External Firewire Drive Suggestions, Which one to buy? Options

[smokinshaman]

i am currently looking to buy an external firewire drive and am in need of suggestions. i know that i want 7200+ rpm and 10ms or less seek time. Also, would love it to be whisper quiet.

Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

Anyone using Glyph or Seagate drives? If so, please tell me how they are working for you.

Dumb question: "Do i install DP4 on the internal or external drive?"

KC

[PristineRec]

I record to one of these drives:

http://eshop.macsales.com/Catalog_Page.cfm...tle=&Template=1

Other World Computing's Mercury Elite Firewire drives. It's whisper quiet (no fan) and I've had no problems recording with it whatsoever. I use the Firewire 800 model, and it's very very fast.

Always run your applications off of your system (internal) drive, and record your audio tracks onto the firewire drive. This will keep the running of the software/operating system from competing with the writingreading of the audio tracks. Also, your internal drive most likely spins at a slower speed, and can't handle as much simultaneous writing/reading as the 7200 RPM firewire drive.

[smokinshaman]

Thanks for reply PristineRec!

Those look like great drives with 8 MB cache. Right now I'm between the OWC and Seagate drives...leaning towards the Seagate drive. I don't have a firewire 800 connection on my PBook G4 12", so I won't be able to take advantage of that connection. Though I am wondering if the OWC might be the better choice down the line if I should ever upgrade the laptop. Ahhh! Decisions Decisions

By the way I noticed the OWC uses the Oxford 922 chipset which did have problems in the past with Panther. Am i correct in thinking that issue has been resolved?

Thanks Again,

KC

[iscralatchtical]

lacie is largely recommended in this forum. I took heed and found the lacie to be perfect. The D2 extremes take firewire 400 and 800. Rackmountable with the rack kit from their website. It is whisper quiet as you need, and a very good buy. I recommend.

[PristineRec]

When Panther was first released, there were many firewire drives that had problems losing data when connected to a machine running Panther. Very shortly afterwards, the drive manufacturers developed patches to their firmware to correct the problems. So all drives manufactured since the few weeks after the problem was identified last year have the correct firmware already installed. Almost all of the manufacturers have firmware updates on their websites for drives manufactured prior to Panther's release.