Firewire Hard Drive Query

Hello

What is the best brand of external firewire harddrives for the MAC G4?

I would like to incorporate multiple firewire drives into my current set-up and I'm hoping somone can suggest the best method for doing so.

Can more than one firewire drive be added externally? If so, do I need a firewire hub or can multiple firewire drives be linked together without setting up a raid?

My current configuration is as follows:

Mac G4 733 with the DVD SuperDrive, 1-60 gig system drive, and 4-75 gig internal media drives.

I also plan to use a single firewire drive to back-up my current media drives. It was suggested instead of using a plain copy program for transferring my video and render files, I should use cloning software. What is the best cloning program for for Macs?

Can an external firewire harddrive be used as a bootable drive?

Thanks
Howie

You are much better off using an external FW or Sata Raid then a bunch of FW drives chained together. Check out G-Raid or ProMax Costs a bit more but worth it

[www.g-technology.com]

[www.promax.com]

promax.com without ANY doubt. do a search of the forum. you will not see a single issue with a promax drive. myself and derek mok both sing the priases of their products. he and i also share the same sales rep - rene kropf. call him, tell him we sent you and he'll take good care of you.

[www.promax.com]

even their cheapest $160 product will be good enough to get you going. i have 2 of them on my machine right now and im running like a champ. and with your older machine, you'll be limited to fw400 but thats just fine.

yes, you can daisy chain firewire drives together. the most ive linked together at any one time is 3. you wont get better performance (like a raid) by having multiple drives, you'll just get more live storage.

keep in mind, the firewire debate has rolled on here for years. some of us swear by them, others rally against them. but the one thing i have seen as a constant is that ive never heard of anyone using promax drives having any problems.

Hi Wayne

Thanks for the quick response. Right now I am more concerned with the additional storage space.

Does fw400 mean a 400 gig firewire drive?

Howie

no. firewire400 and firewire800 are two different types of firewire. 800 just has faster transfer rates than 400. they both have the same kind of physical connectors and firewire800 devices can be used on machines with firewire400 connections, but you will only get firewire400 speeds.

but with your older machine, you only have 400 ports, so i would just get a firewire400 drive. no point in paying for something that youll get no benefit from...

i reccomend this drive:
[www.promax.com]

I had a look at the promax site as recommended. The thing I don't understand about this RAID business is this: if the drive calls itself, say, an 800G Raid, does this mean that the files are backed up within the drive itself and that the actual "real" capacity would be 400G?

Such a dopey question, I know, but I've never understood.

Best

Harry.

again, no. not in this case. that all depends on how a RAID is configured and to my understanding, thats not the purpose of these particular drives.

i say, the best use of your money is to get a cheaper individual fw400 drive or two and save your money for a newer computer and more ram. i doubt that with your computer youre going to see a world of difference just by having a RAID drive. you will indeed se some benefit. but youd see MUCH more from a newer computer.

oh and as far as backing up your media drives... i think a cloning application would be overkill. sure, it will work, but its just not really needed. where i would use a cloning program (cc cloner) is to back up your boot drive.

the cloning program catches all the invisible files that simply darg copying wouldnt get.

and yes, FW drives are indeed bootable

oh, above: meant DRAG copying, not darg copying - dont want to confuse anyone

You mentioned you wanted to backup your media drives, including digitized clips and render files, correct?

That really isn't necessary as long as you backup your main drive that contains your project file. As long as you have a copy of your FCP project file you could rebuild your entire project. Clips could be recaptured from the source tapes and render files could just be re-rendered. You also need to backup any other media files that didn't come fromsource tapes; music, sound effects, graphics, etc.

JK

jk, thats ONLY IF he logged his clips. if he used capture now, im pretty sure hed have to back up ALL his stuff.

Remember FW 800 is backward compaible with 400 so it might be a wiser move to buy 800 than 400. That way you can bring it to your next Mac which will have an 800 port

And I'd still go with a raid over a bunch of FW drives any day. And a SATA raid at that.

wayneGranzin wrote:
> jk, thats ONLY IF he logged his clips. if he used capture now,
> im pretty sure hed have to back up ALL his stuff.

I disagree. As long as you have accurate timecode you can re-capture anything from the source tapes. Provided you entered the reel information correctly so you know which source tape to use. If you don't follow basic media management at the beginning then yes, you'll be pretty hosed if you suffer a drive failure.

I you really need to back up your media then another solution is to just drop all your clips on a timeline and then record them back out to tape. That's a much cheaper and longer-term archive method rather than dumping it all on a hard drive.

JK

Thank you all for responding. I always find everyone on the board to be quite helpful when I post a question. Now a little more information...

I currently have 3 media drives in use. I believe my fourth drive needs to be replaced. It makes a grinding noise and hangs when I try to copy files to a disc to back-up. Can anyone share a similar experience?

I want all of my video footage, render files, music, sfx, etc., backed up in case I were to lose any data during the installation of a new internal drive. I don't want to have to go through weeks of uploading video and rendering again.

At this point I don't have use for a raid and a new machine is not in the cards.

I am currently in the middle of a large DVD project. I am running OS 9.2.2, FCP version 2.0.2 and iDVD version 1.1. Instead of upgrading my current system drive to OS X Tiger during this project Jude Cotter made the suggestion to use an external firewire drive as a new OS X system drive for iDVD 5. This way I can complete my project in FCP 2 but still be able to author my DVD with the latest version of iDVD.

A few new questions...

1. If I am daisy chaining additional external firewire drives do I need to set-up my computer so they are all on their own individual bus and install new dedicated firewire cards for each drive, or, do the drive plug into one another without any problems?

2. Can my video deck be on the same bus as either new drive?

3. Do I need a cloning program to copy all of my files to the new firewire drive or can I drop and drag?

Thanks again,

Howie

you cant really compare a raid to a bunch of individual firewire drives. they are two radically different things. the cool thing about having a number of smaller fw drives instead of a big raid is that its super cheap and easy to exchange individual drives on an as needed basis. you can do that with a raid, but its a bit more costly and not AS easy.

Besides Promax what is a good brand firewire drive to consider?

<<<Besides Promax what is a good brand firewire drive to consider?>>>

You said the magic words.

It is at this point that the rest of us point out that Apple refuses to allow using FireWire drives for live video in either direction because it's not 100% stable or reliable. The postings on the board pretty much agree that between 5% and 10% or so of people that try to capture or playback from FireWire drives fail in one way or another.

Apparently (from anecdotal evidence) the Promax drives are tuned enough so they fail far less than everybody else. I'm from the other camp. *Every* time we try to capture or play with any external FireWire, it fails. So we don't do it.

That's not to say we don't have FireWire drives. We do. Seemingly thousands of them. We use them for media storage, moving massive projects between machines, and archival storage. Pretty much what Apple wants us to do.

We also have two new LaCie iT drive stacks, one per major machine. They're RAID 5, so we only see 750G out of the 1000G. They sound like garbage disposals while they're running, so that does worry me.

You can get away with using FireWire drives for capture and playback by using different FireWire connections for the deck and the drive. In English, that means buying a FireWire card for your deskside or a PC-CARD for your laptop. The two FireWire ports built into a Mac count as one.

Did I miss anything? LaCie and Western Digital seem to have the worst reputation, Promax the best. We have been happy with Seagates.


RAIDs are rated by number for what they do. I don't remember the actual numbers, but one RAID "parallel's" the drives to increase speed. Another RAID stacks the drives to double the capacity. Another RAID saves all the data twice, once on each drive. Another RAID provides an algorhythmic backup. If one fails, you can reconstruct it with the ones left. If two fail, you're toast.

You can combine the RAIDs.

If you want.

Koz

as far as what drive mechannism is in a manufacturers enclosure, that varies from vendor and model.

my personal preference is a seagate barracuda 7200 rmp drive. ive never had one of these fail. i opened up one of my older promax fw400 drives a couple weeks ago out of curiosity and the drive was an ibm deskstar.

as to your question about what other brand to use? EVERY other brand ive ever seen has been complained about on lafcp somewhere. i have yet to read a negative post about a promax drive. - and NO, im not getting kickbacks from them!

<<< the drive was an ibm deskstar.>>>

They have an odd history. I have a number of them in various configurations on the PC side.

Apparently, they had, to borrow an automotive term, " a Friday Run" of drives that were complete garbage. IBM published a DFT (Drive Fitness Test) program which would beat the crap out of the drive to determine whether or not the drive was going to fail. They would cheerfully replace a drive that failed this test, quickly and no questions asked.

I had two fail. After the dust settled, no more failures.

The Deskstars are being made by, I think Hitchi now and as near as I can tell, there are no more Friday Drives (unless you have one sitting on the shelf somewhere).

Koz

Has anyone used the following firewire harddrives, if so, what's your opinion?

1. 250 GB 7200RPM SATA HD
2. 250, 300 or 500 GB Extreme Triple Interface - 7200RPM, 8MB
3. Prosche Design FW/USB 2.0 5400RPM Portable

howie, im not sure why you are trying to second guess what weve already told you time and time again, are you just trying to get yourself into trouble?

1. the promax sata max tool is flawless ( and sata max is by definition NOT a firewire device. the FIREmax IS.) the sata max is based on an external pci sata card to an external sata array box - its NOT a fire wire device, period...
2. you can put whatever size drive you want on a firewire interface and its all the same
3. the porsche design device is a lacie drive and as youve seen here, lacie is pretty much the bigest ofender of firewire problems that you'll find here.

im really not sure why you are second guessing our firewire advice? your machine is quite frankly sooooooo behind the curve, that an effort to throw money into a drive is really a BAD decision. get yourself up to date on the CPU level, THEN worry about a top of the line drive situation.

Firewire drives work fine for me and that is while using Digi bete files. Never daisy chain them, use them individually, fw 800 so you have the speed and you should speed test them : Digi beta should be at least 70mb per second and for playback set your audio'visual preference to none. No problem touch wood as they are lacie d2 drives