Jazzooo Posted November 16, 2006 Share Posted November 16, 2006 Hola, pardners-- I need to buy a portable hard drive to use for recording and/or storage of samples. I know very little about this stuff, but I saw a Western Digital My Book drive, 250 gig, 7200 rpm, for $149. Will this suffice? Right now, all my recording is done on a MacBookPro with the internal drive, also at 7200 I believe.This is something I need to buy by Saturday as I'm leaving town. If that drive isn't the right one, can you please point me in the direction of what I can buy at a typical electronics place like Fry's or Compusa? And please don't feel obligated to answer the next question unless you really feel like it! When I buy the new drive, I'd like to copy all my mp3s from the drive I already have hooked up to my PC. Now, I can probably figure how to do that, but will I then have a problem hooking the new drive up to my MacBookPro? Do I have to format it for a Mac? Obviously that would trash the data, right? I've got nothing but questions tonight! Thanks. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
David Nahmani Posted November 16, 2006 Share Posted November 16, 2006 That drive would work well but it's overpriced. You can find 250G drives for $70 nowadays. Wait a mn.. do you mean the whole drive with a firewire box? That's probably it. Now that would make sense. Still, if you can, try to find a better price or a larger drive.. but that will work just fine. Anything made by Seagate, Hitachi/IBM, Western Digital... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jazzooo Posted November 16, 2006 Author Share Posted November 16, 2006 Thanks, David--yes, it seems self-contained with Firewire. But I'll scout around looking for those names. I guess 7200 rpm is kind of the standard for portable drive now. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
greeneye Posted November 16, 2006 Share Posted November 16, 2006 David where are these 250 gig harddrives for $70. I need a truck load of them? You must be talking about just the drive itself not in anytype of caseing Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jasonc Posted November 16, 2006 Share Posted November 16, 2006 Funny you should say, because I just got a 'crash' course in hard drives myself. After installing Logic Pro 2 weeks ago, a few days after my stock 40 GB drive in my G4 started making louder than normal clicking sounds, and started not showing up at startup. I did the usual routine of start from CD, use Disk Utility etc. Everything was repaired ok at first, but the next few days it kept happening, and I kept going thru the routine again, until finally it only showed up as a 9 GB drive in Disk Utility. When I opened up my G4 and examined the drive (I'm not techy really at all) I noticed there was a tiny HOLE in the ribbon cable attaching the HD to the logic board. It was caused by just getting pinched by the case itself. Anyway, that explained the erratic behaviour of the crashes before the drive finally died. (old os 7 style crashes where everything just freezes). Sooooo...I got online, read for 2 days, and this is what I gathered from everyone's opinions... - the clicking is the definitive sound of drive failure. No if's, and's or but's. - Maxtor drives fail more often than others, are noisier in operation and (obviously) cost less. (My G4's stock drive that failed was a Maxtor) - The BEST drives are considered (in order) Seagate, Hitachi, Western Digital (mid), then the Maxtors etc.(low-end) - Seagate gets the most love from people that know drives. They are known for having the quietest drives, and they're extremely reliable. Some extra stuff I learned in the process... - My LaCie D2 160 GB ext. Firewire drive exhibits a very high pitched whining, even when it's powered off. The sound only goes away if you disconnect the power cable from the unit. - inside that LaCie is our friend, the Maxtor drive which is most likely the culprit. - I've learned you can replace the drives in your externals with Seagates that are quiet and reliable. 8) Sorry for the long post, but maybe my experience will save you some time. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jazzooo Posted November 17, 2006 Author Share Posted November 17, 2006 A quick update--I went drive shopping tonight. I kept the mantra of Seagate, Hitachi, Western Digital in my head but was disappointed to find that none of them were offering drives with Firewire 800, which I have on my MBP. I was about to buy a Seagate external drive when the salesperson suggested getting an internal drive and an aluminum case with FW800. So I got a 400 Gig Seagate drive and a groovy little case, and now I'm attempting to put it all together. I'm not that technical, but I haven't hurt myself yet. $312 out the door. Sounds like a good deal to me. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
davidrice Posted November 17, 2006 Share Posted November 17, 2006 In my experience, Lacie is the absolute worst. I've had 2 drives fail. I bought a couple 250G "My Book" drives recently. The first cost $119 after rebate, then inexplicably the price went up to $189 a month later. They haven't let me down. Sometimes they have trouble mounting on startup but I suspect that's becuase they're daisy chained from a Powercore Firewire rackmount. Also note I'm only using these as backups since I run audio from an internal Segate 10k rpm drive (very happy with it). About formatting: FIRST plug the drive in your Mac and format the drive in disk utility (Mac Extended w/ journaling, unless someone else has a better idea). THEN transfer files from your PC. Good luck! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
David Nahmani Posted November 17, 2006 Share Posted November 17, 2006 Jazzooo, I think you made the right choice. Most boxed drives are overpriced in my opinion. The best external drives I've ever had are the ones I made myself. Get a box, get a drive, stick it in the box (you'll come to realize that it's really no harder than changing a light bulb!) and you're good to go, with a better quality product, and less money spent. Plus, next time you want to buy a drive, just buy the bare drive and swap it for the one you have now. As long as you have one box, you can use as many drives as you want. FW800 vs FW400, you won't see much difference for most use. You're fine working with FW400. If you really need hi-speed, you'll have to consider eSATA or RAIDs. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jazzooo Posted November 17, 2006 Author Share Posted November 17, 2006 "FW800 vs FW400, you won't see much difference for most use. You're fine working with FW400. " Well, I've got it now so I might as well use it, right? I'm thinking that farily soon I'll be loading in some big sample collections--would you record onto the internal drive on the MacBook Pro and store the samples on the external, or vice versa? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
David Nahmani Posted November 17, 2006 Share Posted November 17, 2006 It depends what kind of internal you have, and what kind of session you run. Sample heavy vs tracking heavy? Use the faster drive for the heaviest use. For example, let's say you just have a regular 4,200rpm internal, and just use a few samples but a lot of audio tracks: use the internal for your samples and the external for your audio tracks. Makes sense? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SubFunk Posted November 17, 2006 Share Posted November 17, 2006 i recommend buying an ICY BOX enclosure and a SEAGATE drive, very good quality combo for recording audio. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
j Posted November 17, 2006 Share Posted November 17, 2006 whats with the links to maxtor from the seagate support page, are they affiliated somehow? http://www.seagate.com/support/index.html well i used to believe that guff bout seafate being the best. but my external lacie [fairly new] which has seagate in turned very whiny very quickly, and my other external with segate in became unreliable. my fairly new seagate internal has been making horrid noises in my g5 for ages, but refuses to die. ive had no problems with maxtor [and ive had loads] go figure. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
guavadude Posted November 17, 2006 Share Posted November 17, 2006 I picked up a 400g Seagate SATA 150 as a system drive backup, thinking I could put it in an SATA/firewire enclosure and then eventually just swap it out for the internal drive when it goes bad. But I'm having trouble finding SATA enclosure with firewire. Anyone else have any luck on this. It seems easier to find SATA encl with SATA outs. Is there a card that add SATA to a G5 PPC. Or am I better off just hanging on to this and getting an IDE. Another reason I want to do it this way is that Seagate has a 5yr warrantly on internal drives and only a 1 yr warr on external drives. That's a big difference. That ICY Box looks cool, but only USB and SATA outs. Thanks Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mrpad0 Posted December 7, 2006 Share Posted December 7, 2006 New to all this, but... "FW800 vs FW400, you won't see much difference for most use. You're fine working with FW400. " I'm finding my FW800 MASSIVELY faster when delivering Symphonic Choirs samples into Logic on my Powerbook (1.67GHz 1.5 Ram). I bought a FW400 first and it just choked when delivering the samples.... Yes I use DFD and Kontakt 2.2 Also, I've just bought a Macbook Pro. But the hard drive is 200GB 4200rpm. (2.33 GHz) When using Symphonic Choirs/Orchestra in Logic Pro is this fast enough to cope? I mean, I'll be delivering the samples from the FW800 but should I use the Macbook's hard drive at all? Or load everything onto external (s)? Including Logic itself? Kontakt 2.2 Should that be run from the firewire also? This 4200rpm hard drive thing is worrying me a bit (!) so...any advice would be very useful and save me a great deal of time trying things out! I'd prefer to avoid having to open up my new Macbook pro to change the hard drive if at all possible! Thank you : ) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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