FireWire Performance Survey

[kcurry]

Hi. I have an HD2 Accel system with a dual-2 GHz G5 and the latest, greatest version of PT. For a long time now, I've been using SCSI, but I am considering switching to two FireWire drives I have (both 7200 rpm). The drives can operate on FireWire 400 or FireWire 800 (they are EZQuest Cobra drives). I would like to clear up a slot for another Accel or Process card. What kind of performance can I expect in terms of tracks and edits? I just do stereo music recording and mixing. I don't do lots of editing, but I do use quite a few plug-ins. I rarely use more than 32 tracks on any one session. How reliable is FireWire?

[RobMacki]

For me it has been my only type of hard drives. (LaCie 7200 FW400s)
I'm on a PB G4 w/Magma HD2Accel.
But I am on OSX2.8 PT 6.2 with little or no problems.
I have seen and maybe you have too about nightmares on 6.4 OX10.3 even w/ the latest .4cs version. I have been a little leery of upgrading. I know I'm gonna want to go to 6.7 when it is available. But I think I'll watch the trenches to see what kind of problems occur before making the switch.

[Drew Mazurek]

I run my sessions off a OWC Mercury Elite 120gb FW drive and I only run into issues when the drive hits about 105gigs full. either making space or doing some consolidating of tracks clears the bottle neck. it works for me and I'm pleased with it. btw, my stuff is usually 30 some tracks and sometimes includes drums that have been Beat Detectived. is that a word?
drew

[JKD99]

all's well here, PT HD3 Accell v6.4.1cs8, G4 1.25 MDD, Panther 10.3.5 (yep), Firewire drives only, 7200rpm Oxford 911. Rarely have to pop in the ATTO card anymore, just the occasional transfer from old Avids.

[drBill]

I run my sessions off a OWC Mercury Elite 120gb FW drive and I only run into issues when the drive hits about 105gigs full. either making space or doing some consolidating of tracks clears the bottle neck. it works for me and I'm pleased with it. btw, my stuff is usually 30 some tracks and sometimes includes drums that have been Beat Detectived. is that a word?
drew

Same drive, 200mb. Running 60-70 tracks, low to moderate edits off of one FW drive. No problems. Dual 2.0g G5. Light plug ins. Not missing SCSI - that is after I turned off quartz extreme. Before that, nothing but freezes.

[maxserg]

Same drive, 200mb. Running 60-70 tracks, low to moderate edits off of one FW drive. No problems. Dual 2.0g G5. Light plug ins. Not missing SCSI - that is after I turned off quartz extreme. Before that, nothing but freezes.

How do you turn off quartz extreme?

[Adamsound]

I still own LOTS of SCSI drives (anyone interested?), but for about a year now, I have been running an HD3/Accel system on a G4 933, with three Glyph 120 gig drives in their single space rack. I run REALLY HUGE sessions with 70 to 90 tracks, often mixed to a QuickTime video, and with a completely excessive use of plugins, and I have had very few problems. I only consolidate tracks and things like that to lower the edit count with I'm doing edits on an entire drum kit, which seems to put me over the top, but otherwise, I don't worry about it. I do run Disk Warrior to defrag when necessary, and that seems to help a lot.

[filmixer]

OS X is optimized for firewire and it really is the easiest, trouble free way to go. Stay with Firewire 400 though. Firewire 800 isn't qualified by Digi yet and there have been many threads on this forum with people having trouble with it. Firewire 400 has enough bandwidth for hundreds of tracks of audio. You can also as an option get one of the new 10k RPM serial ATA drives that fit internally in your G5. I know a few people that are working this way and are having great success with it. If you stay pretty close to Digi's recommended track counts for each drive, you should have a solid trouble free system.

[woodshopsound]

I have an identical system to yours. Often I run 60 tracks or more on one 800 drive, without a hitch. I'll make one comment, though. I have had quite a few bad experiences with EZQUEST drives. They are manufactured very poorly and are prone to failure. I have never had a serious broblem on a Lacie drive though, and those are the only ones that I buy.

[Chief Technician]

I do run Disk Warrior to defrag when necessary

Disk Warrior only defrags the directory. To defrag the files, copy them to another disk, erase the original disk, then copy the files back to your newly initialized disk.