Is anyone using firewire hard drive?

[dubwon]

Hi- I'm in the market for a new HD and am considering an external firewire drive for my MAC setup. I will be using Logic platinum.

Anyone have any experience/problems with firewire drives?

If so, what kind of drive do you use? I am considering an EZquest 7200rpm.

Your comments are appreciated.

[dubwon]

one more thing...
i'm using a g4... do i need to have an external drive for audio recording? i have heard that internal drives can affect the audio signal (noise). is this true? has anyone experienced this problem?

[the noise]

I have a LaCie firewire hard drive which I use purely to back up my audio [pro tools stuff], it isn't fast enough to use in real time for some reason.

so if you really want a firewire drive make sure it works with audio with the system you have or want first.

[kcrusher]

The only company that I know of doing firewire drives for audio that actually WORK is GLYPH. Any other brand may have a 7200 rpm drive in there, but the actual speed of transfers, from what I've seen, is substandard.

Check with Glyph and see what they have to say about it before buying anything...

[bluzgtr]

I don't know if it is still true, but when I checked out Firewire drives 6-8 months ago, they were all being made with very low end drives...Ok for archiving, but nothing you'd want to use for recording audio. Why, I don't know. It seems bizarre. I stuck with SCSI, and I'm glad I did.

Larry

[AudioRain]

I too have been looking into firewire drives and recently checked out the ACOMDATA external drives. They say they are ideal for A/V editing, DTP, graphics, etc. They are 7200 rpm and 50 mb/sec. transfer rate.
If anyone has any experience with these drives, feedback is appreciated.
Dave

[jazzman1222]

I bought a Laice 60gig Firewire drive.

I is quiet, fast ( I'm getting 21 tracks w/ plug ins on a G3 350) and I've had no problems at all with it. In fact, I would recommend it highly!

[bigh2]

the key to Firewire drives is the "bridge chip" that is used in the case. All current FireWire drives are essentially ATA drives inside a case that uses a bridge chip to translate from ATA to FireWire. The early bridge chips were terrible, but some decent ones are starting to appear, boosting speeds 50%-100%. The ultimate goal is native FireWire drives, which may happen now that MS has endorsed FireWire (or 8011b or whatever the spec is actually called)
www.xlr8yourmac.com (http://www.xlr8yourmac.com) has great info and a couple of reviews that deal with all this. A recent review of a newer bridge chip/box is at:
http://www.xlr8yourmac.com/firewire/OWC_oxford911/OWC_oxford_911_casekit.html

btw, any ATA drive can be put into one of these boxes, and the boxes are usually sold separately.

[dubwon]

Thanks alot everyone for your replies- the info you have provided has been very helpful.

We should continue this thread as firewire drives are becoming more and more popular.

Any users of firewire drives plesae post your drive types/system hardware/software/track count.

thanks again!


[This message has been edited by dubwon (edited 05-07-2001).]

[ICKO]

I actually just got a Firewire HD 2nd generation made with an IBM HD 7200 rpm
and the new Oxford 911 Bridge.
I am using a Powerbook G3 400MHz (Firewire model), and I can easily run 40 tracks in Cubase( not necessarily all simultaneously ) without any problems. These are actually segments and samples repeated on different tracks throughout the song.

I copied the file containing all the same samples for the same song on the Firewire external hard drive, but two or three mono tracks are enough to make it stutter. I tried running 5 stero tracks, each one made of one piece, not segments, and it seems to run fine.

Am I supposed to conclude I won't be able to really edit audio with Cubase on this drive ? This is exactly why I bought it for, so you can guess I am a little worried and annoyed.
Thanks for your help.

Pierre

[vor51@hotmail.com]

For the price of Firewire Drives you could get a fast SCSI drive

[soilman2]

I have been using a firewire hard drive with pro tools/Mac G4 for over a year now. I was cautioned to use GLYPH, but it made no sense to me to pay what GLYPH dealers were asking at the time (GLYPH 30 GB HD's now cost half what a 7 or 10 GB did a year ago). I researched, and found that Fantom hard drives sold a firewire model for $350.00 that incorporated a Seagate drive. The seek time and rpm's were compatible, so I took a chance. It has performed flawlessly. The most tracks recorded thus far has been 20, and I doubt I'll exceed that track count.