I have a new 17'' G4 P.Book, and am getting the 828mkII.

I have discovered my built-in hard drive is 4200rpm. Not so hot!
Is this going to be ok for recording, say, 4-6 trks of live audio? At least for a while?

I want to eventually get an external hard-drive. Two questions:
1) MOTU reports G4's with firewire800 (like mine) have problems with external firewire hard drives. What's the deal? and will a USB 2.0 be ok instead?

2) How exactly is this set up? Does the HD have to be firewire and run "in line" with the 828? Or can the hard drive be on a seperate port, and just "plugged in" to the 828 from the AudioDesk software?

Any help is greatly apreciated. Thank you!
JAMES

You daisychain the the fw-units:

If I remeber I think it was: Computer--> 828 --> ext harddrive.

Motu may have some recommendations on their website.

Maxtor - among others - have external harddrives with both USB2 and/or fw connectors.

Cheers: Dixiechicken

I had all kinds of problems using external firewire drives and MOTU cards - too slow!

eventually traded in my motu for a Hammerfall and now I don't have these problems at all - running 24 tracks of recorded audio.

If you decide to go external I would recommend getting a disk such as a LaCie Big Disk Triple Interface.
http://www.lacie.com/products/product.htm?id=10117
That way you have a choice of using one of the three interfaces on the drive.
It has FireWire 800, FireWire 400 and USB 2.0 connections

Lacie Drives Rock

Hi,

I've daisy chained my 15 TiBook (10.2.8) -> MOTU828 -> LaCie Ext HD with no problems using DP4.1

along the idea of using ext. hard disks...
I have an Ext LaCie Firewire 60G HD and it is LOUD (fan). I use it with my laptop for onsite recordings. Can anyone tell me if its just mine or are all Lacie (and other brands) fan motor audibly loud?

Could anyone recommend an ext firewire HD that isn't loud? I've been looking at Glyph rack mounts. I like them but the are a bit expensive. I also like the LaCie D2 series (rackmountable) but a friend said they are just as loud as the unit I have now.

Thanks in advance for your ideas-
Karl

The LaCie d2 drives don't have fans so you won't find them anywhere near as noisy as the older style LaCie drives with fans.

My d2 Drive is very quiet.

wow thats great news! I 'll ask my friend again what his beef was, we probably got our signal crossed.

Apologies everyone, don't want to give the wrong idea about a product.

I'll definately check out the D2s they are must less expensive than the Glyph GT series.

Thanks formatj