cracks and Pops, external HD, buffers and firewire Options

[mortalengines]

This is getting off the main topic a little but now that you mention it. I have been running loops off of a 7200 RPM external HD (Oxford chipset) enclosure & really don't notice ANY change in my CPU load (still pretty high) & also have been known to get "pops & clicks" in my audio (doesn't happen when running from my system drive, but I did increase my sample & plug in buffer rate & it did seem to improve things somewhat). Am I doing something wrong? The drive enclosure is from Tiger Direct & my Mac automatically recognized it as an "Oxford" drive. I have it running into my FW800 port on my 1.5GHZ G4 Powerbook via a 400 to 800 adapter cable. I am also using a Mackie Onyx FW card & mixer on my FW 400 port. Any suggestions?

[lepetitmartien]

(separated the post, better as a subject of his own)

CPU load… IDE drives controlled by the CPU eat more CPU than firewire connected HD, way more. And the load here is mainly dependant of the fact it's connected, not really what it's doing.

What's you buffer size? if it's too low you "kill" the CPU by asking too much, and too big it'll give latency. Usually values between 256 and 1024 are common.

Have you tried to switch and put the Onyx on the FW800 with the adapter and the HD on the 400 ? a 400 peripheral on a 800 should not cause problems but let us be nosy.