External Hard Drives, Do I really need Glyph? Options

[Tim]

I'm getting a Powerbook and will be running ProTools LE and Absynth...at least for now. Some guys at a music store I am working with are making me think that I need a Glyph drive for my external hard drive. Now, I do know that i want an external drive, because i don't want to tax the Powerbook drive with the audio I record and playback. But, the Glyph drives are so expensive. I just looked at a Mac Warehouse Catelog and saw 7200 RPM, 80gig firewire drives for a little over $200. Won't this suffice. The 80gig Glyph Companion drive is $500.

Anybody using drives from LaCie, Que, etc? Any problems or rumored problems?

Thanks,
Tim.

[fromage]

Pardon the warming-up of leftovers from the back of the fridge, fellas -- looks like this topic's been dormant for a couple months. I thought it might be nice, though, in my first post here to share some (hopefully) useful information I've found, and possibly get an answer to my question. I couldn't find any recent updated thorough info on this as of last week, so I did a little digging myself.

Of the pros I spoke with who are currently either using or building their Mac-based digital home studios, most are saying the same things, which are as follows.

First off, FireWire external drives are the most popular choice. They're easy to implement, cheap, fast, and reliable.

Two main components are to be considered in the process of shopping for an external FireWire drive: The IDE drive itself, and the "box" within which it resides.

The drive's size is somewhat important-- those that have a 40GB or smaller all say they wish they'd paid the extra cash for an 80GB; those with 80GB or higher are happy.
The drive's SPEED is more important-- all recommend 7200rpm drives. Also, if you can get it already formatted for Mac, that's even better, as the formatting process can be a bit weird over FireWire...? I don't know enough about this. More digging for another future post, perhaps.

Now for the box-- the most important features (in order) are the chipset, case material, and items inside the case other than the chipset and drive. Consistently the Oxford 911 chipset was recommended. Aluminum is the case material of choice because of its heat-dissipating qualities. And fans, even "quiet" ones, are generally avoided (and not really needed with aluminum cases anyway). Also, if you can get a case with an external power supply, this reduces the heat in the case even more (though it might add another "wall wart" AC Power Adaptor to your setup-- blechh!!).

With that in mind... You can buy an ideal drive (80GB, 7200RPM) for well under $100 US dollars, and a good case (Oxford 911 chipset, aluminum case, no fan, external power supply) for around $50 through the right auction.

One thing I didn't even think to ask of the people I spoke to (and they didn't mention it, so maybe it's not a big deal?) was the cache size -- 2MB is common, 8MB is possible but not as readily available. ANYONE, do you know if this is a concern?

FYI www.eshop.macsales.com has a pretty decent deal going right now-- one of their setups is for a 100GB drive with the 8MB cache and all the other good things mentioned above, plus a 2yr warranty, for around $275. Still think dropping $400 on a comparable Glyph drive is worth it?

Cheers, all -- and if you find out about that whole cache conundrum, fill me in, k?