My recommendation is to obtain an eSATA controller card in your G5 and purchase a SATA drive housing and two drives to create a RAID 0 array.
You don't say which model G5 you have. Earlier G5s have PCI and/or PCIx slots, the last G5s have PCIe slots. This would be important if you decide to use external eSATA drives - - which must be connected to an eSATA card installed in your G5. You'd have to make sure to get a card compatible with the slots in your G5.
eSATA is usually faster than Firewire and also does not cause problems if you are also using a Firewire audio interface. In addition, the thing that most frequently goes wrong with Firewire drives is the bridge circuit in the drive enclosure. this circuit mediates between the drive and the Firewire port. I've had several drives go dead because this circuit failed - - nothing actually wrong with the drive itself. This is, however, easily fixed by obtaining another Firewire enclosure, taking the drive out of the old enclosure and installing it in the new one. With eSATA drives the circuitry is on the controller card - no bridge circuit in the enclosure to go bad (or to pay for).
Other World Computing (a very dependale company) sells their own brand of 2 channel SATA controller card for $50.00 and they sell Firmetek/Seritek cards (which I have found extremely reliable). They also sell an inexpensive dual drive housing for $68 or a complete 1TB RAID for $390 (wth two Seagate 500GB drives) They also have the much more deluxe Firmtek hot-swap drive housing for $200. Installing the drives in this housing is much easier than in the inexpensive housing and the housing has many features (e.g 3 fan speeds). Another thing about hot-swap housings is that they can be used for multiple purposes. You could, for example, purchase additional drive trays ($23) and drives so that you could take the drives comprising your sample RAID out of the housing and insert another drive or drives and use it (or them) as a backup medium. (This would also enable you to store backups offsite.)
You could buy a housing from OWC and two Western Digital RE 500GB drives from Newegg.com for $320. (Western Digital RE drives are specifically designed for RAID applications and have low power consumption They also have 5 year warranties - - unlike the less expensive Western Digital SE drives.) As I said at the start, the idea would be to make a RAID 0 array for your samples. RAID 0 is not secure because if one drive fails all data is lost - - making a two drive RAID 0 exactly twice as likely to fail as a single drive. On the other hand, a two drive RAID 0 array is, at least theoretically, twice as fast as a single drive. Since you have your samples on DVD, the security issue is not as important a consideration as it would be for other kinds of data. You can also turn of journaling when formatting the RAID which will further increase speed. I have been using a RAID 0 array for over a year for Vienna Instruments and other samples with no problems.
I hope this is helpful.
You don't say which model G5 you have. Earlier G5s have PCI and/or PCIx slots, the last G5s have PCIe slots. This would be important if you decide to use external eSATA drives - - which must be connected to an eSATA card installed in your G5. You'd have to make sure to get a card compatible with the slots in your G5.
eSATA is usually faster than Firewire and also does not cause problems if you are also using a Firewire audio interface. In addition, the thing that most frequently goes wrong with Firewire drives is the bridge circuit in the drive enclosure. this circuit mediates between the drive and the Firewire port. I've had several drives go dead because this circuit failed - - nothing actually wrong with the drive itself. This is, however, easily fixed by obtaining another Firewire enclosure, taking the drive out of the old enclosure and installing it in the new one. With eSATA drives the circuitry is on the controller card - no bridge circuit in the enclosure to go bad (or to pay for).
Other World Computing (a very dependale company) sells their own brand of 2 channel SATA controller card for $50.00 and they sell Firmetek/Seritek cards (which I have found extremely reliable). They also sell an inexpensive dual drive housing for $68 or a complete 1TB RAID for $390 (wth two Seagate 500GB drives) They also have the much more deluxe Firmtek hot-swap drive housing for $200. Installing the drives in this housing is much easier than in the inexpensive housing and the housing has many features (e.g 3 fan speeds). Another thing about hot-swap housings is that they can be used for multiple purposes. You could, for example, purchase additional drive trays ($23) and drives so that you could take the drives comprising your sample RAID out of the housing and insert another drive or drives and use it (or them) as a backup medium. (This would also enable you to store backups offsite.)
You could buy a housing from OWC and two Western Digital RE 500GB drives from Newegg.com for $320. (Western Digital RE drives are specifically designed for RAID applications and have low power consumption They also have 5 year warranties - - unlike the less expensive Western Digital SE drives.) As I said at the start, the idea would be to make a RAID 0 array for your samples. RAID 0 is not secure because if one drive fails all data is lost - - making a two drive RAID 0 exactly twice as likely to fail as a single drive. On the other hand, a two drive RAID 0 array is, at least theoretically, twice as fast as a single drive. Since you have your samples on DVD, the security issue is not as important a consideration as it would be for other kinds of data. You can also turn of journaling when formatting the RAID which will further increase speed. I have been using a RAID 0 array for over a year for Vienna Instruments and other samples with no problems.
I hope this is helpful.
