Anyone using a Seagate External Firewire drive?

[3over3]

Is anyone using a Seagate External Firewire/USB combo drive for PT?

I'd be really grateful for any information regarding any issues with them, or whether they just do what they say on the tin... and work fine.

Thanks in advance!

[steve at Your Heaven]

I have used them. The only issue I have is they are set to spindown after some minutes if not used, and I have not found how to change that setting. If doing work with a client there, it would be embarassing to wait for it to come up, and it is sometimes annoying to me; I would want to have control over that setting. If you find it, let me know.

[3over3]

Thanks for that - no problems with track count, data integrity, etc?

[steve at Your Heaven]

No problems with data integrity.

I have not tested to find what the track count limit is, but think I have run at least 40 or so tracks. Others have reported using real tests, you'll get better info on that by searching or asking again if no one else replies, but i think that has to do with genereic issues (speed, i/o port rate, buffer and cache sizes) than brand of device.

[3over3]

Thanks, Steve!

[beggehorn]

I use one here, but only for backup. The spindown behavior mentioned above forces me to keep the drive off during work and only turn it on for doing backups. If I leave it on, PT will continually pause when the drive is accessed (even though I never record to it... perhaps its updating the databases?). So far its been a solid drive for me. I have the 300GB version FWIW...

[3over3]

Right - this spindown thing seems pretty significant, I've heard the same comment from a number of users.

I'd probably get the 300GB version, but I'd want to use it as my main drive to record to and play back from. Luckily, I'm on LE without MPT, so I'm not having to concern myself with overworking the drive or overloading the Firewire bus with all those 32 mono voices, eh.

How often, or rather how quickly into a period of inactivity does the drive go to sleep? The drive I use for my Logic system does something similar, but only after 20 mins or so, which at a normal level of working just doesn't matter.

Also, regarding the 300GB drive, I notice there's an 8MB cache version and a 16MB cache version, which I gather came later. Some users of the 8MB version reported problems - does this ring true?

[steve at Your Heaven]

I just looked on the seagate website, for which they get an F. There's no mention of this behavior or of any way to change it in the docs. There is no search bar anywhere, so someone is going to have to call seagate and ask them how to change that setting.

I downloaded a file from them,if it has the info,I'll post it here when I get a chance to read it.