Best Internal SATA H/D for PT8LE?

[plangentmusic]

I was wondering what the thoughts were on the best additional hard drive for audio only on a Mac Pro Quad 2.66 using an Mbox 2 Pro, 8 GB of RAM - PT8LE.

I tried using a 1TB Western Digital Cariar Black 7200rpm 32MB cache and could never get sessions copied on it to launch or work. It was only until I tried to partition it that I discovered the dreaded "Invalid B-tree node size, the volume could not be verified completely" message from Disk Utility. Half the drive seems to be OK partitioned, but I'm not willing to trust it at all at this point. So, that model is out...along with my $100 bucks that went for it.

Experienced recommendations please...

Thanks


Mac Pro Quad 2.66 "nahalem"
OSX 10.6.4
8GB RAM
PTLE 8.0.4
Mbox 2 Pro, Command 8

[Craig F]

that's the drive I would recommend
return it as defective and get a new one

[Slim Shady]

Yeah the Caviar Blacks are usually the way to go, they're highly recommended for audio/video use. Yours should still be under warranty (I think it's 3 years on that model) so you should definitely get it replaced.

[Onager1286]

Man PT8 is so 2 weeks ago. Get with the times.

Sorry to hear about your drive though. I actually have a 1 TB WD Caviar Black in my external enclosure, and it's been fine for the past year. Oh and I'm pretty sure the Black models have a 5 year warranty.

[plangentmusic]

Yeah, you guys are right. I need to replace it. Initially I thought it was just a problem with Spotlight indexing, but no...

I also forgot to mention that I've erased over the drive 3 times now with one-pass zeros as well. Same "B-tree node" message.

Just to be sure of what you're saying though; this drive is just a lemon right? Or is there something that I can purchase that is more reliable?

Thanks again.

[virgult]

Originally Posted by Onager1286

Sorry to hear about your drive though. I actually have a 1 TB WD Caviar Black in my external enclosure, and it's been fine for the past year. Oh and I'm pretty sure the Black models have a 5 year warranty.

...can you please tell me if it's silent enough? Imagine you had to keep your computer (and thus your hard drive) in the same room where you intend to record (eg.) a female voice. New iMacs are dead quiet by themselves, so this would be your computer. Would you use that drive with your enclosure in that situation? Or would it screw all your recordings with a subtle BZZZZ...CRKCRKCRKCRK...BZZZZZZZ....? :P

[Onager1286]

Originally Posted by virgult

...can you please tell me if it's silent enough? Imagine you had to keep your computer (and thus your hard drive) in the same room where you intend to record (eg.) a female voice. New iMacs are dead quiet by themselves, so this would be your computer. Would you use that drive with your enclosure in that situation? Or would it screw all your recordings with a subtle BZZZZ...CRKCRKCRKCRK...BZZZZZZZ....? :P

Well to be honest, no, it's not very quiet. It's a steady hum. When I record my vocals I'm about 5 feet away from it and you can hear it pretty easily. I guess it depends on the distance, but honestly I don't think other 7200 rpm drives would be much quieter.

[aka21stCentury]

I've put up with Cheetahs in the old days of LVD SCSI (12 ft with those new braided cables) still internally it was a horrific whine.

ATTENTION: non-journalled drives crash a lot on OS-X, I don't know why. But you cannot record audio with journalling turned on. I would advise against dual partitions as when you dismount a non-journalled one, it could do that dreaded B-tree damage just by dismounting it (no you can't dismount the whole disk only one partition at a time). BTW I fixed mine so it would mount again in Firewire target disk mode with an OS 9 powerbook and Norton 6. Gave up on Disk Warrior, was the first Pro Tooler to begin using it back in the day, but it and Tiger cost me a dozen songs at least. Lost. Unrecoverable (well Norton scavenged them but little good 10,000 audio files named audio 1, audio 2 would do unless still in their folders). This with Pro Tools 5.xx or SVP.

At least after firewire target disk mode and Norton 6 (do not use Norton 4) the partition would mount and I could copy items to a good disk. Two files were interweaved and I couldn't save them, the rest were all good. Saved by Norton! Used to be saved by Disk Warrior until Panther and Tiger came along. But I own three versions from Alsoft and haven't had much success lately. You may however, it is worth a try. Disk warrior saved many a Pro Toolers butt in the old days.

Warning: there are bit volume viruses that can attack your home router. Kiddy scripters have gotten a hold of these sophisticated codes that look for many audio files (AIFF, MP3s, TOAST disk images) and then bame! Gone. Fat 32 thumb drives, HFS+ drives, anything connected when you download the .cv setup from you Linksys or Netgear router. This may be attached to the 'Blue Pill' html embedded javascript, if you allow IRC and have a wifi router with Browser and javascript setup built in (pro routers are terminal only for this reason) so Google the 'list' of suspect routers, you may be at risk. The 'Blue Pill' is not a rumor. A router on the list was up only two weeks, brand new high-speed cable service before it was infected. Killed a Tiger HFS+ HD and a Fat 32 thumb drive exactly at the same time, erasing all evidence and this is frightening. It may take many years for Kaspersky to update this on their definition list. Believe me I looked for it.

So have a backup solution, and a fast noisy drive is perfect, but turn journaling on for backup drives. In Drive Setup, hold option key down, then select partition, journaling in the upper menu selection will no longer be grayed out. You can turn journaling off and on at will.