External Firewire Drive Recommendations

[Bob W.]

Since I recently installed M-Powered on my iMac, I've been using my internal drive for PT sessions and media. It works OK, but it is my understanding that I should not use the system drive for session files and audio. I am planning to add an external firewire 400 drive for use as audio/session storage. Should I steer clear of 5400 rpm drives? I'm looking at a 120GB FW400 7200 rpm drive that has 2 FW ports, so I can daisy-chain my ProjectMix with it. Is this plan OK?

Bob W.
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M-Powered 4.2
iMac 2.16 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo
1GB RAM
OS 10.5.3
ProjectMix I/O

[mindnoise]

hi,

your plan sounds good.
just make sure you drive gets at least 8MB of cache and the FW case as some sort of Ofxord
bridge chip. the Oxford 911 support FW400 and IDE, and the 924DSB FW400/800 and SATA drives,
like the 10k RPM SATA.
Glyph make some good cases. but as long as it´s Oxford in it all is fine.

best

[JrummerJ]

I'd look into these. Reasonably priced, and lots of guys around here have had good luck with them:

http://eshop.macsales.com/shop/hard-...te-al-pro-quad

J

[Bob W.]

Thanks. I found one of those great deals on eBay. It's a Fantom Drives enclosure with a 7200 rpm 120 GB drive with dual FW400 ports. Got it for $10 plus another $10 for shipping. Seems to work fine. Every now and then you stumble across deals like this...

[Eric Seaberg]

I'm looking at a 120GB FW400 7200 rpm drive that has 2 FW ports, so I can daisy-chain my ProjectMix with it. Is this plan OK?

Not a good idea, but you're stuck with the iMac. It's a known problem that sharing FW interface and FW drive on the same buss will cause traffic problems. Even on a Mac Pro, which has multiple FW ports, they ALL share the same buss and are subject to the same problems.

The way around this is to purchase a FW card, either for a slot in your G5/Mac Pro or, in my case, a card for my MacBook Pro. This puts the INTERFACE and DRIVE on a totally separate data path and will give you the best performance.

Again, there's not much you can do with an iMac. Other World Computing (macsales) is a GREAT place to get drives. Look at the Seagates more than anything else. They are worth the minimal cost difference!!

[ericdano]

Not a good idea, but you're stuck with the iMac. It's a known problem that sharing FW interface and FW drive on the same buss will cause traffic problems. Even on a Mac Pro, which has multiple FW ports, they ALL share the same buss and are subject to the same problems.

The way around this is to purchase a FW card, either for a slot in your G5/Mac Pro or, in my case, a card for my MacBook Pro. This puts the INTERFACE and DRIVE on a totally separate data path and will give you the best performance.

Again, there's not much you can do with an iMac. Other World Computing (macsales) is a GREAT place to get drives. Look at the Seagates more than anything else. They are worth the minimal cost difference!!

Yeah. Not a good idea. I have a Project Mix on a MacPro, and it suffers if you have a drive on the Firewire chain and use it. If it is on the USB2, it is fine.