Glyph drive as main audio drive?

[imp]

Hello,

Got an 867. I've been running audio on my second Deskstar ATA internal drive, and I keep the OS and PTLE on the primary ATA internal drive.

I have an external firewire EZ Quest drive that I use for back up only... I cannot run audio on this drive due to the 9060 error problem, but I hope to be able to fix this by fooling around with the extensions / drivers.

Anyway, to the point: could someone list the advantages and disadvantages specifically of running audio off a Glyph external drive. Quirks, problems, etc???

I am not having problems at the moment running audio off the secondary internal ATA, however since both my internals are Deskstars, I am a bit worried (due to the reports of defects and failures).

Of course, our friend Brad L. is often here telling us how the Glyph is truly a hot-rodded drive designed specifically for audio use, etc... so I thought that perhaps a Glyph is indeed a reliable drive (even though it costs more than the average firewire drive.) It probably does mkae sense to spend even an extra few hundred $ to greatly decrease any chance of catastrophic failure.

But, is the speed of the Glyph limited by the firewire interface? Would it be any slower than an internal Deskstar? Are there any other quirks or issues when running audio exclusively off an external Glyph? Anybody ever have any troubles with these?

I am about to buy another external drive, and while the EZ Quest has been working wonderfully, I thought that it might be a good idea to specifically run audio off a drive that is considered very reliable and designed specifically for the task. With this in mind, I am guessing that a Glyph would be better than a Deskstar.

Also... I am getting the 9060 error with the EZ Quest... I guess I should expect to get the 9060 error with the Glyph too? Or is the Glyph for some reason better in some way and able to run without evoking the 9060? Or, as some have said, the 9060 error was caused in some cases by the EZ Quest drivers / extensions... perhaps the Glyph drivers etc might be more compatible with PTLE? I would guess that they are, but I am dealing with an 867 here, and with an 867, anything can happen.

Comments, info, etc welcome. Thanks -imp

[M Lawrence]

makes absolutely no sense at all, since, aside from speed, throughput is the other major factor in a drives capacity for dealing with streaming audio. that said, your throughput on an ata drive is going to be somewhat significantly faster, and theoretics aside, your average peak will be about 33-34mb's a second with a firewire drive instead of 40, whereas, depending on whether you have an ata/66 or 100 on the ide chain, there is nothing standing in the way between the drive & the bus (i have yet to actually test, but trust me, it'll be higher). and though i'm not sure whether glyph a/v tune their drives like scsi drives (i'm not even sure you can access cache mode paging, the way you can with scsi, in order to change the block size to larger blocks to suit audio), i don't think that'd make up the difference. firewire drives are only advantageous when you can't use anything else.

hope that helps.

ml

[bassmac]

I use two 30GB ATA's, a Maxtor and a Seagate Barracuda. They've both performed flawlessly. No HOT RODing needed.

[imp]

Thanks bassmac... but I thought I remember reading a lot of posts saying that Seagates were to be avoided...? No? I could be wrong. -imp

[imp]

Very interesting. Thanks.

I wonder then if there is a real super-duper incredibly reliable internal ATA drive available. I bought an IBM Deskstar after reading nothing but rave reviews back a few months ago... then of course right after I bought it and installed it, I read new articles saying that the Deskstars are potentially defective and can fail, etc.

It seems that almost all internal type ATA drives out there have been known to fail. I don't know if I have yet read about any one drive that has been reported to be truly excellent in all cases... it seems that almost everyone has had a major failure with just about every drive in existence.

Just as a recap... I'd love to hear reports on internal ATA drives that would be considered the best and most reliable. I know this topic has been tackled here probably not too long ago, but it seems that these type of reports change week to week.

Gee, it would be nice to just have a drive that you could really rely on. I realize that any mechanical device can fail at any time and there is no such thing as a failure-proof device, but there should be at least a line of acceptability. Does anyone (like Glyph, or?) make a HOT ROD internal ATA drive that is specifically designed to have audio run off it? I think it would be worth the extra $$$ for something with a greatly reduced failure rate. What can be worse than having your system blow up right in the middle of an important session, and losing some audio data?

Thanks guys - imp

[Christoph1123]

imp,

I've got an IBM Deskstar 2nd HD in my 867 and an external Glyph firewire X-Project. I've done tests between the 2 HD's and they perform exacly the same, excellent.

Chris

[M Lawrence]

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:<HR>Originally posted by imp:

I bought an IBM Deskstar after reading nothing but rave reviews back a few months ago... then of course right after I bought it and installed it, I read new articles saying that the Deskstars are potentially defective and can fail, etc.
Thanks guys - imp[/QB]<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

it's only the 75gig deskstar that had the prob. so, unless that's what you bought, you're fine. my recommendation would be quantum's fireball plus/as, which is an ata/100 drive.

ml

[lwilliam]

The Glyph Project X (for the Digi001) is an IDE drive with a firewire-to-ATA adapter.

I don't know who makes Glyph's hard drives - but Glyph doesn't manufacture them. I'm not sure if they are "specially" made for Glyph by one of the major HD manufacturers, or if they just have a deal for standard production-line HDs with another HD manufacturer.

The Project X has a fan - do you care about the extra noise of a hard drive + fan in your rack?

They're also very portable - assuming you DON'T rack mount them. There are other firewire drives that can just sit on top of your G4 and are more portable.

As you can see, I'm not a fan of the over-priced Glyph line.

[Hank5]

I've had nothing but heartaches dealing with IDE drives in the past (Totally SCSI now). My take on this topic is, If you use your drives, I mean really beat the hell out of them using them six+ hours a day expect them to fail, With all client files burn a CD, And start a Busted Hard Drive exhibit like me [img]images/icons/rolleyes.gif[/img]