I bought a "La Cie"Big Disk Extreme with 600 GB (i.e. 559 GB on my Mac/osX10.4.5)
which is connected with FW800 to my G5, just for the VIs.
So far i'm very satisfied with this solution.

Greets:
HTF

Happy Tree Friend.
How quiet (loud) is the la cie disc? Are ther any fans?

@yofish said:

How quiet (loud) is the la cie disc?

Hi Yofish,
i forgot to write this: the big disk is very quiet; i can't tell you if hear it at all, because i have it on the top of my G5 (2.5Dual), and i just can hear the computer!

Greets:
HTF

thanks!
then I`ll go for that disc
[:D]

HTP,

I've had lots of Lacie discs over the years so please be aware of a couple of things. Your particular disc doesn't have fans this is OK in a coolish environment but if they start to get hot they can spiral out of control.

i once had one disc that hadn't been in a well ventilated area that though was still working was at a temperature that would instantly burn if you touched it. 4 weeks later it failed!

The other thing to be aware of is that there are 2 discs in a Lacie 600GB they appear as one as they are either JBOD or in your case a Raid 0. If either discs fail you will loose your data and inbetween the discs and your computer is a firewire bridge that could also fail.

I would recommend that you either have a back-up of your stuff or in the case of the Vienna Instruments consider how long an install from the original DVD's will take mid project if you have a failure.

Having said all this I ran my VSL Pro Edition from a Lacie 500 Extreme for a year or so and the performance was good to excellent.

Julian

I'd like to forcefully echo what Julian has said. My experience with the LaCie 500 (dual-250) has been nearly identical.

I had my entire VSL library on one and it died after a few months usage requiring me to purchase another and reinstall the complere libraries.

Well, that was mistake number two. I never should have replaced it with the same type drive. My experience is that with intense orchestations with VSL the drive gets extremely hot and begins to fail. I have to shut down and wait for the drive to cool.

Needless to say, I am now replacing that second LaCie with a new set-up.

I read on a post thread that a VSL employee has had heat problems with that drive. Forgive me, as I can't remember which person that was.

I can't forsee why the VI would make any difference in the activity of the LaCie Big Drive. Nor would I want to necessarily think the LaCie 600 would act any differently. I'm sure it's a good product but not for our application.
There are too many other good options out there to chose this direction.

Hoping for the best for you,

Jack

i'd like to add this applies to most external disks (mainly FW/USB) unfortunately. as already pointed out, this type of drives is intended to be used in a *normal* setup (loading a file from time to time or such) and not in a heavy-access-environment like with sample streaming.
some models carry off heat better (eg. maxtor OneTouch II), some of them not (obviously some LaCie drives) - it makes a big difference if the heads of a disk are moving from time to time or 8/10/12 hours a day continuously.
it might sound provocative, but professional work calls for professional equipment ...
christian

Thanks Julian, Jack and Christian for this (frustrating) information!
Its better to hear this now as to have a crash during a hard production...


So could you mention some concrete hard disks that are perfect for the VI Cube
(i.e. the 400 GB)?


Greets:
HTF

I'm using an external enclosure with 4 x 400GB drives - has a small fan, is extremely fast and as the drives WD4000KD's connect directly to the SATA 2 card in the G5 there is less in the way to go wrong! appears to run cool and transfers large files at 240 MB/second(1920mbs) and smaller (up to 50MB) at 360MB/second(2880mbs).

My Lacie Firewire extreme drives max out at 50-60 MB/second (400-480mbs)

Julian

Thank you, Julian, for your answer!
I've found the WD4000KD by GOOGLE, but i'd like to ask you, which external enclosure you use?
(i hope thats not an indiscreet question...)
Am i right that you'll split your VIs on _all_ of the 4 disks?
or would it be the same with 2 disks?

I'm sorry for my questions, but it's very hard to find competent help on harddisk-questions...

Greets:
HTF

@JJRoach said:

I don't know about everyone else, but I've spread my library across 4 Firewire 800 drives. I've tried to separate the orchestra somewhat equally:

1: High Strings, and Solo Strings
2: Low Strings, and Low Solo Strings
3: Brass
4: WW
...percussion will most likely live on the internal drive (or I may buy another)

I don't know how much Direct from Disk the VI uses, but I'm assuming spreading the library this way will help ensure a more stable system.

Josh Roach

Hi Josh Roach,
This is nearly exactly the way I have split the VI over four seperate Slaves connected to the Sequencer-Host.
But still than I am not shure if I should'nt split further not for HDD-reasons but the RAM-Usage.
Do You realy intend to use the Whole SC on one single System?
Even if there might be HDD that can store and easyly load the Data of the whole SC, is it realy reasonable to work with it on just one CPU. [*-)]:
Steffen

@Happy Tree Friend said:

I've found the WD4000KD by GOOGLE, but i'd like to ask you, which external enclosure you use?

Am i right that you'll split your VIs on _all_ of the 4 disks?
or would it be the same with 2 disks?

I'm sorry for my questions, but it's very hard to find competent help on harddisk-questions...

Greets:
HTF

First of all the VSL library is automatically distributed across all 4 drives as the set up is a Raid 0 which uses all 4 drives as a single x4 speed drive. You could also use 2 or 3 or even more drives as a Raid 0. As there is a 4 times greater chance of drive failure with my system (if any 1 of the 4 drives fail in a Raid 0 it's doo doo time!) i have any irreplaceble files (or files that I wouldn't have time to replace in a hurry) backed up on Lacie FW 500GB and 600Gb drives. Any really precious files are backed up twice to different drives.

The enclosure I use is a Mini G SATA and this is connected (drive by drive) to a Sonnet SATA 2 4+4 card which would also accept extra internal drives in a G5.

http://www.transintl.com/store/minig.cfm

It's very cool looking -basically a mini G5.

Julian.

Hi Julian,
thank you very much for this information!!
Its really cool that you share your know-how with other users!

Greets:
HTF

Hi Steffen,

What do you mean by SC?...Are you asking if my system will run an entire orchestra at once?...and as far as RAM usage is concerned...to my knowledge, the RAM being used to run samples is inside the unit running VI, not the external hard drive. I know that there's a small buffer in the Ext. HD, but I'm pretty sure that the master sequencer will be pulling the load...I was trying to use another library in August from 1 external hard drive, and since I've spaced the library out amongst these drives, I haven't gotten any Disk Too Slow error messages...(this isn't to say that my system is bulletproof now, because I"m STILL spending time setting it up)...but, I've got a G5 1.8 running my host (within which I'm loading VI instances) program with 4 gigs of RAM...so, once I start running out of RAM for that program, I'll just load another instance of the host, allowing me to access the remainder of my 4 gigs. Unless I'm wrong about how VI streams samples, I'm thinking that the orchestra will run fine with my setup...I may run into a wall with the woowinds and brass, but we'll see.

Another thing to keep in mind, I'm running only sounds on my 1.8 G5...it is only generating sounds, just like a GigaStudio would. I've got another G5 (2.7 dual) which I'm running Logic and other programs...although, I'm thinking about switching the systems around, and generate MIDI from my 1.8 single and running sounds on the 2.7.

Josh