Metropoulos Forum

I would like to add an external harddrive for audio to my comp, and I have a firewire add on card. What kind of real world speed can I expect? I have an external drive on USB 2.0 that I can record tracks to. But it's not quite fast enough for large Nuendo projects.

Is the FW connection really much faster than USB 2?

Here's an enclosure I'm looking at:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6817145346

Thanks,

George

George, take a look into these before you commit to an external.

Removable Hard Drive Tray
http://www.atruereview.com/ezswap/index.php

My wife used to use one of these when she was doing Web design and had to utilize both Windows and Linux. You have the base and can buy multiple trays where you install a hard drive in the sleeve. Once the drive is in stalled and the tray locked to the base it works exactly like an internal HDD. Once you are done, unlock and pull the tray out. Make sure you keep at least one tray so that when the you are done using the first, you can install the second to make sure no added dust gets into your system.

Hi George:

On paper USB2 is faster than Firewire/IEEE1394, 480 Mbit/sec vs. 400 Mbit/sec. But not in real world tests.

USB2, like USB1, uses the CPU a lot, whereas Firewire does´nt. This is especially bad when used for recording, where the processor already has lots to do. This results in Firewire being much faster in most cases.
Firewire is also isynchronous, so when you daisychain devices they all get the same bandwith, whereas with USB2 you divide it. And Firewire is full duplex, it can send and recieve at the same time, USB2 can´t, meaning that you can read and write to a drive at the same time. It does´nt have to stop to change directions. (Drives can´t either, but it takes longer for the OS to put copying on hold, change to read, and back again. With Firewire the chip in the drive does this much faster)


Firewire is so fast you can max out the drive, so make sure you put a fast one in your enclosure.

When I restore/install Mac´s I use a Firewire drive. The image file is 5,3 Gb. Takes around 3 minutes, including erasing the internal drive, and checking the restore.

Get Firewire. Even our PC guys are using it when they can. We are dual platform, PC and Mac, and our in our experience Firewire runs circles around USB2 for data transfer. USB2 is great for scanners and such things.

Check this: http://www.frozentechnology.com/article ... re-vs-usb2

Especially the CPU load is important for you, as you PC is not tha fastest on the block anymore...

Hope this helps.