External hard disks - what to buy?, Pondering what external HDs are best Options

[rickenbacker]

Anyone got any recommendations for an external FireWire hard disk? I have a combo-drive iBook and want to get an external hard disk that I can use as a dedicated audio drive for music making only.

Any suggestions, tips and information would be welcome.

[macmax]

Hey Martian
The name of the comapny is Glyph, as i mentioned.
The purpose of the Firewire hub built in on the new model is as described. as the 828 only has a single port, meaning you cant daisy chain to get 16 I/O if required.
While in general i would agree with your comment on using seperate ports, i have encountered this match up a couple of times, and experienced no problems in the short (single day sessions) i used it.
Having said that, we were only dealing with between 8 and 16 tracks of audio.
It may be that the difficulties appear at higher track counts, when significantly more bandwidth is being used.
We only used a maximum of 4 inputs at a time and stereo out.
So perhaps using all 8 in and 8 out as well as 30 odd tracks may be another matter.
I'll let you know when i try it. (Havent got such a session booked at present, but i'll make effort to squeeze an investigative one in soon)
Even if they are mounted in one case, they can still be used on seperate ports if required.....
Still say its a neat and effective partnership, and looks the business too.
The caveat is that i have heard of 828s frying peoples firewire ports on the odd occassion, couldnt comment on where the fault lay , as it wasnt a first hand experience, but it does seem to have happened to more than one user.
I want an 896 for my birthday by the way!!!
The drive review can be found in Sound on Sound in the firewire drive roundup recently published.
(although this is the older , Non Hub version.)
best regards
max