Hard Drive. Help Requested, Newbie enquiry Options

[Foxyphil]

I have an emac G4,1 Ghz, running osX 10.39. Also recently purchased Focusrite Saffire, bundled with cubase le. Its clear to me that my mac just doesnt "do" 192hz, but I want to try to record files at 96hz. Doing this currently uses up a huge ammount of cpu.

I plan therefore to get an external drive, and will prob go the firewire route, maybe with USB2 compatibility. My question to experienced users is this. Is there any possible DISadvantages at getting a 300 or 400gb drive? Is it possible that an emac couldnt "hack" that ammount? The prices dont seem that much more expensive (I was thinking either Seagate or Carrilion) than for 100 gb. To be honest< id rather not have to upgrade any more hardware for at least a year or two - hopefully longer. I would actually like to try making a few tracks now.

Any input would be great.

Thanks in advance and thanks for great site too.

Phil

[mixfisto]

Foxy, as far as the size of the hard drive is concerned, it really doesn't matter as long as you "defrag" regularly. You must go with a Firewire if you plan on using it as your main audio drive, usb2 is not fast enough for real-time...
About the 96k... I don't know what kind of music you plan on doing and how many tracks and plug-ins you want to use, but your emac at 1 Ghz is going to get maxed out pretty quick. Especially if you have less than 1Gb of RAM (the more RAM, the better). If it were me, I would highly consider staying at 48k, and having a smoother running system with more power, instead of always pushing the Mac to it's limit (after awhile it gets very frustrating and becomes more of a technical battle than music making). Depending on what your other equipment is, I really don't think that sonically there would be a big enough difference to justify the 96K. I have friends making records today, selling hundred's of thousands of albums that are recorded at 48k....
Don't mean to burst your bubble, just trying to give you my opinion. Good luck with whichever way you go!!!

[Foxyphil]

Thx for that Mix. Valuable feedback.

Cheers man. Foxy

[lepetitmartien]

If the final use is to be 44.1, keep at 44.1 or 88.2. 48 is broadcast oriented (hence 96 too) and you'll have less surprises converting to 44.1 from a round simple multiple.

OS X can adress quite some Terabytes so don't bother… To defragment a drive the simple way, have enough space somewhere (internal HD or 2 partitions on the external) and copy to it, format the partition (not the drive) and copy back. Instant defrag!

[bcatcho]

lepetitmartien, thats the laziest defrag process ever.

And I think THE reason you should go for firewire is because it is less intensive on the CPU (transfering data uses CPU cycles). I'm not sure that firewire is that much faster than USB2 but it will save you some overhead.

[mixfisto]

bcathco, firewire is actually "slower" than usb2, if youi look at the stats.... but in my experience (with PT), only the firewire lets you use the audio files in realtime for recording, playback, etc... the usb just cant hack it... don't have an explanation, i just know it doesn't work

[bcatcho]

You are right, looking at specs, mixfisto, firewire should be slower (400 mbps compared to USB2's 480mbps). But there are some other issues at play.

In the firewire architecture both the device and the computer work to find a solution to comon file transfer problems (packet loss, other hickups etc.). Each device (your computer and external harddrive) works co-opperatively.

BUT USB works as a master-slave relationship. The PC does all the error handling and processing of bandwith issues.

This is not the only reasons but just one of the reasons that USB hits the CPU alot harder than Firewire.

Take a look at this link for some real world test data:

http://www.barefeats.com/usb2.html

[lepetitmartien]

USB2 is faster on paper, but is a mess like other flavours of USB at real time uses.

USB2 does better than USB1 and USB1.1, but firewire is more the reference. Also, a hard drive in firewire can boot your computer if need be, not a USB drive.

Some side remarks on "my" defrag method:
- it is NOT suitable for system partitions, you have to clone the system, not copy it. But for a partitons with only files like audio etc, it's ok.
- files under 20 MB are optimized by OS X on its own (among the thing it does when it can run the BSD scripts at night, it can defragment small files…

I'd be very cautious upon defragmentation/optimization using software on a system drive, there's been horror stories especially among Logic users… Though Drive10 has some good reputation. But we have not enough feedback to be sure for all uses.

[Mac Daddy]

lepetitmartien

I become smarter each time you transmit information. Fortunately, I never "really" have problems... I had my Computer Set-Up by... This is not a "Plug" for the Retailer, because as much money as I have spent there, they should be paying me... but if anyone is in Hamburg, contact Amptown... Arvid Dalke...If there is anyone as experienced and informative as lepetitmartien it's Arvid Dalke... I told him about Mac Forum... With lepetitmartien and Arvid... There is nothing this Mac Forum cannot accomplish... Should also be interesting how much Arvid and lepetitmartien evolve.

[cornutt]

Hmm, did the Mac OSX drive format incorporate the BSD Fast File System stuff? I'll have to go look into that. Back in the days of BSD 4.2 and the big minis, I always found that with the FFS, as long as disk usage was kept below about 85%, defragging was never necessary.

[lepetitmartien]

Standard drive format is HFS+ which is not BSD at all but Apple did some things to the OS X flie system way more advanced than what OS 9 and HFS+ could do, but it's way above my head (there was a long article at arstechnica on this if you're interested)…