Best external hard drive?

subtractor

subtractor

New member
I'm gonna buy an external HD today...
100gb or so, firewire...

What is the best model for speed and reliability?
What amount of cache do I need to look for, and are there any other specs I need to look for?
 
I have a 120 gig maxtor one. It works fine for backup, it's waay to slow to do any tracking on though. It's made for usb 2.0 but I only have 1.0, so I'm sure that makes a big diffrence.
 
USB 1.1 vs 2.0 does make a huge difference.

For an external hard drive I'd probably get a generic firewire enclosure and add a regular hard drive of my choice.
Maxtor, Seagate or Western Digital, brand doesn't really matter that much. Preferably 7200rpm and 8MB cache.
 
christiaan said:
USB 1.1 vs 2.0 does make a huge difference.

For an external hard drive I'd probably get a generic firewire enclosure and add a regular hard drive of my choice.
Maxtor, Seagate or Western Digital, brand doesn't really matter that much. Preferably 7200rpm and 8MB cache.
Click to expand...

I did the exact same thing, but one note -- the firewire specification is the limiting factor, and the difference in performance bewteen having 5400RPM and 2MB cache with a firewire/usb connection is negligible. Get the cheapest / largest drive you can. Don't expect anything great, though, as read/writes are limited to ATA33 or PIO speeds (not-so-good). I have a 7200 RMP 8MB 80GB Maxtor special edition in a $50 generic enclosure and it does what it's supposed to do just fine, but my 4200RPM 60GB Toshiba internal drive outperforms it.

Extrernal drives are great for storage, but not for active/working project use. I have to use my internal laptop hard drive to do all the project work, otherwise the external drive labors and causes latency stuttering during recording/playback.
 
Pinky said:
the firewire specification is the limiting factor, and the difference in performance bewteen having 5400RPM and 2MB cache with a firewire/usb connection is negligible. [...] I have a 7200 RMP 8MB 80GB Maxtor special edition in a $50 generic enclosure and it does what it's supposed to do just fine, but my 4200RPM 60GB Toshiba internal drive outperforms it.
Click to expand...
You have configuration or hardware issues. Firewire is not the limiting factor here.
 
Well... Pinky is right up to a point.
Firewire IS a limiting factor with a bandwidth of 400Mbits. Nowadays hard drives go beyond that. But it's still suitable for recording, considering that one track at 24/96 is only 288 kbytes/s. Do that 100x and you're still not reaching the limits of firewire.
 
Sorry, there was some misleading information in my post.

My issues are with latency, and a combined/cumulative latency between having an external sound card (audigy 2 EX usb) and a firewire drive. Having two external devices of that type cause just enough latency that eventually it seems the machine has some difficulty managing the communications between them.

I'm likely going to find the root cause, but I stopped homerecording a few months ago to turn my focus elsewhere musically.

Now, my point about IDE drive speeds is 100% correct, as the bandwidth allowed by firewire/USB 2.0 is lower than the actual bandwidth most IDE drives can operate at nowadays.

[from http://www.macobserver.com/columns/askdave/99/july/990701.html] As far as ATA-66 is concerned, this is actually an update to ATA-33. ATA-33 supports a maximum transfer rate of 33.3 MB/s (yes, MegaBytes per second), and ATA-66 supports 66.6 MB/s.
Click to expand...

[from http://www.it-enquirer.com/storage/firewire.html] firewire specs
Click to expand...

Difference in tech terms that are confusing -- MB (Mega Bytes) and Mb (little "b" = Mega bits). Mega Bytes is a storage specification, true to the size files we move. Mega bits is a communication specification, and actually represents the bandwidth / transmission of the data. 400Mb does NOT equal 400MB. MB is a larger value. Take the Mb (mega bit) number and roughly divide by 8 to get the actual Mega BYTES (MB) being moved. Firewire does around 50MB per second. Most of today's IDE drives operate at 100 or 133 MB per second, MUCH faster.
 
Last edited:
Pinky said:
Now, my point about IDE drive speeds is 100% correct, as the bandwidth allowed by firewire/USB 2.0 is lower than the actual bandwidth most IDE drives can operate at nowadays.
Click to expand...
That's what I said
Difference in tech terms that are confusing (etc etc)
Click to expand...
Yet it's exactly how I said it. Read carefully. I know what I'm talking about
Most of today's IDE drives operate at 100 or 133 MB per second, MUCH faster.
Click to expand...
Not quite. They may have an interface that supports up to 133MB/s but apart from cache bursts, there is not a single hard drive on the market yet that can pump out that amount of data sustained, not nearly as much.
 
christiaan said:
Not quite. They may have an interface that supports up to 133MB/s but apart from cache bursts, there is not a single hard drive on the market yet that can pump out that amount of data sustained, not nearly as much.
Click to expand...

Very true. This was used for sake of example/comparison. Regardless, all ATA100/133 still operate at ATA66+ under worse conditions which still exceeds the usb2 and firewire specs.

BTW, I wasn't refuting a thing you posted... I was just trying to clarify for the other members in the thread who DON'T know "what I'm talking about"...

Glad I didn't disagree with you... agreeing was painful enough :rolleyes:
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top