Seagate Harddisks, which type ??

[Dirk Christiaens]

Hi, I recently bought a complete Protools 24 MixPLus system with MAC G3 and an external Harddisk, a Seagate Medalist Pro SCSI 9,1 Gb (7200 RPM ST39140W)). After 4 months, it has already some bad blocks, and it's not even been used intensively.
It was delivered and recommended by my supplier. Although this disk is listed as an AV disk (Audio-Video, no temperature calibration), I find this disk is rather slow. (Max 18-20 tracks)
I received a temporary replacement drive, which is a Seagate Cheetah 18,2 Gb(ST39103LW), 10000RPM. This disk is not listed as an AV disk and is not listed in the recommended drives by Digidesign.

My question: "Are AV tuned harddisks necessary if a drive turns at 10000RPM ?"

Many thanks

[Steve Rosenthal]

Dirk,

Your Cheetah drive is certainly "A/V" caliber. Here's a little background on "A/V tuning":

A/V tuning used to mainly concern the timing of thermal recalibration of the heads. That was back in the old days of dedicated servo (a platter and head were dedicated to reading servo tracking information).

A/V firmare would adjust the timing of recals so they wouldn't interrupt data transfers.

Now that nearly all drives use embedded servo (servo information is embedded in the data tracks on the platters), drives don't recalibrate in the same way. In a sense, they're always recalibrating, since they are constantly adjusting to the servo data on the platters.

So, your Cheetah will do the trick.

BTW, the model number you list is for a 9GB drive.



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--Steve Rosenthal, Digidesign ETS

[Dirk Christiaens]

Steve,

Thanks for the prompt and usefull reply. I was told that these drives delivered by a certain provider are specially AV tuned.

As I read in the meantime on the Seagate's website, "Seagate’s high-performance Cheetah and Barracuda LVD drives (drive models with a suffix of LC or LW are ushering in the future by utilizing the super-fast LVD Ultra2 SCSI parallel interface capabilities. Users of video, database servers, RAIDs, workstations and high-end desktop applications benefit from the greater I/O bandwidth, device connectivity, data reliability, and cable lengths offered by LVD"

So I can buy these drives seperately and put them in an external case. This is cheaper then buying them from my PT provider.

Many thanks,

Dirk

[Steve Rosenthal]

Glad to be of service.



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--Steve Rosenthal, Digidesign ETS

[Mike Thornton]

The Medalist Pro are the budget Seagate drive and are OK but for serious PT work can be abit slow etc which is what you found. The Barracuda range are fine and the Cheetah range are excellent. If you are happy about installing the drives into external cases then you will almost certainly get a better deal on drives if you shop around. However try and make sure the supplier is reliable and are going to be around when you need to replace a drive under the 5 year warranty.

Even with Seagate it does happen occasionaly.


Hope this helps,



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Mike Thornton
One Stop Digital (OSD) Ltd.
http://www.osd-uk.com

[Steve Rosenthal]

In addition to what Mike says, take extra care to make sure the enclosure(s) you choose have the following:

- A reliable power supply.
- Adequate air-flow over and under the drive(s). It's critical to keep cool air flowing over the electronics as well as the HDA (Head Disk Assembly).
- Metal bays or rails (or similar) that will be in contact with as much surface area of the drive as possible. (Typically this will be the sides or bottom.) This will act as a heat-sink for the drive(s), which can do as much -- sometimes more -- to cool the drive(s) than a fan.
- Quality cabling.

--Steve Rosenthal, Digidesign ETS