Any Problems using Firewire HD's?

[EthanMorse]

For those that use Firewire Hard drives, have you found it to be reliable? Better/worse than scsi? If you could Just also list the brands and models that you're using and how they're set up in your system it would be a great help to me.

Thanx!

[DigiTechSupt]

If you haven't visited it already, check out the following link which outlines our preliminary test results using FireWire:
http://www.digidesign.com/compato/firewire.html

Brent

[Rob Macomber]

I have been using the EZ Quest Cobra + 80 gig firewire for a month now. It rocks! For the money (349)--it certainly beats scsi. I am connected to my G4 (533) firewire port. Format it using Apple DriveSetup.

Rob

[Johnny Jam]

Hi.
I have no problem getting a 64 trackcount with medium densed edits from a single Firewire drive.
I even find the performance better than my two old SCSI drives.
Here is a link to the drive I use, the OWC Mercury Elite 7200RPM FireWire drive with the Oxford chipset: http://eshop.macsales.com/Catalog_It...em=OWCMEFW80GB

Johnny

[Rob Macomber]

Playing back 64 tracks, yes, but for recording?? I'd use atleast 2 drives...or 3 to be safe. I have successfully bounced 73 minute, 24 trks, 24b/48k sessions with over 2000 crossfades across all tracks, DSP maxed out (2 mix farms), Full automation...including plugins. All bouncing from 1 Firewire drive to that same drive.

Bottom line though, you do NOT want any DAE errors during a record pass in a session! ( or at any time ) Digi has their conservative guide lines for a reason. They want to garauntee a trouble-free session. Does your Studer ever drop out of record?

I like to test boundries too (and save money), but when with clients, I always try to stay within the digi guidelines.....so I don't get any surprises.

Rob

[EthanMorse]

Thanx!
I'm curious, has anyone been able to get full 64tracks simultaneously from Firewire drives?
If so what kind?

Thanx a lot!

[sidereal]

Couple questions....

I got the OWC Elite 7200 with the Oxford chipset, but Apple's drive setup utility can't seem to read it. I'm running OS 8.6. Do I need some kind of firmware update, an OS update, or is there something else I'm missing?

When recording to multiple drives, has anyone tried recording simultaneously to both FW and SCSI drives? Any issues there?

I originally got the FW drive as a 40 gig backup, but I'm thinking now that it might be a sweet main drive. Now I'm trying to decide what's the best backup drive, my 2 IBM 7200 SCSIs, my DigiDrive, or the FW drive. Thoughts?

[Johnny Jam]

Yes, I had the same problem with the Apple's drive setup utility, but I just use the utility that came with the drive. It works great.

[Lee Blaske]

Rob Macomber wrote:

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:<HR>Bottom line though, you do NOT want any DAE errors during a record pass in a session! ( or at any time ) Digi has their conservative guide lines for a reason. They want to garauntee a trouble-free session.<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

The weird thing about this, though, is that some of the Digidesign guidelines can cause more problems for certain systems (especially large systems).

For those running large, challenging sessions with video (using a DC-30+ or Fuse) 64 tracks, Logic, ESB, soft synths, etc., using internal IDE drives or moving to FireWire can be a godsend, resulting in fewer nasty -6042 (PCI bus too busy) errors than using SCSI.

I've built some test sessions that will instantly cause a -6042 error when I attempt to play them back from two Cheetahs hooked to an ATTO card (using the recommended drivers, firmware and settings). Moving all the tracks to a single IDE 7200 RPM internal drive, the session plays back just fine.

I'm personally very surprised that Digidesign hasn't been aggressively moving away from SCSI and the ATTO card. The results from Digidesign's testing department simply aren't jibing with what those of us out in the field are experiencing these days.

Lee Blaske

[EthanMorse]

Thanx guys!
Any people out there running 10k RPM firewire HD's(if there are such things) or do they only come at the 7200rpm speed?
Keep the responses comming! thanks for the help... I'm trying to start running sessions using firewire drives but I'm afraid of the "Ooops, I'm sorry my comp. #$%^@) could you do that again???" factor.
The website links if you have them off hand for the drive manucaturers would be great deal of help.

Oh also, for those of you that are using multiple firewire drives, are you using it set up as a raid? and if so how do you go about configuring it like that?

Once again thanx!!!