external drive power eating!

[stevesound]

Hiya,
ok, so I managed to scrape together enough cash to buy an external HD for my setup:

Digi 002Rack, Titanium Powerbook 1GHz, 1G RAM.
Maxtor One-Touch 250G External Firewire Drive.

I've noticed that when the external is my target drive for the audio (as recommended), it seems a lot tougher on the processer regaurdless of the CPU level etc. Basically, I can't run as many plug-ins while using the external drive as I can when using the internal laptop drive.
IS THERE ANY WAY AROUND THIS?????

thanks!

[stevesound]

Come on! There must be someone out there with a suggestion?
thanks,
steve

[sdemott]

FireWire requires CPU cycles to manage the buss. The more devices on the FW bus the larger hit to performance. The biggets performace hits will come when the most amaount of bus management is requires (during extended or heavy read/writes).

Use a FW800 drive on the FW800 bus or get a FW CardBus adapter to offset the load. These is the only option at the present time.

Also, be sure you are using an Oxford 911 or 922 interface bridge on the drive to insure the least load on the bus, and format the drive using OSX before usig it (performance always seesm better after a reformat from the OSX Disk Utility).

FW will mature and things will get better.