Firewire drives instead of scsi?
 

I finally made the jump to a Mac G4 dual 1 gig. My old Windows NT system is now used for playing Asteroids. The Adeptec 19160 SCSI card that ran in NT is not compatible in Mac, although I could still use the two Seagate Cheetah drives as my "audio files only" drives like I did with NT. Here's my question. Do I need to invest in a Mac (and PT) compatible SCSI card, or can I use one or two external Firewire drives for audio files during recording. I'm not familiar with Firewires transfer rates or other specifics for this application. I'm running PT Mix/24, and PT v5.1.3. Thanks for any advise.

Re: Firewire drives instead of scsi?
 

Hi,

I have an HD 2 system now,,,
I have 4 Firewire drives that I use instead of my scsi stuff now.
I still have the scsi drives, but don't really ever use them anymore.
As a matter of fact, I only use two of the Firewire drives for audio.
I have been running fairly large mixes off the firewire drives (36 tracks plus) and they work great.
There is a slight speed difference, (Record start, etc) but it works great.
I know that they will be coming out with Firewire 2 in the near future, and that will probably be the end of scsi.

I say go for the Firewire drives.

Good luck.

Re: Firewire drives instead of scsi?
 

Firewire!

I have 3 firewires on HD and run 60-80 tracks all day at 48 with no lag.

Much cheaper and you can build your own. Ebay has IDE/ATA 7200 RPM 80G drives for 75 bucks and www.granitedigital.com has the bridgeboards. I even have a removable firewire granite digital tray for my backup and as I fill up drives I start on a new one.

Yeah scsi has the best performance but for most applications firewire is perfect, much more affordable and easier to come by.

Re: Firewire drives instead of scsi?
 

I second all of theese posts! [img]images/icons/wink.gif[/img]

Re: Firewire drives instead of scsi?
 

YES! Have an 80 gig OWC Mercury Elite that has never skipped a beat. Am now SCSI-less and loving it.

Re: Firewire drives instead of scsi?
 

Just switched to 2 Glyph hotswap FireWire bays, running 64 trx of 96Khz audio using 2 drives, no problems at all.

Re: Firewire drives instead of scsi?
 

Thanks for all the advise guys, (and girls?). It's what I was hoping to hear. Happy Holidays everyone!!

Re: Firewire drives instead of scsi?
 

Firewire kicks butt!
The only thing to watch out for is...firewire bridgeboards ocassionally go bad (ive had 2 go bad), and they will take your data down with them sometimes (50/50 chance).
Ultra SCSI definately responds faster, but it can be negligable sometimes, and mabe not worth the convience and savings of firewire.
i've found Cobra firewire drives w/ibm drives to be the fastest of my drives (i have about 6 different types).

Vive la Firewire!!!!!!

Re: Firewire drives instead of scsi?
 

firewire can conceptually never be as fast as SCSI... why? because firewire is basically just external EIDE, and the controller is not as fast. there will always be room for SCSI in high-end pro audio. SCSI can read & write at the same time, something the IDE controller is just not designed to do. however, if it works, it works and i'm glad to see an alternative solution that will hopefully bring down SCSI prices.

Re: Firewire drives instead of scsi?
 

I've been using firewire drives for 2 years now and never looked back. I'll only use Glyph drives, cause they rock!