Glyph GT050Q...which capacity to get?

[mysterywhiteboy]

i know this question is more a matter of preference, but i wanted to get a consensus on what size external HD people typically use with a portable setup (MBP). i'm definitely getting the glyph GT050Q drive, but i'm not sure if i need 500GB vs. 250GB. i also plan to get a second external HD (not a glyph) for backup...prob a Western Digital 1TB.

 

i was intrigued by the glyph 320GB portagig, but they don't offer an eSATA option...

 

i guess a simple question to ask: how full is your external drive now (the one you record to)? anyone pushing past 250GB?

[triplets]

Always go for the bigger drive, think long term. In one year 250 won't be enough.

[David Nahmani]

Why would you pay way too much for a drive that's too small and sporting specs from several years ago? That's what you get with the Glyph. I mean the 250G model has a 8MB buffer size! I haven't bought a drive that doesn't have a 32MB buffer size for a long while.

 

And the question "250 or 500G?" is soooo 2006. Your question should be "750G or 1TB?".

 

If you do your research, get a good 750G drive, a good enclosure, you'll end up with a much BETTER & FASTER drive, for about A THIRD OF THE PRICE!!!

 

To this day I have yet to understand why people buy Glyph drives. They're overpriced, underperforming drives with a glorified warranty.

[mysterywhiteboy]

If you do your research, get a good 750G drive, a good enclosure, you'll end up with a much BETTER & FASTER drive, for about A THIRD OF THE PRICE!!!

 

at first, i was considering a lacie 750gb with the 16MB buffer, but read horror story after horror story on how often lacie drives fail, which leads me to...

 

To this day I have yet to understand why people buy Glyph drives. They're overpriced, underperforming drives with a glorified warranty.

 

i was under the impression people bought glyph (and paid more for them) b/c of their rock-solid reliability...perhaps i'm mistaken then.

 

care to recommend a brand/model or two? thanks for the input...

[David Nahmani]

In my experience, Glyph drives are not more reliable than any other drives. I have seen Glyph drives fail. I have never, ever seen one of the drives I built myself for 1/3rd the price fail. That could be just luck, of course, but IMO Glyph are certainly not more reliable than others. Keep in mind the drive inside a Glyph box is the same as the one you'll buy yourself.

 

I believe people buy Glyph for the warranty, but to me that doesn't make much sense since I can buy 3 drives instead of one Glyph, and make a bunch of backups . That's a much better warranty in my opinion.

 

I don't recommend LaCie either.

 

I recommend finding a fanless enclosure with the specs you need (FW800, or eSATA), and buying an internal Seagate, or Hitachi drive, and put it in the enclosure.

[triplets]

Go to OWC at www.macsales.com.

I get all my external HDs from them.

[mysterywhiteboy]

Go to OWC at www.macsales.com.

I get all my external HDs from them.

 

is this what you are referring to?

 

http://eshop.macsales.com/item/Other%20World%20Computing/MEAQ7750GB32/

[David Nahmani]

Go to OWC at www.macsales.com.

I get all my external HDs from them.

 

is this what you are referring to?

 

http://eshop.macsales.com/item/Other%20World%20Computing/MEAQ7750GB32/

 

I don't know that drive but it looks great. OWC is pretty reputable, I've used them with success too. I've also bought the following drive and it works great (you may find it for less $ somewhere else).

 

http://www.g-technology.com/Products/G-DRIVE.cfm

 

Whatever drive you get, make sure you format it using /Applications/Disk Utility/ before you start using it.

[mysterywhiteboy]

Go to OWC at www.macsales.com.

I get all my external HDs from them.

 

is this what you are referring to?

 

http://eshop.macsales.com/item/Other%20World%20Computing/MEAQ7750GB32/

 

I don't know that drive but it looks great. OWC is pretty reputable, I've used them with success too. I've also bought the following drive and it works great (you may find it for less $ somewhere else).

 

http://www.g-technology.com/Products/G-DRIVE.cfm

 

Whatever drive you get, make sure you format it using /Applications/Disk Utility/ before you start using it.

 

thanks, david...i notice the G-Drives don't have FW800 ports...do you find the FW400 is all you need? as i dig deeper, i'm reading that in order to get the most benefit out of eSATA, you need to run them on a RAID configuration...that using eSATA without this only increases performance marginally faster than FW800. since i will be using the apogee duet on a MBP, i originally thought of using an eSATA card, but i might rethink this in light of what i've just discovered. curious how you record externally with a MBP setup...FW400? FW800?

 

and...just so i understand correctly, even though it mentions these drives come "preformatted for mac", i still need to format the drive as you mention above?

[triplets]

Just make sure that they're formatted as Mac OS Extended (HFS+). It will show when you select the drive in Disk Utility.

[David Nahmani]

as i dig deeper, i'm reading that in order to get the most benefit out of eSATA, you need to run them on a RAID configuration...that using eSATA without this only increases performance marginally faster than FW800.

 

Where did you read that? That's wrong. SATA and eSATA are much faster than FW800. Those ones have FW800:

 

http://www.g-technology.com/Products/G-DRIVEQ.cfm

[mysterywhiteboy]

as i dig deeper, i'm reading that in order to get the most benefit out of eSATA, you need to run them on a RAID configuration...that using eSATA without this only increases performance marginally faster than FW800.

 

Where did you read that? That's wrong. SATA and eSATA are much faster than FW800. Those ones have FW800:

 

http://www.g-technology.com/Products/G-DRIVEQ.cfm

 

i read the following from here (there's a chart at the top of the page showing timed trials comparing the performance of USB/FW400/FW800/eSATA):

 

http://www.macworld.com/article/131750/2008/01/mercuryelite1tb.html?t=223

 

The reason eSATA is only slightly faster than FW 800 is because of drive performance - the hard drive itself starts becoming the bottleneck at FW 800 throughput. To really see the difference, you need to be running a multi-disk RAID 0 setup...

 

...interface bandwidth has nothing to do with the throughput of a given device connected by that interface unless of course the interface in question is old and is itself a bottleneck. No device is going to magically perform faster than its design limits allow because it is on a faster bus. FireWire 800’s maximum theoretical bandwidth significantly exceeds the best data transfer rates of any modern hard drive, so there is no legitimate reason to expect anything but marginal differences in performance between a FireWire 800 and eSATA attached hard drive.

 

Contemporary bus design is supposed to exceed need not meet it. Top tier FireWire and eSATA offer much more bandwidth than a single drive requires, but offer plenty of headroom for stripped RAID.

 

i'm confused

[David Nahmani]

As you can see from their tests, the difference in performance really depends on what you're doing (copying, duplicating a file, using Photoshop...). So your results are going to be different when using the drive for audio tracks, long vs short audio files, sample streaming, etc. I wish they had a "Logic Pro" test! In my experience there's quite a bit of difference between FW800 and eSATA when using the drive for your Logic project. That difference is going to vary depending on the project, the number/size of audio files, etc.... so your mileage may vary, but.. why not just get the fastest interface?