Powerbook External Hard Drives?, has to work with pro tools though Options

[slowintrepid]

(first off I know there is a similar post right below me)

anyways. I have a powerbook G4 and I'm gonna be running pro tools LE with an M-Box and maybe logic. my school recomends that I get an external firewire hard drive with 7200 RPM"s as the minimum. I also know that pro tools is pick about what hard drives you use.

my question is. either what external hard drive is good for my set up.

and 2. is it possible for me to take a internal HDD put it in a case and and use it. (I know it's possible but would it work for Pro Tools)

and finally if I was to go there external/internal route. How to I hook up the drive to my comp??? does the case come with a firewire output or something??

[dixiechicken]

Most external fw-drives are simply usual ata/ide drives put into an external enclosure. In the external box there is some electronics to mediate between ata/ide & fw-protocols.
The external box may have built in or have an external power supply unit, somtimes they draw power from the bus.

I wouldnt recommend removing your internal drive & putting it into an external box (if that was indeed what you meant) internal dives in laptops are often ONLY 4200 rpm units.

I can recommend the Maxtors (they generally make stuff), or follow Digidesign recommendations.
Try to check whether the external fw-drive have the Oxford 911-chipset,
( I think it was the 911 at least - if not it was 912 chip-set - perhaps one of my fellow moderators can chip in [pun intended] and correct me if I dont remeber correctly)
as file-corruption problems have been reported with OS-X & said chip-set.

Both Apple & fw-drive vendors have posted info & updates to help alleviate this problem. Check out "WibeTech" website, they have a pretty neat solution - called fw-bridge, no external box or anything.
http://www.wiebetech.com/products/firewire...edrivedock.html

Cheers: Dixiechicken

[nate d]

Hi SlowIntrepid,
A harddrive built into an external firewire enclosure will indeed work in ProTools...in fact, it works quite well! You can get empty enclosures for as little as $50, and hard drive prices increase with size. But buying the enclosure and drive separately is a lot cheaper than buying a pre-built "firewire drive" (which, as dixiechicken pointed out, is usually just a fancy enclosure with a regular hard drive in it).

Good luck!

[jamester]

slowintrepid -

What school do you go to? Berklee? I am a Berklee grad; I just heard about them requiring all students to get a laptop. What's up with that? Does it have to be a Mac?

JAMES

[slowintrepid]

slowintrepid -

What school do you go to? Berklee? I am a Berklee grad; I just heard about them requiring all students to get a laptop. What's up with that? Does it have to be a Mac?

JAMES

yeah I'm going to berklee. Basically Berklee hooked up all the students with a nasty Laptop package for $2500

its like the best 15" powerbook. and M-Box a Oxygen 8 reason ms office
losts of NI suites toast and jam bias peak le. I dunno but it's like 7000 dollars worth of stuff. the cost is included in our tuition so financial aide pays for it. they're trying to work the powerbooks into everyclass. (like you will email your teacher a score from finale)

if your an allum you entiled to buy the same package at the same price. if I were you I would check out the website and maybe call the school.

[jamester]

hey - thanks for the tip!

I just got a 17" P.Book in Nov. doh! Still, I'll look into it...

Berklee's great; just living in Boston is even better! Crazy expensive, though. I'm gonna try to visit this summer. sigh...

What major ya thinkin' about?

[slowintrepid]

well I'm gonna do music production and engineering / music synthesis.
and if you already bought a powerbook you still might be able to purchase the mp&e budle which is like an M-box protools every NI suite and some other cool stuff.

and yeah I know boston ain't cheap but I live right down the street from the school so I should be ok

[Ben Up the Tree]

I have a powerbook and also ran into trouble because I ran out of room on my little 40BG hard drive for audio. I decided that the best bang for my buck was to buy an external hard drive and stick it in an external enclosure. If you are doing pro-audio work you should invest in a 7200 rpm hard drive in a firewire enclosure.

Although most new macs (Not emac) have USB2, USB2 works by sending packets of data, which you can imagine can wreak havoc with audio or video streams. Firewire conversely was developed by Apple specifically for video streams and can handle audio with no problem. You can also choose a Firewire and USB2 enclosure to ensure compatibility with a PC machine down the road.

I bought a 200GB Seagate Barracuda 7200 rpm for $100 ($100 of rebates) and a Plumax 3.5" external Firewire/USB2 enclosure ($45). I would caution that if you are not a technical person, this may prove more challenging then you might like. I would also check websites like Dealmac, who often link to the lowest prices on the web for hard drives, enclosures, and prebuilt external hard drives.

This post has been edited by Ben Up the Tree: Thu 5 Feb 2004, 22:14