Lee, what would suggest for the Mac. I've got one SATA drive in my G5 but how do you add another without getting into those SATA controller cards, which I know you hate? G5 has no more slots for drives....(Dual 2G).

TH

Herb said it will need about 350GB disc space:
http://community.vsl.co.at/viewtopic.php?p=52544#52544

Herb also said that Solo Strings is the largest collection - 88GB uncompressed data needs around 56GB on your harddisc:
http://community.vsl.co.at/viewtopic.php?p=53727#53727

DG, I said that 2x250GB would fit best (because of enough headroom in order not to loose too much of the HD performance):
http://community.vsl.co.at/viewtopic.php?p=52280#52280

On this matter: 400GB drives do only give you about 370GB (labeling convention fooling you to make it look like you would get more) - so you would loose quite some performance as the drive would be almost 100% loaded with the data. Apart from that 2x250GB might even be less expensive.

Cheers
PolarBear

just as a sidenote: there is no such thing like a *firewire hub* - every firewire controller (except end-devices like videocams) are a *hub* by itself (at least 3 ports, each omnidirectional) - so 1 in 2 out (one of the outs is the connected device itself, of course. eg. the harddisk)
christian

@cm said:

just as a sidenote: there is no such thing like a *firewire hub* - every firewire controller (except end-devices like videocams) are a *hub* by itself (at least 3 ports, each omnidirectional) - so 1 in 2 out (one of the outs is the connected device itself, of course. eg. the harddisk)
christian

Thanks for that comment.
Current Situation is G5 with 160 GIG System Drive not used for Samples or Audio.
Extra SATA 250 GIG used for Audio, Samples and a Backup drive for documents from System drive perhaps only a couple of GIG. FW Lacie Porsche 250 GIG for Samples and duplicate Backup and a small 40 GIG Lacie for non VSL samples.
I also have A MOTU 828 and a MetricHalo ULN2. None of my PCI slots is in use.

So is there an argument AGAINST SATA Controller cards if I am NOT running Pro Tools - Just LOGIC?

@tom@aerovons.com said:

Lee, what would suggest for the Mac. I've got one SATA drive in my G5 but how do you add another without getting into those SATA controller cards, which I know you hate? G5 has no more slots for drives....(Dual 2G).

TH

The Firmtek card is excellent and I have no problem running 4 drives with samples and audio from it on an older G4. I can only imagine what a G5 would do with it. SATA external with a card is great. Firmtek is a super company with great well priced products.
J

I know you guys are all Mac. However, if you'll indulge a Windows guy like me, I just bought a system with a second 200GB SATA drive for samples. I figured I could use fire wire drives for any more samples. Just how bad is the performance comparison between SATA and fire wire? will my stuff sound like crap if I have most of my PE or SC on a SATA but some on a fire wire?, or series of fire wires? the system is a 64bit P4 which should be arriving next week. Still trying to decide whether to use SC or PE. that's another discussion. Just need to know whether I totally screwed up by not having a drive bay installed for multiple SATA drives.
Kevin

I would suggest buying two 300 GB Maxtor drives or similar and stripe them in a RAID configuration, preferably using hardware RAID most motherboards come equipped with these days. You get all the space and more speed you can possibly need. I use this for PE and never get hickups even with DV video running at the same time and plenty of audio tracks on the side.

And of course you need to have all the stuff backup'd, because if on striped RAID you lose one hard drive all the data is lost. Use them firewire hard drives for backup.

Stakula

@kevjazz said:

I know you guys are all Mac. However, if you'll indulge a Windows guy like me, I just bought a system with a second 200GB SATA drive for samples. I figured I could use fire wire drives for any more samples. Just how bad is the performance comparison between SATA and fire wire? will my stuff sound like crap if I have most of my PE or SC on a SATA but some on a fire wire?, or series of fire wires? the system is a 64bit P4 which should be arriving next week. Still trying to decide whether to use SC or PE. that's another discussion. Just need to know whether I totally screwed up by not having a drive bay installed for multiple SATA drives.
Kevin

How big is the VI strings 1 and 2? If that's all I had, how much space would I need for the extendedstring library? I don't need the complete SC if I have the strings.

Kevin

@kevjazz said:

Just how bad is the performance comparison between SATA and fire wire? will my stuff sound like crap if I have most of my PE or SC on a SATA but some on a fire wire?, or series of fire wires?

I ran my tests on a 300 GB USB drive first - slow, but didn't sound "bad" at all. When I was fed up with the loading times, I put the hard disk into a firewire case. The loading time was consicerably increased, the sound was the same. Anyway, even with a slow drive you can bounce your tracks to audio without any loss in definition/quality.

Cheers,
David
VSL Manuals

@kevjazz said:

How big is the VI strings 1 and 2? If that's all I had, how much space would I need for the extendedstring library? I don't need the complete SC if I have the strings.

Kevin

Herb said Solo Strings with around 88GB taking 56GB of diskspace with compression scheme is the biggest of the VIs, so this means you should be fine with anything of 200GB upwards as a drive for Strings I & II (more headroom on the drive will help the drive speed for better streaming capabilities).

The sound quality will (and should) not change no matter which storing solution you use. External/internal Firewire/SATA/IDE all do the same - deliver the same bunch of 0's and 1's [;)]

Hope this helps,
PolarBear