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  4. Which external hard disk for an Intel Mac Mini?

  • Which external hard disk for an Intel Mac Mini?

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    I'm currently using VIs on a Mac Mini (1.66 GHz Intel Core Duo, 2 GB RAM), which for the time being must serve as a temporary replacement for my broken PowerMac G5 Quad. Unfortunately I get lots of clicks and pops, even if I use VI as a standalone, with no other programs running. It's not a problem of CPU power, as can be seen in the Activity Monitor (of course I'm using the Intel version 1.06), neither is it a problem of missing RAM, so the hard disk where the samples are stored is very likely to be the culprit. This is corroborated by the fact that clicks and pops only occur when I play a certain note with a certain articulation for the first time.

    I'm using a 1TB LaCie Big Disk, which is connected to the Mac via FireWire 400 (there is no FireWire 800 port on the Mac Mini). Since a growing number of people on this forum seem to use a Mac Mini quite successfully as a VI slave (and that's what I also plan to do as soon as the G5 is repaired), could you tell me which hard disk you use and how you connect it to the Mini?

    P.S. Inside Logic, I don't get clicks and pops, but an annoying dialog box saying that Core Audio hasn't got enough processing power, and then playback stops completely. Is there a way to get rid of this dialog box? There is no "Don't tell me again" checkbox there...
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    I'm using the Lacie Mac Mini drives connected over FW400 and don't get any problems. Although I am using WindowsXP not OSX and use VSTACK as my slave host.

    Tim
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    @timkiel said:

    I'm using the Lacie Mac Mini drives connected over FW400 and don't get any problems.


    That's strange, since the Big Disk seems to be slightly faster than the Mac Mini drive:

    LaCie Mac Mini: 40 MB/s sustained transfer rate, seek time < 11 ms
    LaCie Big Disk: 42 MB/s sustained transfer rate, seek time < 10 ms

    Anyone else using a Mac Mini with a FW400 hard disk?

    I'm using an M-Audio FireWire audio interface -- maybe FW400 doesn't have enough bandwith to share a connection with a hard disk and an audio interface...?
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    It's interesting if you look at the other thread I did have issues when using the EDIROL UA1EX but I've now reverted to the internal card and it seems ok - just doing some more testing though to see if it's just me.
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    @Another User said:

    also, i'm running an NTFS partition on the LACIE (as I was using the MAC under WinXP) would this have anything to do with it?

    My LaCie is HFS+ – maybe HFS+ AND onboard audio will be the solution. (I will be travelling until the beginning of August, so I can't try it out right now.)

    Has anyone tried a USB 2.0 connection? I'm somewhat reluctant about it. For Syncrosoft reasons, I want to keep the USB bus as "clean" as possible...
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    I recently picked up a Wiebetech TrayDock. It's SATA to FW800. I put a 250 GB Seagate SATA with 16MB cache inside and it seems great. No problems. The case isn't cheap, but it's well built, swappable, and one of the very few SATA->FW options available.

    J.
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    a Tray Dock???I'm going to have to check that out if it does what I think it does...

    I just used a woodwind section this weekend using a mac mini duo inside logic (but as a slave, so all it was doing was recieving midi and spitting it out again)...with the internal audio card...no problems...was impressed with the way it was working.

    My samples were sitting on an external firewire 400 Other World Computing drive housing with a seagate hard drive inside it.

    Josh
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    Yeah, the Mini doesn't have FW800 anyway, but Wiebetech also makes a FW400 version. The main thing is being able to put an SATA drive inside, not just a standard IDE drive.

    Here it is:

    http://www.macheaven.co.uk/?page=proddetail&prod=1515

    J.
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    cool...thanks for the link. yeah, I'm dissappointed about the lack of firewire 800 in the mac minis.

    ..I'll be honest and say that I'm a little fearful that the next wave of macs won't have firewire at all...just because i have all of these firewire hard drives!...

    having said that, I think I see a future in SATA external hard drives. (that is, SATA ports on the drives)

    josh