Need Hardware Advice On Powerbook & External Hd Options

[kevin808]

Hi everyone,

Could you please help me make an informed decision? I am about to throw my PC out a frickin' window in favor of a nice new Mac. Ultimately I would like to get a Powerbook and run Logic Audio, but I am apprehensive about this setup thinking that maybe the Powerbook would be under-powered due to its slower Hard Drive RPM speeds (4,500, or 5,500), or mabey even the g4 processor. (I would like to get at least a 1.25Ghz or above)

I did a little research here and found that people are using external hard drives with their Powerbooks. This coupled with the fact that I have my wife’s 1Ghz iMac, and the new Logic Audio 7 Package uses other networked computers to help process effects plug-ins and other jobs within logic - is making me think a Powerbook is not a bad choice.

My main question is: Are Firewire 800 drives faster at delivering information than the Powerbooks own internal Hard Drive? I'm looking at a 200 GB LaCie FW 800 drive.

And what are some of your experiences with how your Powerbooks perform playing your tracks? Lag issues? No probelms - runs great?

I also just got a Roland MV-8000 Sampler/Workstation which will be synced up to the Powerbook via midi, and will be doing some of the sound rendering and effects.

Any advise or thoughts would be helpful and appreciated. Like everyone I'm just trying to have my cake and eat it too...

Thanks,
Kevin808

[CanadaRAM]

See this article on Barefeats on Firewire drive performance on Powerbooks (search the Barefeats site for other tests)

http://www.barefeats.com/fire45.html

Bottom line seems to be get 2 Firewire 800 drives and one PCMCIA Firewire 800 interface, striped in a RAID 0 array for the absolute fastest access.

I would keep that data well backed up though, as one glitch on either drive and you say "bye bye" to your data on both drives. That's the downside of RAID 0.

An advantage of using Firewire 800 bus and / or a PCMCIA Firewire card for your drive(s) is that you keep the harddrive data stream away from your Firewire 400 bus that is doing the audio data stream.

Thanks
Trevor
www.canadaram.com