FULL Track Count? Internal or External Hard drive?

[minor2nd]

I was wondering how i could get the most out of my system. I havent really pushed my system while recording a session, but i've done some tests like putting a delay and verb plugs on 10 tracks and this thing gets sluggish. I have a Dual 1.25 G4 with 1 gig of ram and only one hard drive. Would using another hard drive just for my audio really make a huge difference? And which should i get, an external or internal hard drive (also any brands or any other details would be great). And whats a SCSI drive?

[heavymoe]

Take a look at the compatibilty for this machine. I believe that you will have to purchase a separate Firewire card to use an external firewire drive. There are a few listed as recommended. We use firewire only for our sessions. Just make sure that the drive uses a Oxford 911 bridge chip. Here (http://www.pacificproaudio.com/drives.asp)
Your issue with plugins really has very little to do with drives, more CPU cycles gives you more DSP. Also remember that Reverbs are the biggest pigs.

[Icabod]

Put in another internal drive. You will be very pleased.
I like to use smaller drives, 80 gig and under. I am just paranoid about having much more data than that on one drive!!
Your machine will support four internal IDE drives if I am not mistaken.

[where02190]

The preformance difference having a dedicated drive for audio is massive. Increased track and plugin count, faster redraws, there is no comparison.

You can easily put 2 more drives into your G-4, one on top of the current drive, and one under the CD/DVD drive, with no additional hardware or software except the drives. We have 3x120gb IBM/Hitachi 120gb/8mb cache drives in our dual 1ghz Quicksilver G-4, and we get 32/8 score in the Davec test. We use the second drive (the one over the system drive) as our primary audio drive, and the 3rd as backup. (Drive #3 is on the optical buss, which is slower, and thus not as well suited for read/write.)

If you want portability you cna always go Firewire as well, but you will not get as good a performance boost as with a dedicated internal drive.

Best drive prices from vendors listed on www.pricewatch.com (http://www.pricewatch.com).

[41217]

Definatly go for the extra internal drive!But i was wondering...are serial drives(internal) compatible with the g4 macs?? would it be much faster?

[Carl Z]

If your not sure you can look at the drive that's in there.

Definitly go internal.. My Mantra is "Dual Processors - Internal Drives".

Not really. I don't have a Mantra. It's a Honda.

C

[where02190]

SATA drives do not work with G-4's, only G-5's.