW800 on my Dualie 1.46 G4 for several months now with large DP sessions and video with Final Cut HD and i've never had it disappear on me. you might try one of them when you go for another FW drive.

NP = Brand X - Do They Hurt?

 

[NK]

Hey James,

Actually, one of the FW 800 drives that *did* disappear on me was one of those babies. To be honest, I've had mixed results from LaCie drives - I own 5 of them - and 2 of the 5 have been unreliable..the one I mentioned and a 160GB FW400 one. I have a friend who owns a studio here who has told me several horror stories about them too, so I've not been using them for recording for about a year now. I'm glad it's working for you of course - my experience has not been as fortunate.

As I mentioned in my original post, I just got a new Granite hotswap rackmount yesterday that will do the trick nicely when it comes to FW400. While I do my productions at 88.2 I get a lot of stuff to finish up and mix that is at 44.1, and often loads of tracks as well, and I've found the bridge in the Granite gear to be really fast - a lot faster than LaCie, Ikebana, Fantom etc. The only thing it's not faster than is probably my U3W SCSI behemoth, but most places I work at have phased SCSI out now. I can still work on it at home, but then it's a pain to have to transfer everything again to go and mix etc. I think this Granite deal will help me out a lot. It's a dual chassis with hotswap trays (I've got about 20 of the trays by now as I've used a single Granite unit for the last 18 months with no problem at all. I work on so much stuff that I need a really cost effective medium. Using these reusable trays is great too - once the project is over I give the drive to the client and use the tray for the next one. No piles of FW drives all over the place plus the transfer speeds are so much faster, not to mention the cost of the bare drives being almost 50% of a standalone external drive. My other thought was whether or not I should move on to SATA, for exactly the same reason, plus the fact that the data rates are 4 times faster. Last year I mixed an album that had been done at 96k/24bit and used all 64 tracks (maxing out an HD3) Some of the songs were over 10 minutes long, with one of them being 18 minutes. That album almost brought the mix system to a halt - the drive was having so much trouble chugging away at the data that everything slowed down immensely. Still, we got through it but it did make me start to look elsewhere for speedier options.

Neil K.

 

[sorceron]

thats the thing with computers man, something that works perfect on one system my not on another, i have a friend with a g4 running pt and he gets that same problem with the drive disapearing, although im not sure what kind of drive, he has another one that works fine.

and yea i seriously cut a notch in the card with a kitchen knife(quite carefully) and i slid it in the slot and it works great, much better. i can barely believe it myself.