Best second internal hard drive in G5 Dual 2,7GHz

[Labyrinth Services]

Hello!

I would like to buy a second internal drive for my G5 (Dual 2,7GHz) in order to replace my external firewire working drive (PT sessions).
I've read several acticles now and I still can't figure out which HD could be the best/flawless for this use (Seagate, Maxtor, Hitachi, WD, ...???).
All advises are welcomed.

Thanks in advance !
Olivier


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Apple G5 Dual 2,7GHz - 4,5GB RAM
OSX 10.4.6
ProTools HD|3 Accel (7.1cs7)

[Mark Dann]

I have two of these machines, (yes, two HD systems), and installed a Seagate 400 gig drive. I forget the exact model. Works great. I initially tried a Western Digital drive, but had major issues.

[Ginger]

Second the vote for Seagate. Nothing in terms of drives is truly "flawless" though.

[Lee Blaske]

I've had good luck with Seagat 400 GB drives in my dual 2.5 G5. Since I purchased them, I believe Seagate has come out with a 500 and 750. These larger drives run somewhat hot, so if you're not going to need that much drive space, go with a smaller drive.

Personally, I think you'd be fine with either Seagate or WD.

How many tracks do you plan to run on a single drive? Video, too? Is one drive going to be enough?

In my own system, I've got two 400 GB Seagate drives in my machine, but I'm using them for streaming samples (huge sample libraries like VSL, etc.). For my audio drives, I'm using WD 250 GB drives in a Firmtek 4 removable drive external case. This is an SATA case, so it requires a PCI card for the additional SATA interfaces. It's not something tested by Digidesign, but for me, it works GREAT (and the construction is extremely solid and professional - it's not cheap junk like so many other cases on the market). I've used both FireWire and SCSI in the past, and the Firmtek is the best drive set-up I've ever had. It's significantly faster than FireWire, and it has none of the hassles of SCSI. Installation and configuration (including installing the drives in the trays) could hardly be simpler. Obviously, it's not something you can use if you have 3 Digidesign cards in your chassis, but I'm using it with an expansion chassis.

For heavy duty use, I think a well-cooled case for audio drives is a good idea. I'm not sure how much air circulation is taking place around the drives within any of the G5 towers. I don't know if the interior of a G5 is the best placed for a mission-critical drive that's going to be worked REALLY hard.

As another responder stated, there is really nothing "flawless" when it comes to drives. You need to take precautions. What I'm currently doing is using the fourth drive of my Firmtek set-up as a back-up. It's a 400 GB drive, partitioned into two partitions. At various points in production, I'll just drag work in progress on the other drives to a back-up folder on the fourth drive. That way, I've got things in two places (until things get backed up to more permanent media).

Lee Blaske

[Labyrinth Services]

32 audio tracks on one single drive should be enough for me. No video at all. But in the case I need to, I'll put it on one external FW drive.
Thanks for your advises...still waiting for some more.

Olivier

[Labyrinth Services]

None else able to advise me about it???

Olivier