DIGI 003 & HDD options

[Muddy-T]

Came in to my place of work during the last week of my -well deserved- vacation, just to get a couple of sessions so I could work on those a bit at home.

Starting the system I found the external HDD was not responding. Not on the desktop and no 1394 light on the 003. Dang!

Now I've seen this before so I tried the usual remedy of powering down everything, reseating the cables and trying again but no joy.

Took the HDD home and tried the USB connection, nothing. Tried a different power supply (wall wart) still nothing.

On a hunch, and with the warranty on this 10 year old WD MyBook long void, I took it out of its casing, removed the interface and hooked it up via my indispensable little ICIDU HD adaptor. Sure enough the HDD itself was fine, it was just the interface/power supply that was borked.

Seen that only several dozen times before...

So what next? I don't think you can buy HDD's with two FireWire 400 ports any more.

There still are LaCie's and FreeCom's with two FW 800 ports but I'm thinking it would be more convenient to get a NewerTech Voyager Q Dock and a couple of FW400 to FW800 cables, if I were to get a new HDD I'd need those anyway. And with the dock I could just use the old HDD and be done with it.

A new drive with 2 FW800 ports starts at about 140 Yurp bucks. Plus two 400/800 cables at 20 bucks a piece.

The dock is about 80 Yurpian Units...

Looking for comments from anyone with experience with docks. Or a cheaper solution...

[Darryl Ramm]

The voyager docks are not intended for continued use, they are to setup or clone drives in.

Why do you want to use the ancient-ware FW interface. In order of preference.., are PCIe, SATA III, USB 3 options? Unclear what exact computers you need this to work in.

Many WD MyWhatever HDD products were awful with slow green drives in them. So is your drive even worth saving... what exact model drive is it?

What exactly are you trying to do? Do you need an audio spec external drive or just a portable drive to carry sessions around on (which a USB stick gets awfully good at). On what exact computers?


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[Muddy-T]

Thanks for the reply Darryl.

It's the audio drive, the one with the sessions.

This is at my workplace, a small project studio at a local community center where neighborhood kids can record their music for free.

I'm working on a 2013 iMac and a DIGI 003 interface/controller. The 003 only supports FW400 so I'm pretty much stuck with that.

The old HDD is a 500GB WD MyBook Essentials. I only found out it's one of those "Green" jobs after I cracked the enclosure and read the label. Still, it worked fine up till just last week.

As you can imagine money is an issue here. I'm just looking for the cheapest and fastest way to get up and running again ASAP.

If the dock's interface can't handle continuous reading/writing I guess I have to go for the replacement HDD -FW800- option.

It'll still be cheaper than replacing both the HDD, the interface and the controller.

Again, thanks for the input.

[Darryl Ramm]

2013 iMac... what exact model? What internal drive options?

It should have USB 3.0, so just go buy a 7,200 rpm external HDD or even better a SSD (like Samsung T3)... better performance and robustness, safer from rough handling etc.

You could also look at options for adding internal drives as well.

You got lucky running that green drive.


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[Muddy-T]

Apologies Darryl, I wasn't thinking straight. Clearly not all of my brain has returned from vacation yet.

I just got fixated on the idea of replicating the old set up (with the HDD daisy-chained between the 003 and the Mac).

(Insert D-oh! smiley here)

The Mac (actually late 2012) is glued shut so I can't easily open it up like the older, fatter models. So an internal drive is not an option. But I have a couple of unused USB3 ports so a decent spinner will do the job just fine. Sorted.

Thanks for helping me think!

T