minskybabs

Powerbook Hard Drive Woes!

Hello everybody,

Oh woe is me, my 80Gb factory fitted hard drive on my powerbook (G4 alu 1.25Ghz 15 inch w 1.25Gb Ram, out of warranty, no applecare!!) is dying/has died/is an ex hard drive.

One day when checking my emails, the laptop froze, and I had to hard reboot, this kept on happening, I re installed OSx tiger and it seemed better for an hour or so, then died again. Finally I managed to get it mounted, by starting up from a bootable back up on an external FW drive, and using Disk warrior (god bless Alusoft!!) I have managed to salvage all my important data (my last backup was a little longer ago than it should have been, oops lesson learnt!).

However both Disk warrior and now I notice it, disk utility in Tiger report that the S.M.A.R.T. status is failing, which sounds bad, and from my investigations means the disk is soon to go to the great hard drive scrapheap.

Anyone had this happen, and have any advice on replacements?

I don't really fancy replacing the drive myself, it looks like a nightmare, my local apple centre quotes around £360 UK for replacement, I have managed to find a smaller repair man who is apple experienced who has quoted around £190. It seems hard to find out which hard drives are MAC compatible, I have looked at xlr8yourmac for the drive database, but can't find the drives mentioned there, on the net in the UK.

ANy thoughts on the trade off of disk size, speed and heat. I don't really use it from the battery, but don't want it getting hotter than it already does. It is used for music (normally with the external drive) and itunes and iphoto and surfing, a seperate account. I guess I want as much space as possible, and as I use an external hd for audio, the speed is less important? Or if I got a fast drive (eg 7200 rpm instead of 54000 rpm) maybe I could use the Mac for audio without the external drive, most people suggest that the external drive is always a better idea?

Thanks for any thoughts.
Minskybabs.

Firebox Or Traveller

Hi all,
I currently use 2 Macs a Powermac G4 tower 466 (Digital Audio) with 512Mb Ram and running OS9.1 and a 15" Alu Powerbook 1.25Ghz w 512MB Ram running OS10.3.9.

I use logic platinum 4.8.1 on the powermac tower with a Audiowork 2 sound card. and don't use the laptop for music much except itunes and a bit of garageband.

I am thinking of upgrading the powermac and powerbook to tiger, and buying a new soundcard to use logic on both, I guess I will upgrade to logic 7.2 as well.

I like the look of the Presonus Firebox, or the MOTU traveller or 828 mk2 but can't decide between them, I want to be able to use with both machines.

Will this be possible, the tower is below the minimum spec for the presonus, but I only normally record one or two tracks at once.

I hope to be able to get rid of my mixer (soundcraft F1) and use the interface as the mixer, as due to impending birth of number 1 son I have now got space issues!!

Any ideas, will they work with both machines etc.?

Thanks a lot,
Minskybabs

Audiowerk 2 & Logic

Hi there everyone in Macmusic world! I have read the forums & loved the site for a fair while and finally have a question for you helpful people!

I currently run Logic Platinum 4.8.1 in OS9.1 on a G4 466 with 2 internal hard drives and 512Mb ram. I still use the USB dongle, I have not upgraded to XS key.

I am happy with the set up I have, but lucky me, my lady is about to but a 15" G4 Powerbook superdrive model, which I believe is OSX only. If I want to be able to use Logic with this new beauty what are my options?

I currently use the emagic audiowerk 2 soundcard and emagic MT4 midi interface. Obviously I won't be able to put the audiowerk 2 in the laptop as it is a pci card, but I am worried that I won't be able to use Logic at all.

It will cost me £499 GBP to upgrade to Logic 6.0 Pro, and although this is tempting, I am not sure I can justify the expense! Will I be able to run my version of Logic on the laptop, is it possible to run OS9.1 on the new laptop?

I know I need to go OSX one day and that the new Logic pro gives me many fine plug ins, but I have a load of OS9 ones that would cost too much to upgrade.

portability and power may be available to me with the laptop, but at the moment I mostly only need to use it at home, for recording guitars/vocals and then adding beats/noises. Will I be able to record at home on the desktop, but mix on the train/holiday with the laptop?

You are wise folk out there what do you recommend?

Thanks Minsky.