External Firewire Harddrive

[Johnrg]

Ive had some advise that it is best to record direct to an external firewire harddrive rather than to the internal harddrive on my Imac.
Can anyone point me in the direction of what I need?
My local electronics store has one that is 160GB for $169 but I have no idea if thats what I need or not.
Thanks
JohnG

[Avid]

Your profile shows this:
System Details
003 Factory compleate, 2.66 Imac

If that is one of the newest iMacs, then you would need to connect both your 003 and a FireWire drive to the single FireWire 800 port on the new iMacs:
www.apple.com/imac/specs.html

For those models, you would need to use the same setups listed on this page:
Pro Tools LE 8.0 for Mac OS X System Requirements
Where details are listed for "MacBook Pro FW800 Models"

The configuration options are:

1) FW800 port —> FW800 Drive (912 or 924 chipset) —> Out FW400 port on Drive —> Pro Tools LE FireWire audio interface

2) FW800 port —> FW800 to FW400 converter cable —> FW400 Drive (911 chipset) —> Multiple FW400 Drives (911 chipset) as needed for maximum track count —> Pro Tools LE FireWire audio interface

If it is one of the previous generation of iMacs, then you have both FireWire 800 and a FireWire 400 ports:
http://support.apple.com/kb/SP485

That makes the connection a little more simple, you would just connect a FireWire 400 drive to the FW400 port on the iMac, and connect your 003 to the FireWire drive.

In either case, you should be looking for an external 7200rpm drive with a FireWire interface. More details about your system and the drive or drives you are looking at would help.

[Johnrg]

Thanks for the reply.

Yes my Imac is the new generation model with only FW800 ports.

Noted on the setup.

I will do some research on the drives available locally here and re-post for advise.

Thanks

[JrummerJ]

These are great drives for the money...

http://eshop.macsales.com/shop/firew...teAL/400+USB2/