USB vs. Firewire vs. Network (Hard Drives!)

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shackrock

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It's been a while since I've been on the forum...been pretty busy with school, but I'm back!

Anyway...I'm getting a new laptop. With it, I'll be putting my several hard drives (both IDE and SATA 3.5" drives) into external enclosures - hopefully 1 or 2 enclosures, that each house 2 to 4 drives.

I am wondering what the best option is if I plan to record my audio tracks directly to these drives. I've been trying to go through pro's and con's of each. I haven't found anything too decisive on the net so far, including here at HOMEREC. I'll be recording up to 16 separate tracks at once via Firewire 400 (1394a), with the Mackie onyx.


Here's a great IDEAL speed comparison chart:

http://www.lyberty.com/tech/terms/usb.html




Beyond that discussion, I'm also having trouble finding any enclosures that will then suit my needs.... I'm really leaning towards a gigabyte Ethernet switch/router, which I can connect a network storage enabled enclosure to. However I'm afraid that my PC will bottleneck the performance of this, and end up hurting me in the end...which is why I then think of going to firewire 800 or even just 400, or usb 2.0. You can see my headaches.

Anyone's educated opinion would be really helpful, thanks so much.

Scott
 
If you've already got a firewire interface and can daisy-chain a drive to it, that's the best way to go.

Otherwise, USB2 or firewire will usually work for you with little difference these days.
Overall, Firewire is faster than USB2 for SUSTAINED data transfer; USB2 is better at bursts like file copying.

Big Hint: if you get a combo interface drive (USB2, firewire and eSATA) then you can hook up the drives to any configuration that works for you!

Bottom line: Use whatever works.

You do NOT want to record to a network drive. Use it for backups.
 
well, I already have a bunch of hard drives that I'll pull out of my old desktop. They are (not exactly sure, because I'm not at home, but...):

400GB SATA
250GB IDE
320GB IDE
80GB IDE
80GB SATA

I also will want in an external:
DVDRW Drive, SATA

I'm willing to do a few dualbay externals for the hard drives, or even all seperate, if that seems the most economical and easy to do. I don't mind NOT having RAID - I can backup on my own pretty easily.
I am a finatic about proper cooling, though.

Thanks again everyone.
 
alright...

Alright, well I've made some decisions, but I still need help because I can't find anything that does what I want.

Here's what I want (a couple options here):

1 - A Dual bay enclosure for 2 IDE hard drives (3.5"). Must support drive sizes between 100GB and 750GB. It needs to output to at least eSATA ports. However, I'd also like it to output to 1000 Mbps ethernet, so that I can connect it to the network. Again, this network connection is not required, although it would be nice.


2 - A quad bay enclosure that can house 2 3.5" IDE hard drives (100GB-750GB) and 2 SATA II devices (3.5" hard drive support up to 1 TB, and 5.25" spot for a SATA DVD Burner). Again, It should ouput to AT LEAST eSATA. Network support would again be best, but is no required. I imagine this device will have 4 5.25" slots that can accommodate the smaller 3.5" hard drives with different bays of some sort. The power supply should be able to handle the max load, while burning a DVD. Even better, I'd love to be able to power on only the drives I specify.

If ANYONE knows where to find either of those, I'd be so happy. I seriously can't find anything, at all!

Thanks so much.
 
For a start, I wouldn't daisy chain firewire hard drives if this is the interface you're also recording with. You don't want to clog the IEEE1394 interface up with disk I/O interrupts when you're recording!

You could have a look at a Buffalo Terastation.
Armed with one of these and a crossover cable you will have bags of fast space in RAID5.

I'm also wondering why you're going the "laptop + big box o' drives" route to be honest though. Going this way you lose both power and portability.
Laptop-based recording is best done onto the internal drive and then later dumped onto external devices back at base.

If you want a powerful DAW with plenty of space, you need a desktop.
If you want to do mobile recording on a laptop, you can record onto the internal HDD and then dump off the material later. Just get a laptop with an internal disk big enough to last for a few hours of recording.
 
Yeah thanks Codmate...

My situation is that I WILL be getting a powerful laptop for engineering design work, modelling, etc..... more powerful than my current desktop rig. But, I have 1+TB of 3.5" hard drives that I'd still like to make use of (and have them be as fast as they would be internally, hence the eSATA choice now). Portability isn't a huge concern....and recording is, at this point, just going to be a hobby now. I'll look at those terastations, thanks again.
 
shackrock said:
Yeah thanks Codmate...

My situation is that I WILL be getting a powerful laptop for engineering design work, modelling, etc..... more powerful than my current desktop rig. But, I have 1+TB of 3.5" hard drives that I'd still like to make use of (and have them be as fast as they would be internally, hence the eSATA choice now). Portability isn't a huge concern....and recording is, at this point, just going to be a hobby now. I'll look at those terastations, thanks again.
Click to expand...

I appreciate that there are some meaty lap-tops around these days - I am pretty pleased with my Toshiba Satellite Pro P100 for instance; but I would never use it for anything serious. It's great for location recordings - but I wouldn't mix or edit on it.

I have a few good reasons for this:

Most laptops only have one internal 5,400 rpm hard drive.
This makes putting the O/S, data, applications and swap file all on different physical disks impossible.
Hard drives on laptops are a serious bottleneck!

Laptop mainboards generally use a slow FSB with slow RAM, making rendering times excruciating and some mixes with multiple plug-ins very slow.

Laptop screens are too small for serious work.
After going to a 24" screen or dual monitor set-up it's *really* hard going back.

Battery life on a powerful laptop with a decent sized screen tends to max out at 2 hours or so.

If you don't care much about portability, upgrade your desktop.
It's great having a powerful laptop as well as a powerful desktop/desktops, but if you have to choose having one machine - concentrate on a 'real' computer - even if it has to be in a mini case!
It will cost about half the price of a top-of-the-range laptop and you will have a far more powerful and flexible machine.

Spend the money you save on a big fat high-quality monitor. I'm consistently amazed that people spend so much money on their computers and then look at the output on an awful screen.
 
something to consider my esata port is not a plug and go when the operating system is on,so you have to power down for it to find the hard drive,so if you are doing alot of swopping drives arround it would become a pain in the arse very quickly.
 
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