Recording Harddrive + super quick question

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matthew_a

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Hello gents,
I'm looking to upgrade my recording hard drive, I've done my share of research and am looking at something 7200rpm, external, portable, and with small capacity. I'm pretty set on picking up a Glyph portagig800 160gb, although I'm also looking into LaCie, but I'm just looking for last minute wisdom on this purchase. I'm running XP on a Dell Latitude D830, dualcore 2.0ghz, (soon to be upgraded to) 2x2gb of RAM.

My super quick question involves the portagig. The only FW connection is 800 (9-pin) and my only connection on the laptop is 400 (6-pin). Also, that connection comes via a PC card. I've heard that using a 9 to 6 pin FW cable from the harddrive (9pin) to the PC (6pin) will work fine, but I'm a little queasy about that. My only other option with the portagig is USB, and supposedly to use the bus power you have to use the Y-configuration cable which I'd rather avoid (and obviously FW is just faster anyway).

Also, if anyone has any general thoughts on brands like Glyph...they're tailored to recording, but is it just a gimmick? is it worth the little bit of extra cash? Thanks

Matthew
 
matthew_a said:
Hello gents,
I'm looking to upgrade my recording hard drive, I've done my share of research and am looking at something 7200rpm, external, portable, and with small capacity. I'm pretty set on picking up a Glyph portagig800 160gb, although I'm also looking into LaCie, but I'm just looking for last minute wisdom on this purchase. I'm running XP on a Dell Latitude D830, dualcore 2.0ghz, (soon to be upgraded to) 2x2gb of RAM.

My super quick question involves the portagig. The only FW connection is 800 (9-pin) and my only connection on the laptop is 400 (6-pin). Also, that connection comes via a PC card. I've heard that using a 9 to 6 pin FW cable from the harddrive (9pin) to the PC (6pin) will work fine, but I'm a little queasy about that. My only other option with the portagig is USB, and supposedly to use the bus power you have to use the Y-configuration cable which I'd rather avoid (and obviously FW is just faster anyway).

Also, if anyone has any general thoughts on brands like Glyph...they're tailored to recording, but is it just a gimmick? is it worth the little bit of extra cash? Thanks

Matthew
Click to expand...

Re: stepping a six pin Firewire 400 up to a nine pin Firewire 800... that question is best answered by the manufacture (i.e., can your Firewire 800 use a Firewire 400 port) but frankly I wouldn't bother. Glyph may not be your best choice depending on how price adverse you are and how much hand-holding you require. (Click on the picture to follow to source.)

External enclosures such as this one...

... allow you to connect to a number of different interfaces and use any drive you wish. For example, this 64GB SSD costs $140, or you can pick up a 500GB 7,200 rpm SATA such as this for $130.

Either option would provide you with equal or better performance and more bang-for-the-buck then the Glyph for roughly the same amount of money.

On the flip side, if anything does go wrong (unlikely, but not impossible) you have multiple vendors to point fingers at each other whereas Glyph will most likely suck it up. You never know... read the warranty.

Glyph does not manufacture the hard drive in the enclosure, nor the enclosure itself. The additional cost (and questionable value) is in the name.
 
wheelema,
thanks for the response. I've also been looking into putting together my own drive, and the most attractive feature is easily the eSATA connectivity, although I would then have to pick up some sort of eSATA express card mumbo jumbo. The one potential bonus of brands like Glyph and LaCie is that their portable drives are very nicely protected, and I will be recording and traveling all over the place with this thing. But I totally understand what you say about basically just paying for the brand name. That's so true across any numbers of markets. That Vantec enclosure looks nice, but I'm stilling thinking of the whole protection issue, so perhaps I'll look into enclosures that offer more padding. Thanks again.

Matthew
 
matthew_a said:
wheelema,
thanks for the response. I've also been looking into putting together my own drive, and the most attractive feature is easily the eSATA connectivity, although I would then have to pick up some sort of eSATA express card mumbo jumbo. The one potential bonus of brands like Glyph and LaCie is that their portable drives are very nicely protected, and I will be recording and traveling all over the place with this thing. But I totally understand what you say about basically just paying for the brand name. That's so true across any numbers of markets. That Vantec enclosure looks nice, but I'm stilling thinking of the whole protection issue, so perhaps I'll look into enclosures that offer more padding. Thanks again.

Matthew
Click to expand...
The Seagate drive referenced uses 'G-Force Protection'. From the Seagate web site...

Seagate®
G-Force Protection™ technology, an option Seagate offers on Momentus®
hard drives. This free-fall sensor is designed to detect when the hard
drive has been dropped. With that knowledge, the hard drive is able to
defend itself against a large shock and protect critical user data that could
otherwise be destroyed.
Click to expand...

Luck.
 
glyph uses seagate drives... i've got 3 seagates here... may want to check the onboaqrd buffer sizes... mine are all 32M...
 
Hello,
thanks for the input guys. I ended up going with putting together my own external; with the advice of a friend. I ended up with a WD 320GB, 16MB catche, 7200rpm 3.5" drive. The enclosure has FW800, FW400, eSATA and USB, so I'm pretty much set. Hope it works out!
 
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