Internal SATA versus External Firewire

[scoobydoo]

Need new drives. I would either do a internal SATA 7200rpm like this one:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16822148140

Or I could go with an external drive in a chassis with a firewire interface like the one digi recommends like this:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16822154069

Aside from the obvious portability of the Firewired drive, would there be any advantages to either?


If you could even point me too a couple threads on the subject that would be most helpful. I did some searching, but couldn't find a thread comparing the two.


Thanks

[Stompinmsc]

I put a Western Digital 150 gig 10K internal SATA in my G5 for recording. Haven't done any 96K sessions, but at 48K I can and have easily done 100 tracks. I use Firewire to backup. It is a pretty solid and quiet drive.

Rob

[scoobydoo]

mmmmmm that sounds tasty. Is that the Raptor? I though about that route, but as I only handle around 32-48 tracks per session I'm not sure I need to worry that much about speed. I could be wrong tough. Sounds like the SATA buss will not be the bottleneck so I shouldn't worry about it then?

[Eric Seaberg]

I'd go with the Seagate and never look back! I've used Seagate drives for the last 16+ years and NEVER had issues!! Our current PTHD systems (4 of them) are using external Ultra320 (SCSI) but we also have an internal 250GB SATA in our G5s that works great. We use it as temp storage, but PT sees it as a real, working drive.

5-year warranty can't hurt....

[c-tone]

How much better is the performance of a 10K internal SATA drive than a 7.2K RPM internal SATA as far as Pro Tools is concerned? Does it really improve track counts, screen redraws, etc.?

It looks like the WD Raptor X might be the only real option, and they only make a 150 GB size. The seek times look to about nearly twice as fast as the 7200 models, but it is hard to compare transfer rates, since they use bytes for one model and bits for the other, but from my calculations the transfer rate on the 10K drive are slower.

I have had some strange issues, such as plug ins and auxes randomly stopping passing audio, that some have suggested may be from running too many tracks from one drive. Maybe this drive would help.

[c-tone]

The internal SATA drives are faster than FireWire and will give you better performance. Ideally, you record to the internal SATA, and then back up to FireWire.

[Skwaidu]

I'm running a WD Raptor 150 gigs.... It's totally great! On "normal" <80 tracks sessions I can run on DAE playback buffer "0" for much of the time, which is way cool as the system is very fast and responsive... And I've done a couple of 200+ tracks session with maxed voices which run ok with the playback buffer on only "2". I don't think a 7200 SATA or a FW drive could run such a session at all!

I'm running a Quad 2,5 G5 with HD Accel3... 4,5 gigs of ram.

And yes, backups to FW800.

[zoing123]

Have you tried the eSATA external drives with a eSATA pug in cad?

[c-tone]

I don't have room for an extra card.