Digi 002R to Firewire drive vs. SATA

[tylercomstock]

I have a digi 002 rack. I'm wondering whether I should buy and record to an additional internal SATA drive OR a firewire drive connected directly to the 002R. My concern is that data will have to be sent to the SATA over the firewire connection. Will this defeat the purpose of using the faster (than a firewire drive) SATA drive?

Thanks in advance for your thoughts on the matter.

[JFreak]

if you have a G5 powermac with internal s-ata connectors, just install secondary drive and use that for audio. it will be the fastest alternative.

if you have a G4 powermac, you will have to buy a pci card for getting s-ata connectors, and you would lose some speed as s-ata is faster than pci. you would not be getting full speed of s-ata, but it might still be somewhat faster than the builtin p-ata.

if you decide to use firewire for portability, i'd suggest you install another firewire buss (again, via pci card) for it as there's something strange in panther's firewire implementation which means one cannot get full performance of 002 + firewire drive if the two are connected to the same buss (different ports or daisy-chained, it doesn't matter).

i myself have a G4 powerbook and 002R. i connect my lacie firewire hard drive to the powerbook via a lacie pcmcia firewire bridge card, and the 002R audio interface via the builtin firewire. i get the full performance and have no problems at all. but it's totally different story if i try to run them via one firewire buss...

[tylercomstock]

Thanks again for the help.