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Music_Producer

macrumors 68000
Original poster
Sep 25, 2004
1,633
18
Hi there, just hoping someone can help me out with this. When working with audio or video, we work with fast SCSI hard drives which run at 10-15k rpm. Most of the time though, I am on the road with my powerbook and a firewire drive which runs at 7200 rpm. This is great, but not sufficient for intense audio applications. My idea is : If I buy the Western digital Raptor drive (SATA 10,000 rpm) and a SATA firewire enclosure from Addonics..wouldn't the firewire bus slow down the transfer speed anyway?Whether you use a 5200 rpm drive or a 10 k sata drive..everything's passing via the firewire cable and this wouldn't make a different what the drive's speed is..correct? Thanks
 

varmit

macrumors 68000
Aug 5, 2003
1,830
0
Music_Producer said:
Hi there, just hoping someone can help me out with this. When working with audio or video, we work with fast SCSI hard drives which run at 10-15k rpm. Most of the time though, I am on the road with my powerbook and a firewire drive which runs at 7200 rpm. This is great, but not sufficient for intense audio applications. My idea is : If I buy the Western digital Raptor drive (SATA 10,000 rpm) and a SATA firewire enclosure from Addonics..wouldn't the firewire bus slow down the transfer speed anyway?Whether you use a 5200 rpm drive or a 10 k sata drive..everything's passing via the firewire cable and this wouldn't make a different what the drive's speed is..correct? Thanks

Yep, the connection you use will affect how fast it can transfer data. But if you use a slower drive, the bus isn't being used to its full capacity. You figure out which trade off you want to make.
 

tomf87

macrumors 65816
Sep 10, 2003
1,052
0
I have a question for you though. You say at work you use SCSI drives. I'm noticing the plural there. Are those in some sort of RAID so you are using multiple spindles at the same time?

You can get that fast hard disk, but I highly doubt that the Firewire bus will slow it down. The Firewire bus can theoretically handle 50 Mb/sec. A single hard drive can move roughly 30-40Mb/sec on a very good day. So your Firewire bus is not going to slow you down.

Getting back to those SCSI drives, you can't just look at spindle speed and get an idea of the performance. Things like cache, interface, and architecture of the system can affect performance. Now, SCSI drives are usually used together in a RAID, especially in work/production environments. By virtue of using multiple spindles, you get faster transfer speeds.

So, I wouldn't advise spending money on another drive and enclosure, unless you are certain you will get what you want.
 
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