FireWire Hard Drive?

[salomon]

I am looking for an external hard drive for my laptop.
Any idea about the best firewire drive or interface for audio streaming?
Thanks

[sbcrockett]

check out: www.xtradisk.com (http://www.xtradisk.com)

I have the 60 and 80 gig drives of the XtraFire 911 slimline series. Great performance and flexibility in use.

[salomon]

Thank you sbcrockett for the info.

[bombastique]

I've been putting together my own FW drives - 80gb drives for about $150, including the Oxford 911 chip.

I get all the parts from www.pricewatch.com (http://www.pricewatch.com) - it gives you listings of prices. The last one I got was a Seagate 80gb drive for $88 and a case for $60. Putting it together takes about 10 minutes.

[salomon]

Bombastique:
Which enclosure did you pick up for $60.00? Are you happy with it so far?

Salomon

[This message has been edited by salomon (edited 10-31-2002).]

[Z13]

I'm doing just as you plan on doing. I just purchased an external 3.5" hard drive case from General-house http://www.general-house.com/gh_ME-745U2F.html for $77 + $8 s/h that supports USB 1.1, 2.0 and IEEE1394.

That combined with an 80GB hard drive (Maxtor DiamondMax Plus or Western Digital WD800JB) for ~$116 at www.newegg.com (http://www.newegg.com) makes a Firewire (or USB 2.0) hard drive for ~$200.

//Stu

[Jeeper]

Many of the folks that use Mackie MDR/HDR use Lian Li rh-58 removable hard drive frames to transfer to their DAW setups and for backup. They also obtain an external firewire case such as the ADS Pyro (I think thats the model not sure) and place the slide in holder in it. (there are several similar cases on Mkt).

If you do something similiar you can have several drives for use in one case a little more economically. The RH 58's I got were $50 for 2 complete units. I've seen an ADS case in a Circuit City store for less than $100.

I'm not a user of that exact setup because I had a networked PC with a free IDE port thus no need for the firewire case. If you are interested check the Mackie Hard Drive Forum for just about any firewire thread and look for a link to Where's site. He uses a different case from the ADS but explains the setup.

External drives are great for audio data storage and moving systems. I highly recommed their use

Hope this was a good alternate way of doing the job for you to consider.

[This message has been edited by Jeeper (edited 11-01-2002).]

[This message has been edited by Jeeper (edited 11-01-2002).]

[salomon]

Jeeper:
Thanks for your input. I did not understand the setup "place the slide in holder in it".
I will check the Mackie Hard Drive forum as suggested.
By the way I did see today at compUSA store an ADS Pyro FireWire case for $99.99.

Thenks Z13 for the info.

Salomon

[Jeeper]

Its a hard thing to word but the caddy the drive fits in holds the drive just as you would expect. On the back of the caddy is a connector much like a centronics connector on the rear of your printer. There is another piece that is the slide in rails and mateing half of the power and IDE lines that is fixed in the firewire case or computer and that's the one you didn't understand the way I tried to describe.
I'm not much of a technical writer and always have one to dress up my writing at work but she's not here now to help. She probably couldn't be paid enough to do that to.
I don't know if I can get a link on this board or not but here's my try to one vendors page http://store.yahoo.com/directron/rh58.html

If you click on the picture on that page it will enlarge where you can see the split between the two parts. The caddie for the drive is the width of the pull up handle under the air vents. The break line on top is less visable.

Here's link to Where's page on firewire drive setup. http://www.npstudios.com/fwdock.html

One more link http://www.npstudios.com/fwdock.html That's the thread where everyone was working this thing out. Look at the second page for Rainmaker's comment about the case and fit.

This thing the guys worked up is super for at lot more than just Mackie Recorders.

I'm not trying to say this is your route but it's sure been a great ride here. I'll repeat I didn't have to use the FW case here because I could run mine on a totaly free IDE port. Bear in mind, however, that my recorder has to have external drives jumped as master. You will probably have to do that also with the firewire case setup.

Hope this alternate way of doing things gets you to thinking about its applications like it has me.



[This message has been edited by Jeeper (edited 11-01-2002).]

[Jeeper]

I messed this post up bad and couldn't delete it after I posted correction below.

[This message has been edited by Jeeper (edited 11-01-2002).]

[This message has been edited by Jeeper (edited 11-01-2002).]

[Jeeper]

OH NO I blew it on one link. The thread is
http://www.mackie.com/scripts/forum/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic&f=2&t=000977&p=

Sorry I'm having a bad day with my code and copy and paste operations.

[This message has been edited by Jeeper (edited 11-01-2002).]

[salomon]

Tahnks a lot Jeeper. I appreciate your help. I will follow up on the links. I will definitely post my final pick.

Salomon

[bombastique]

Dudes - you're all paying WAY too much for those cases! They shouldn't be more than $60 or so (unless you get one with both USB and FW on it..).

go to http://www.pricewatch.com/ and compare prices first! I got a Seagate 80gb drive for $88! and a 'house brand' FW case for $56. check this link:
http://www.cmicomputer.com/cgi-bin/quikstore.cgi?store=&search=yes&detail=yes&product=csfw&category=&keywords=&hits_seen=&page=search.html&and=&affiliate_id=&exact_match=yes

[rhing]

Get the ADS Technologies Pyro 1394 Drive Kit (IEEE 1394 Firewire) and choose any fast IDE ATA-100 drive you want. It's very easy to assemble your own Firewire drive this way, and you can always use the drive in a desktop chassis in the future if you ever need to. The main drawbacks are the loud fan (loud to me anyway) and the lack of true portability. I don't recommend using this as a portable FireWire drive, because it needs AC power and the chassis wasn't built to lug around.

For a portable FireWire drive, you may want to consider one of the La Cie portable FireWire drives. "Sound on Sound" magazine (http://www.sospubs.co.uk/) had an excellent two-part article on FireWire drives in their March 2002 and April 2002 issues. It was kind of Mac-centric, but very informative nonetheless. For an ultimate Firewire drive, look into the Glyph line. They're optimized for DAW work.

[salomon]

Rhing:
Do have the links for the Glyph line FW?

Salomon

[salomon]

sbcrockett:
How is the noise level of your xtrafire enclosure?

[salomon]

First, I want to thank you all for the valuable information and inputs that you have provided to this thread.
I've carefully reviewed all the advises and visited all the referenced sites. From I can tell, all the FW hard drive enclosures mentioned above (ADS-Pyro1394, Xtrafire 911 slim, Synchrotech-UltiFire FireWire) are all feasible for audio streaming. I have also checked the Lacie and the Glyph series which I have found way overpriced, especially the Glyph series. Also the Glyph series appear to be made specifically for the MBOX by protools.
My final pick happened to be the "UltiFire Firewire & USB 2.0 Hard Drive Series I" by Synchrotech; www.synchrotech.com. (http://www.synchrotech.com.)

I've chosen this one mainly because of silence. From what I can make, this drive appears to be the most quiet one from my short list.

TKO, whom is also a memeber of this forum stated in an email to me on this noise level issue "the hard drive is quiet, its quiter than the air cooling fan on mylaptop!. General use the only noise is from the buffer e.g. the noise
of the buffer filling and emptying, but this is only on playback. on rec. its even quiter."

Other advantages included the USB 2.0 port which makes the drive very flexible. The sustained transfer rates for his drive are 38MB/s reads & 34MB/s wriets.
I have placed my order yesterday 11/9/02. Once received, I will test amd post my results here.
Thank you all. This has been a very good thread.
salomon

[salomon]

[QUOTE]Originally posted by Jeeper:
[B]Many of the folks that use Mackie MDR/HDR use Lian Li rh-58 removable hard drive frames to transfer to their DAW setups and for backup.

Jeeper:
What is the noise level of the Lian RH-58, compare let say to a regular PSU?
I will prefer you email(sstiven@yahoo.com) yr response to me.
Thanks


[This message has been edited by salomon (edited 11-11-2002).]