Powerbook G4/pro Tools/external Hard Drives, Newbie help Options

[jawnzap7]

First I just wanna say thanks to everybody on this site. I just joined but, have already learned a ton just from poking around. It seems as if everybody here is very patient, and informative...now that the requisite ass-kissing is over , lets get down to business...
So I just recieved my 15 inch Powerbook G4. It's a 1.67 Ghz model, with 2 Gb of Ram, and a 100 Gb 7200 rpm Hard Drive. I am currently awaiting my M Box2 (factory bundle) with Pro Tools, via UPS.
I have read the documentation on the digidesign website, and have read that it is strongly suggested to get an external/additional hard drive, instead of using the internal boot drive. But is it necessary? I got the larger internal drive hoping that it might be sufficient. If not I can live with that. I'll spend the money if I must.
So my next question is this...is pro tools compatible with usb 2.0 external Hard drives? Or can you ONLY use firewire/sata/whatever else they list drives. The usb 2.o's are cheaper for more storage than the firewire models. But I definently believe you get what you pay for.
And what about internal drives placed in shells? That seems to be the cheapest/most economical option, but I don't know nothing about that stuff. Is it hard to do?...what is my best strategy here?

[lepetitmartien]

To "build" yourself (in fact, assembling) your external hard drive, you can choose the good drive and a good enclosure, because save a few shopping places, you don't usually know what's inside, be it the drive or the firewire bridge.

Now, at macsales for example you know what's inside most their gear. It's a serious place too as far as I know. Check other places, there may be cheaper shops for hard drives, but check the warranty policy as you're in the USA.

You can choose the interface type, be sure of the bridge (oxford chips are good) and the drive. Be aware that most single drive enclosure don't need a fan, but double RAID ones do have one (so background noise is at stake). Choose in the 3.5" drives, it'll be cheaper, 2.5" are expensive (but less bulky, sure).

In your place (where I'm not) I'd go for a FW400+usb2 or FW400+800 enclosure with an oxford chipset, and if possible, a Seagate drive (silent and reliable, others will do too).

eSATA is blazing fast, but still expensive, especially the drives. So I'll left it out for the moment being.

One side note on drives, don't care about the cache they have. They have usually 8 or 16 MB of cache, it is only of interest to have a large one when you have lot's of little files, in our situation, it's more a seeks/access/write time the important thing and they are very close on these.

And last, be careful with your drive, especially if you move it around, it's fragile.