External Hard Drives, Do I really need Glyph? Options

[Tim]

I'm getting a Powerbook and will be running ProTools LE and Absynth...at least for now. Some guys at a music store I am working with are making me think that I need a Glyph drive for my external hard drive. Now, I do know that i want an external drive, because i don't want to tax the Powerbook drive with the audio I record and playback. But, the Glyph drives are so expensive. I just looked at a Mac Warehouse Catelog and saw 7200 RPM, 80gig firewire drives for a little over $200. Won't this suffice. The 80gig Glyph Companion drive is $500.

Anybody using drives from LaCie, Que, etc? Any problems or rumored problems?

Thanks,
Tim.

[Presto]

I've been thinking. I'm a bit slow but here's my reasoning.

With the 80Gb disk, according to zzounds, you can record 280 minutes of 24-track, 24-bit audio at 48kHz. This means you can record 56 hours with the 2-track Mbox, or 14 hours with an 8-track Motu 828 - all in one go.

(The 80Gb M Project Plus from Glyph has a 4-port FW hub, so if you have three 828s, you can do 24-track recording. But then, you're not worried about Glyph prices, are you?)

Now, let's say you've got 10 Gb free on the internal drive. With that, you can go out without your external drive and record 7 hours of 2-track, or nearly 2 hours of 8-track. You can then come back and put it on your external and go out and start again.

My conclusion is that for recording with an Mbox or 828, your external drive needs to be neither portable nor silent, as you don't need to use it for live recording.

I therefore opt for a not as portable, noisier, not matching, but much cheaper, other-than-Glyph drive.

Is there a flaw?