SCSI vs Firewire

[bytemonster]

I'm using the 80 gig in my g4 dual 1gig for system and audio using digi 001. I'm going to get another internal drive or 2 for the audio...is it worth springing for internal scsi for me or can I get away with an IDE? Will it make that much of a difference for me?

[Calebjess]

Last I checked, the internal IDE drives are cheaper than just about any other solution unless you need the 10,000-15,000 rpms some scsi drives offer. You can get an 7,200 rpm 80 gig IDE hard drive for about $160. Some swear SCSI is faster but IDE works quite well and doesnt require use of a PCI slot.

[He Who Cannot Be Named]

The "HUSH" Drives out perform SCSI

They are at:

avammo.com

[Nick Batzdorf]

All bets are off if you're doing 192k, but otherwise it's the seek time of the drive that's important, not whether it's Firewire 1 or 2. 20 MB/sec is enough to run about 128 24/44.1 tracks, and even messed up Firewire implementations (as on the Powerbook Pismo) do that.

That's how I understand it, anyway.

[DodgyDave]

Java, Hi.

I've been trying tor a long time to get a Glyph DV project dual 80gig RAID drive to work with PT LE. It doesn't.
Running Norton utilities Disk doctor hung the doctor, every time, although Tech tool Pro worked fine on all tests (including defrag). So with high hopes, I fired it up today and got the usual message "your disk may be too slow or fragmented". If anyone else has any ideas, they are welcome, but I guess I'm going to swap the Glyph for something else.

Hope this helps.

Peace.

Dave

[PeeTee]

Neither. Fibre channel is where it's at these days. Check out Studio Network Solutions A/V SAN. 288GB. Can handle 96 and 192 with no problems...no worries.

[dbullard1]

Oh boy, the eternal drive debate.

If money was no object, you'd all buy 15k U160 drives and hook it up to your HD system and love it. That is the fastest system for ProTools at this time.

Fiber is theoretically faster, but until it's thoroughly tested with HD, I wouldn't touch it. Firewire is very fast - not as fast as U160 15k, but usually enough for most work - If You Have HD.

Mix systems do not like anything other than SCSI as a general rule. This is because the DAE was written to work with's SCSI's particular way of disk access. It's not the most efficient way of working, but in the days of slow computers and weak drives, it outshined. Now HD has a new DAE - notice it's no longer an application? - this is written to allow the HD cards to see the full potential of any data source - not just SCSI. This means, you may see the same performance from your firewire drive as you did from your Mix's SCSI drives.

The way that Mix systems worked also accounts for the poor performance of RAID systems. Once again, the Mix card requests information very specifically, and not always efficiently. This causes a bottleneck in the RAID controler and makes the disk slow. If you want faster drives, divide your data.

One more thing, the sky's the limit on all these drives. Using OSX, I was copying files between a Glyph Project X disk and my LVD RAID5 set at 20MegaBites per second! That's quite near the theoretical limit of Firewire, plus I was able to get that on each bus. Proving once again that Apple has some serious horsepower under OSXs hood.

Hope I didn't answer any questions too clearly. I'm still a SCSI man myself, but I only work for the studio, not own it. Otherwise I'd use Firewire until it came tumbling down.

David Bullard
Masque Sound and Recording

[PeeTee]

Originally posted by dbullard1:
Oh boy, the eternal drive debate.

If money was no object, you'd all buy 15k U160 drives and hook it up to your HD system and love it. That is the fastest system for ProTools at this time.

Fiber is theoretically faster, but until it's thoroughly tested with HD, I wouldn't touch it. Firewire is very fast - not as fast as U160 15k, but usually enough for most work - If You Have HD.

Mix systems do not like anything other than SCSI as a general rule. This is because the DAE was written to work with's SCSI's particular way of disk access. It's not the most efficient way of working, but in the days of slow computers and weak drives, it outshined. Now HD has a new DAE - notice it's no longer an application? - this is written to allow the HD cards to see the full potential of any data source - not just SCSI. This means, you may see the same performance from your firewire drive as you did from your Mix's SCSI drives.

The way that Mix systems worked also accounts for the poor performance of RAID systems. Once again, the Mix card requests information very specifically, and not always efficiently. This causes a bottleneck in the RAID controler and makes the disk slow. If you want faster drives, divide your data.

One more thing, the sky's the limit on all these drives. Using OSX, I was copying files between a Glyph Project X disk and my LVD RAID5 set at 20MegaBites per second! That's quite near the theoretical limit of Firewire, plus I was able to get that on each bus. Proving once again that Apple has some serious horsepower under OSXs hood.

Hope I didn't answer any questions too clearly. I'm still a SCSI man myself, but I only work for the studio, not own it. Otherwise I'd use Firewire until it came tumbling down.

David Bullard
Masque Sound and Recording

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial">If money where no object, we'd all be using SNS A/V SAN systems. Here are some specs:

- 128 tracks of 48k from a single drive
- up to 400 MB/sec. throughput
- consistently outperforms SCSI-based systems
- eliminates disk related/PCI bus errors

"A/V SAN™ and A/V SAN PRO™ support up to 128 tracks of 24bit audio from applications like ProTools™, on a single drive. With multi-user access, engineers and assistants can share projects throughout a facility. Vocal tuning and comps can be completed in "Control C" while mixing in "Control A".

It's a Pro Tools users dream drive!

Check out http://www.studionetworksolutions.com/products.htm
That's the current champ for fast storage for Pro Tools. It's proven to work with HD.

Mix systems only work with SCSI? That's news to all of us that have been using FireWire HDs for the past year or so. 64-tracks off of one drive with large edit densities is no problem.

Pro Tools doesn't support RAID of anykind! PERIOD!!!

I can get close to 30MB/sec sustained transfer with a FireWire HD. The theoretical limit of current FireWire 1.0 is 400Mbps = 50MB/sec. FireWire 2.0 is 800Mbps. (By the way, that little "b" is bits...8 bits = 1 byte.)

You didn't answer any questions...you only made many fallacies.

[The Chinese]

Originally posted by dbullard1:
Oh boy, the eternal drive debate.

If money was no object, you'd all buy 15k U160 drives and hook it up to your HD system and love it. That is the fastest system for ProTools at this time.

Fiber is theoretically faster, but until it's thoroughly tested with HD, I wouldn't touch it. Firewire is very fast - not as fast as U160 15k, but usually enough for most work - If You Have HD.

Mix systems do not like anything other than SCSI as a general rule. This is because the DAE was written to work with's SCSI's particular way of disk access. It's not the most efficient way of working, but in the days of slow computers and weak drives, it outshined. Now HD has a new DAE - notice it's no longer an application? - this is written to allow the HD cards to see the full potential of any data source - not just SCSI. This means, you may see the same performance from your firewire drive as you did from your Mix's SCSI drives.

The way that Mix systems worked also accounts for the poor performance of RAID systems. Once again, the Mix card requests information very specifically, and not always efficiently. This causes a bottleneck in the RAID controler and makes the disk slow. If you want faster drives, divide your data.

One more thing, the sky's the limit on all these drives. Using OSX, I was copying files between a Glyph Project X disk and my LVD RAID5 set at 20MegaBites per second! That's quite near the theoretical limit of Firewire, plus I was able to get that on each bus. Proving once again that Apple has some serious horsepower under OSXs hood.

Hope I didn't answer any questions too clearly. I'm still a SCSI man myself, but I only work for the studio, not own it. Otherwise I'd use Firewire until it came tumbling down.

David Bullard
Masque Sound and Recording

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial">This just isn't accurate. Fibre systems work extremely well with ANY ProTools system.. SNS's systtem is OUTSTANDING. like 128trks +video off a drive. The Myth that Mix systems don't like it is just that: A myth.
we have, here at Technicolor sound (formerly Vidfilm) 2 complete fiber systems installed by SNS-A 15 seat, and an 8seat. One for Protools, an one for Sonic Solutions. We have beat these drives senseless in the almost 2 years now the systems has been in service. One failure-a drive went down, but It still doesn't take the facility down. Rest of the Fac went on working. the system is absolutely bullteproof. we have operators ranging from Very experienced to relative newcomers and no one can break this system. we are able to network, fly sessions from one room to the others without remounting drives, extremely fast transfers. we are also able to make deliverables (MO's, CD's, DLT's etc) w WTHOUT taking a room off -line for the transfers. Also we can backup without taking a room offline, and can also backup a drive that's working at the SAME TIME.. For A Facility that's 24/7 that's important.
It's actually sved us money in the long run-we no longer have to have tons of extra drives to cover our workload-we don't have to figure that 10-20% of our drives are down for formatting. we HAVE NEVER FORMATTED our drives on this system. Plus we don't have to spend time in engineering fixing Cross-mounted Drives or typical SCSI crap.
Ok, sorry for the rant, but had to se the record straight.
-Todd A.

[tvent]

Yeah, SAN's are nice
BUT they are NOT necessary UNLESS you have multiple computer systems needing to access the drives at the same time. DO NOT spend the money on a SAN just for the performance boost of fibre channel. Besides, it is EXTREMELY expensive.
For the guys asking about drives for their LE systems - unless you need portability, put in a second internal IDE drive. IF you need portability, get Firewire. IF you need to have something that will work with the studio you rent time in and they only have SCSI - or you have a bunch of SCSI drives around, or you just got a great deal on a load of superduper SCSI drives on eBay, then get a SCSI card.
Anything on the market these days (with the exception of USB) has enough bandwidth available to power 24-32 tracks of 44.1 pretty easily. So (assuming your computer supports firewire natively - I can't speak for the add-in cards) get an IDE or firewire drive and use the leftover money for something else