Need Hardware Advice On Powerbook & External Hd Options

[kevin808]

Hi everyone,

Could you please help me make an informed decision? I am about to throw my PC out a frickin' window in favor of a nice new Mac. Ultimately I would like to get a Powerbook and run Logic Audio, but I am apprehensive about this setup thinking that maybe the Powerbook would be under-powered due to its slower Hard Drive RPM speeds (4,500, or 5,500), or mabey even the g4 processor. (I would like to get at least a 1.25Ghz or above)

I did a little research here and found that people are using external hard drives with their Powerbooks. This coupled with the fact that I have my wife’s 1Ghz iMac, and the new Logic Audio 7 Package uses other networked computers to help process effects plug-ins and other jobs within logic - is making me think a Powerbook is not a bad choice.

My main question is: Are Firewire 800 drives faster at delivering information than the Powerbooks own internal Hard Drive? I'm looking at a 200 GB LaCie FW 800 drive.

And what are some of your experiences with how your Powerbooks perform playing your tracks? Lag issues? No probelms - runs great?

I also just got a Roland MV-8000 Sampler/Workstation which will be synced up to the Powerbook via midi, and will be doing some of the sound rendering and effects.

Any advise or thoughts would be helpful and appreciated. Like everyone I'm just trying to have my cake and eat it too...

Thanks,
Kevin808

[nate d]

Hey Kevin,
A Powerbook with Logic is a great choice! And you're on the right track - you should definitely get an external firewire drive to record your audio to. I have a 15" 1Ghz with an external firewire 400 drive. I bought a generic case which allows you to fit any regular internal drive into it. Costs less than $100 to do it that way with up to an 80Gig hard drive.

You'll also want to up your RAM. I have 768MB in mine and want even more.

As for lag - I have yet to experience any. I don't know how many tracks I've had running at once, but I've had a few complex pieces and my Powerbook didn't even flinch.

Hope that helps!

[arvidtp]

Well, I am using a powerbook 1.25 GHz (see specs in signiture) with logic pro 6.4. I only have 512 megs of RAM and I need more for 'convenience' speed... But my machine so far has held up extremely well in demanding realtime stuff using Logic, MaxMSP and other software, and even jacking them together. I dont have an external drive, but I hardly ever run into a problem with the internal being too slow. But then again I am not recording with tons of channels, so I usually dont go over 10-15 audio tracks playing back at once. I just have my disk buffer on large in logic. I guess this slows down responsiveness to play/record commands by maybe 1/4 second, but that doesnt bother me, as once it is playing/recording that makes no differnece. Maybe I would notice a difference if i got one.

With Pro Tools, CPU efficiency was miserable, but that was Pro TOols LE. With Logic, I find it difficult to hit the computer's realtime processing ceiling! It's a blast.

that sounds cool about the generic drive/enclosure, nate. Maybe I will think about doing that. Where do you get that stuff cheap? Is it all mac compatible etc?

[dockiki]

OWC www.macsales.com
great external firewire (400 and 800) hard drives, quiet, solid, absolutely no problems with mine,
very dependable and fast....
and not so expensive.

[Mr.Dave]

I would like to add my support to your choice. My Powerbook 1.25 has been a total life saving warrior on various projects. If you can afford it I would recomend a 800 FW drive (I use lacie ones) as their performance well outstrips the 400 type. It also prevents bandwidth problems if you opt for a firewire interface like the Motu 828.

Using an 800 drive allows me to keep my sample library on an easily transferable medium and improves direct from disk streaming, which more and more romplers/soft-samplers use.

All the best.

P.S. while I'm on let me thank all those in this forum that informed me of Soundbed and sound flower. Really handy and free!

[kevin808]

Thanks a lot guys, your info was very helpful! I think I can safely go with the Powerbook as my choice and never look back.

I had the oportunity to go to a Mac Logic Audio 7 demonstration last night at Guitar Center in boston... This package is sick! I use logic 5.2 now on my PC, and used logic 6 for a month on my wifes iMac which I got as a trial with a training manual I bought. There was a huge difference between 5.2 and 6, there is a huge difference between PC and Mac and the intuitiveness of how things work, and how well things seem to play, and once again there is a huge difference between Logic 6 and 7.

The new plugins are sick. just sick. Not to mention support for Apple loops, and new EQ'ing Fx that basically do everything for you. The guy doing the demo played for us a recording of a male vocalist with a rough voice one day (Like he had a cold) and with a smooth voice recording from a couple days after. He ran both clips through the EQ, copied the profile from the second one and applied it to the first, and bam! Same vocal tone - exactly. Everyone in the room freaked out. He also did it with a guitar recorded with two different pickup settings and again it was like the same guitar, it was so easy.

And the new guitar Fx plugin is awesome too. It takes pre-recorded, uneffected guitar and makes it sound like it went through $5000 worth of rack effects.

I can't wait to put this stuff together!

Thanks again for your help!

[nate d]

that sounds cool about the generic drive/enclosure, nate. Maybe I will think about doing that. Where do you get that stuff cheap? Is it all mac compatible etc?

I forget where I got the enclosure, but they're all over the web. It was some from some yahoo storefront site. I may have used Froogle to find the cheapest one.

As for the drive, I usually use PriceWatch to find the cheapest, high quality drive from a reliable vendor. And yes, all mac compatible!

[CanadaRAM]

See this article on Barefeats on Firewire drive performance on Powerbooks (search the Barefeats site for other tests)

http://www.barefeats.com/fire45.html

Bottom line seems to be get 2 Firewire 800 drives and one PCMCIA Firewire 800 interface, striped in a RAID 0 array for the absolute fastest access.

I would keep that data well backed up though, as one glitch on either drive and you say "bye bye" to your data on both drives. That's the downside of RAID 0.

An advantage of using Firewire 800 bus and / or a PCMCIA Firewire card for your drive(s) is that you keep the harddrive data stream away from your Firewire 400 bus that is doing the audio data stream.

Thanks
Trevor
www.canadaram.com

[philsen]

i heared, that the controllers inside the hd can´t transfer more than 250mbit/s, so it´s kind of useless buying fw800 drives by now, because they´re no faster than old 400s.

the combination of fw hds and powerbooks works well. i do it too. but as i am using a fw interface aswell, i decided to buy fw-pcmcia slotcard, because these stupid titanums (mine is 1ghz) only have one port. but the card only costed 35€ and is absolute worth it.

[macyu]

that sounds cool about the generic drive/enclosure, nate. Maybe I will think about doing that. Where do you get that stuff cheap? Is it all mac compatible etc?

I forget where I got the enclosure, but they're all over the web. It was some from some yahoo storefront site. I may have used Froogle to find the cheapest one.

As for the drive, I usually use PriceWatch to find the cheapest, high quality drive from a reliable vendor. And yes, all mac compatible!

When searching, try to go for ones with Oxford bridge chips. There are similar ones for cheaper, but they are unreliable. Furthermore, sometimes cheaper ones have crappy powersupply - mine melted down. So I decided to go with a higher quality one from WiebeTech. I've been happy with their stuff.

[scoutdavis]

Hi all, I can't seem to do a decent internet search for a fw800 harddrive that has the oxford bridge chip. Can anyone give me a suggestion? I'm hoping to get a decent deal it possible.

[macyu]

This is what I use : Wiebetech FW800

at $119 for the case, I don't think it's too unreasonable and it's been working fine for me.

If you want to search for cheaper ones, just search for "Oxford 922" which is the chip used for FW800 drives.

[scoutdavis]

Ok, well, I appreciate the guidance to get the Wiebetech and I've read enough to see that if I want a FW800 enclosure it's a good way to go. But here's where I'm stuck. I can get a LaCie 250 gig 7200 rpm fw800 external hard drive with triple interface for the same price as getting an internal 250 hard drive (maxtor) and the wiebetech tought tech enclosure. Aren't I better off getting the La Cie for the same price? Also, I wound up getting a good deal on a 16 mb cache 250 Maxtor internal drive - if I go with the LaCie, I'm back down to 8mb cache - is the 16mg of cache worth it to go with the internal with enclosure combo versus getting the LaCie for the same price?

[CanadaRAM]

i heared, that the controllers inside the hd can´t transfer more than 250mbit/s, so it´s kind of useless buying fw800 drives by now, because they´re no faster than old 400s.

Well, that simply isn't correct.

www.barefeats.com has done extensive testing and Firewire 800 in real world use is signuificantly faster then Firewire 400 with the same 7200 RPM drive mechanism.

Under ideal conditions, Firewire 800 at a theoretical 100 MB/sec actually approaches the bandwidth of an internal IDE ATA/133 connection -- which is theoretically 133 MB/sec. SATA is 150 MB/sec.

http://www.barefeats.com/fire35.html
Finder duplicate: Hitachi 7200 RPM 3.5" 180GXP
ATA/133 46 MB per second
FireWire 800 built in 46 MB per second
FireWire 400 built in 32 MB per second

The limitations of a drive system are a combination of the drive's rotational and access capabilities, the drive interface, the bridge board (if Firewire) and the host computer's circuitry (Firewire, IDE or SATA)

[macyu]

Ok, well, I appreciate the guidance to get the Wiebetech and I've read enough to see that if I want a FW800 enclosure it's a good way to go. But here's where I'm stuck. I can get a LaCie 250 gig 7200 rpm fw800 external hard drive with triple interface for the same price as getting an internal 250 hard drive (maxtor) and the wiebetech tought tech enclosure. Aren't I better off getting the La Cie for the same price? Also, I wound up getting a good deal on a 16 mb cache 250 Maxtor internal drive - if I go with the LaCie, I'm back down to 8mb cache - is the 16mg of cache worth it to go with the internal with enclosure combo versus getting the LaCie for the same price?

As for the triple interface, FW800 can be converted to FW400 with just a cable (800 is backwards compatible like USB2.0 and USB1.1), so I wouldn't really get the Lacie for that, but if they provide you with better warranty conditions, definitely go for it. Also, for some people, the style of case and power supply matters so you might want to look at that. Now, for the drive cache, I never used a 16mb cache drive so I can't say, but theoretically I think that it will be useful if you'll be doing a lot of random access.. like having your sample collection for synths or loops. If it's more or less used for laying down big chunks of tracks, it shouldn't affect it as much. That being said, some research on the exact drives for benchmarks might be helpful.