External Vs Internal Hard Drives, which is better? Options

[bluetone78]

Is there a difference, performance-wise, between your standard internal serial ATA drive and your standard external Firewire drive? I'm assuming similar hard drive specs - I'm more concerned with how the bus effects performance. For example how well would a firewire drive handle a large sample library (5+ GB, at once), reading direct from disk, where it would have to seek out large amounts of info at once?

[Lotus17]

I don't really know how much of a performance issue there is. I know that Trent Reznor of NIN has been using a lot of Lacie Big Disk Extremes for his recent projects, see picture:
http://www.nin.com/current/photos/3_13_06.jpg

I know that Reznor has been known to use a lot of layering in his works, up to 70+ tracks on his cd 'The FRAGILE." I don't know if he had certain setups that allowed that many tracks with little problems, so I am unsure.

If I am correct though, SATA speeds are much faster than USB2.0, FW400, and FW800. So performace wise, SATA is better. But I am unsure if there is really a noticeable difference. I have a friend using a Seagate External Hard Drive on a Laptop via USB2.0 with Pro Tools LE and he has had good results. I have seen probably 15-25 audio tracks on a song and I think his limitation is the computer itself rather than the drives.

I however am going to buy another internal hard drive for my G5 even though I own an External Hard Drive. I like to use my external drive to be able to make things portable and for back up. But I will probably buy a 250GB Seagate NL35 SATA. They just came out recently. They are higher quality than consumer level products and also are quieter. Here's a noise level comparison chart, as well as other spec comparisons:
http://www.storagereview.com/articles/2005...400832NS_6.html

Hope that helps you make a better judgement.

[lepetitmartien]

SATA is faster than IDE/ATA, you can have way much more tracks running from a SATA drive. Period.

In theory, USB 2 is marginaly faster than firewire, but FW is way better at handling files being streamed. I don't say you can't use USB 2, but the same drive in a USB 2 or in a FW 400 enclosure will behave better in FW. FW 800 is twice faster in theory, but in fact, it's slower than the theory, and SATA is faster. In the end, the problem now are drives…

A FW 400 handles already more than 40+ tracks… enough to go…

A few things to consider:

- cache on the drive is no more critical, 8 MB is enough, 16 MB is more important for small files… If you have lots of small snippets…
- The best way to help a drive find things is to partition it, and keep the things which must be found the faster on the first partition. If you have a big sample library, put it eventually with its sisters, on a separate partition. the choice of which samples or audio track will be on the first is a type of main job problem.
- think back up strategy. If you have everything internal, back up external. of have one drive split to back up on it. it helps de-fragment really large files (OS X de-fragment files smaller than 20MB by itself) copy/format/copyback is simple and effective as long as you don't mix up things.
- before buying, check MTBF, Seagate are great overall, but for Maxtor for example not all lines are made equal… (maxline III are better than other lines in Maxtor)

[bluetone78]

wow, thanks guys -

that's ALOT of really useful info. I've got two internals already. The factory installed Maxtor (for programs) and a MaxLine III 250GB (for audio) that I put in myself. I was thinking of getting another drive, external (since there's no more room inside the computer...) to put my samples on. I write orchestral stuff that uses large sample libraries and a lots of stereo tracks, and I'm actaully running out of room on the second drive.

Does anyone have experience using multiple drives for audio? (in this case one internal SATA and one external FW) Are there any internal bus issues that would give me a law of diminishing returns with this stuff?

[Lotus17]

Haha, after trying to find the G5 Drive Bracket company, I came across a G5 mod page...

http://www.maxupgrades.com/istore/index.cf...category_id=306

Looks like you potentially add up to 9 more hard drives... whether or not I would think that is safe, I wouldn't try... seems like there are potential air flow issues.

But supposedly, the G5 Drive Bracket is a great solution for adding three more hard drives.

http://www.g5drivebracket.com/

I guess you could set up a nice RAID setup for added speed if you bought some more drives and some PCI Raid controllers. It would probably cost you a pretty penny. I would assume $500+ depending on how many drives you would want to install. But that is 3 more SATA drives to your advantage if you really wanna go SATA with everything... *shrug* it was a thought that I once came across. Hope that gives you more ideas! Vale!

[lepetitmartien]

The brackets are supposed to help use more drives but some testers found out sometimes the power draw is too much for the G5 for 3 drives, but it works great for 2 additional drives and that that it doesn't give issues about airflow either. You have enough space around so air can just go away easy…

It's such an elegant solution I don't see why Apple didn't install a bracket…

A card
A bracket
2 drives
up you go!

Check well the PCI bus type you need for your card! PCI, PCIx and PCI-express are different breeds…