Hard Drive. Help Requested, Newbie enquiry Options

[Foxyphil]

I have an emac G4,1 Ghz, running osX 10.39. Also recently purchased Focusrite Saffire, bundled with cubase le. Its clear to me that my mac just doesnt "do" 192hz, but I want to try to record files at 96hz. Doing this currently uses up a huge ammount of cpu.

I plan therefore to get an external drive, and will prob go the firewire route, maybe with USB2 compatibility. My question to experienced users is this. Is there any possible DISadvantages at getting a 300 or 400gb drive? Is it possible that an emac couldnt "hack" that ammount? The prices dont seem that much more expensive (I was thinking either Seagate or Carrilion) than for 100 gb. To be honest< id rather not have to upgrade any more hardware for at least a year or two - hopefully longer. I would actually like to try making a few tracks now.

Any input would be great.

Thanks in advance and thanks for great site too.

Phil

[bcatcho]

You are right, looking at specs, mixfisto, firewire should be slower (400 mbps compared to USB2's 480mbps). But there are some other issues at play.

In the firewire architecture both the device and the computer work to find a solution to comon file transfer problems (packet loss, other hickups etc.). Each device (your computer and external harddrive) works co-opperatively.

BUT USB works as a master-slave relationship. The PC does all the error handling and processing of bandwith issues.

This is not the only reasons but just one of the reasons that USB hits the CPU alot harder than Firewire.

Take a look at this link for some real world test data:

http://www.barefeats.com/usb2.html