Re: [microsound] external firewire drives for audio?

[pH_______ <disck@xxxxxxxx>]

taylor deupree wrote:

> hi list,
>
> i figure someone on this list will be able to shed some light on this
> for me (kim, maybe?)... anyway.. my internal drive on my new G4 is
> slow (5400rpm) and giving me some audio recording problems... i need
> to get another drive, asap... and someone suggested i look into an
> external firewire drive.. saying the speeds and sustain rates for
> audio surpass the best scsi drives...

not true at all, Firewire drives are currently just ATA-IDE drives with a
firewire adapter. Firewire maxes out at 400mbps --that's  MEGABITS not
bytes. SCSI speeds are measured in Megabytes per sec--so be careful when
looking @ specs.
That said, you should probably just get a fast IDE drive --they're cheap
and it should be fast enough for most audio applications..  It's lame
that apple was using those 5400 RPM 20gb drives luckily I noticed that
when I ordered and went with the 30GB just because of the speed... but
for the price difference you're prolly further ahead buying another
drive.

Or you can get a SCSI card and go that route-- SCSI is still better, but
it's getting very close these days....-- you should be fine with IDE and
it's cheaper.
Generally, I've Firewire drives are best for archiving- not recording
to..
hope that helps.
-phil