external hard drive for powerbook G4

  • Thread starter Thread starter mattyN
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mattyN

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mac users...

i am putting together a lil home DAW.

i'm using a new powerbook, G4 1.67 ghz, 1.5 mb ram, OS 10.4.

one of the next purchases i want to make is an external hard drive which i will dedicate entirely to audio...

thoughts? suggestions?
 
Any USB 2.0 drive will work on all Powerbooks. Or you could get a Firewire 800 drive for 15 and 17 inch Powerbooks (since your 828 is taking up the Firewire 400 port and 12 inch models don't have the 800 port).

Or you could buy an enclosure that supports USB 2.0 or Firewire 800 and stick a regular hard drive in there.

Or you could buy an enclosure that supports USB 2.0 or Firewire 800 and stick a SATA hard drive in there. This would be the fastest performance option.
 
I just bought a Glyph firewire 80Gb for audio only from sweetwater.com
Nice drive, very fast and TOTALLY SILENT. Worth the few extra bucks.
Also got the rack ear kit with it so it doesnt take up any space on the desktop.
 
thanks for the suggestions...

my powerbook is the 15" model so it does have 2 firewire ports.
 
noodles2k5 said:
Or you could buy an enclosure that supports USB 2.0 or Firewire 800 and stick a regular hard drive in there.

Or you could buy an enclosure that supports USB 2.0 or Firewire 800 and stick a SATA hard drive in there. This would be the fastest performance option.
Click to expand...
Ummm...not exactly. In this case, the limitation is the speed of the Firewire 800 bus, not the speed of the hard drive. Almost all 7,200 rpm hard drives, regardless of whether they are SATA or "regular" (ATA-133) have higher data transfer rates than the full bandwidth of a Firewire 800 bus.
 
Firewire still works better for audio than USB. USB is not as good for sustained data transfer, from what I understand, even though its over all rate is faster.

Your powerbook does come with 2 FW ports- a FW400 and a FW800. I hook my 002 into the 400 port (the narrow one with one rounded end) and use a fw400-800 cable to plug my HD into the 800 port. Works fine.

And they key to getting a good hard drive for audio is that its QUIET! They are hard to shut up and you can't keep them under pillows and blankets for too long because they'll over heat. If the glyph is really that quiet, it might not be a bad idea. I had a drive fro Wiebetech that was fanless and fairly quiet, but I can't remember the model.

Take care,
Chris
 
well, if its too loud or slow i'll end up using it for backups and just record to my internal drive which seems to be doing fine (despite its relatively slow 5400rpm). i'm gonna get me a G5 soon enough...

anyways, this is what i'm thinking:
http://www.technoavenue.com/gt0501f-80.html

i continue to be interested in other suggestions...
 
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