2 questions

[grandmastrmahoy]

I am looking to buy a 002r and want to ask some questions first

1. Can I use an external usb2.0 harddrive? All I ever hear or see is firewire and even though it is more stable, usb 2.0 is faster.

2. The digital I/O. With those I can have 8 analog channels 8 ADAT channels and 2 SPDIF channels all recording at the same time as seperate channels. Correct?

These may seem simple to you guys but I would rather be 100% before I buy.

THANKS

[clutch]

1. Can I use an external usb2.0 harddrive? All I ever hear or see is firewire and even though it is more stable, usb 2.0 is faster.

Well, it may be faster is spec, but in actual fact it tends to be slower because the USB depends on the computer CPU as opposed to Firewire which does it's processing in a chip at the bus end. You may want to try - but don't expect great results in terms of track count or plugin numbers.

2... 8 analog channels 8 ADAT channels and 2 SPDIF channels all recording at the same time as seperate channels. Correct?

Correct.

[grandmastrmahoy]

Thanks your the man.

How about this one. Have you ever tried or heard anything about just using a firewire drive case? I have extra IDE 7200rpm drives, using one those in a drive case. Or is there somthing special with a an "out of the box" external firewire hardrive.

And thanks again for the answers, I'm gettin it.

[curve666]

a regular IDE drive becomes a Firewire because of the chipset in external case. So yes--you can use your IDE drives as Firewire externals as long as the 911Chipset is present in the external case. I made one the other day. $39 retail for the enclosure, $100 out the door for a Seagate Barracuda Plus 120G 7200.7 UltraIDE.
dna

[lwilliam]

...Can I use an external usb2.0 harddrive? All I ever hear or see is firewire and even though it is more stable, usb 2.0 is faster.

This is a common misconception about USB 2.0 vs Firewire in audio recording. In raw numbers it does appear that USB2 is faster than FW400, but in actually streaming video or audio use, FW400 will provide more continuous, usable bandwidth. I explained the differences in the USB vs FW protocols in another post if you want to do a search. Suffice to say that USB was designed for bursty (asynchronous) traffic such as mouse movements and keyboard input, whereas IE1394 (Firewire) was designed from the ground up for synchronous (streaming data) throughput.

[yavuzj]

Hmm...

I am using a LaCie USB2.0 drive with my MAC MINI.
Others used FW400 drives.
Our DaveC est came out the same for similar Mac MINIs.

Are you guys sure?
How could this be?
I mean, how could FW be superior and DaveC test results come out the same.
DaveC test depends on the Hard Drive.

[maccool]

USB2 is 480Mbits/s, =60MBytes/s, maximum.

Firewire400 is 400Mbits/s, =50MBytes/s, maximum.

QuickBench 2.1 tells me that my external Granite Digital FW case with a 200GB Barracuda achieves sustained Read/Write rates of 35/28 MB/s.

This is a quote from the Pro Tools Storage Guide:

Hard Drive Performance

"...The data transfer rate required for 32-track, 24-bit performance (at a sample rate of 44.1 kHz) is 4.04 MB per second of sustained throughput."

Both USB2 and FW400 are an order of magnitude faster that the rate required, which may explain why the DaveC results are the same. Both are fast enough.

[yavuzj]

So, it is not actually slower than FW.
Or... even if it is, it does not have any effect on PT LE.

[lwilliam]

It's like if you only need to go 40mph and you have a 10 lane freeway. Yes, they are both fast enough for 32 tracks of audio.

I think where you'd see the difference is if you were pushing 96 tracks at 96K or something that only an HD Accel system (or non-Digi system) could do.

The DaveC test is a LOT more about the CPU being able to handle the plugin count than about the disk i/o.

Here's a link that should explain it: http://www.usb-ware.com/firewire-vs-usb.htm