External Firewire Hard Drive Question/Recommendation?

[heygermandude]

I have been currently trying to use my USB external hard drive for recording (with no success what so ever) in PTLE 8 until i read that usb are problematic and i never could get any session to record to the external HD. i would always get "could not allocate space for recording." I know i read it, but to make sure im on the same page... DONT USE USB EXTERNAL HD'S... they wont work.. right?

so i assume i really need to just get a firewire external hard drive to save my projects too.. i have a mac mini with very little storage and i dont want to clog up my hard drive with projects. would an external FWHD just daisy with my 002? im not sure how it would hookup since my mini only has one FW 800 input.

Mac Mini. 10.6.7 Snow Leopard
Digi002
PTLE 8

[jbasil]

Yep.

[albee1952]

In a perfect world....... from the Mini FW800 port, use a FW800-FW400 cable, go into an approved drive with dual FW400 ports, then connect the 002. OWC offers several models with dual FW400 ports. BTW, if you have an eSATA port, record to an eSATA drive for even better performance

[heygermandude]

woop woop. thanks yall. i hate that usb drives wont work i have like 20 lol. but oh well. it doesn't have an eSATA port unfortunately.

[jbasil]

There are many differences in the spec for USB 2.0 that makes it less desirable for audio work than FW. But the unfortunate way that FW is not a part of the Windows OS the way it is in the Mac OSX has caused much confusion due to the lack of success vendors have in making it as stable, since it's a constant hit-or-miss upgrading of drivers. This is why some Windows users are so adamant that FW is overhyped.

Aside from the fact that the FW protocol requires that the data get there on time where USB protocol doesn't, USB relies on the host CPU for transfers, which is why there are buffer and interrupt alerts thrown at you during audio work. It's constantly requiring the computer to hand over processing power to the data flow. FW does not go to the CPU, using it's own chipset instead.

I own an 002 and I've hooked up multiple FW drives every which way from Tuesday and it has never not worked fine wherever anything has been in the chain (unlike the mBox 3 Pro which was incredibly picky and changed it's mind every day). Just make sure that the FW drives you get have two FW 400 ports. Many of the high quality enclosures (like OWC) have two 800 but only one 400, which complicates the chain since the interface is 400.