What's Best for Digidesigns Pro Tools?

[cjhope]

Hi,
I've been running Pro-Tools HD on my G4 867 for quite some time now, and I'm due an upgrade. However, I'm getting conflicting views from techs at the stores on what is best for me. Two issues.

Firstly, the OS and drive set-up scenario. It was suggested by a enlightened tech at a post-production facility that I should have 3 internal drives - on the first have an 80Gig partition where I install the OS, on the second have an 80-250Gig partition where I install my applications and have a third internal drive for streaming audio.

The concept is two fold - it is supposed to be faster, and secondly if something goes wrong I can always re-install my OS and be ready to roll again no time.

Please understand, none of the above or what I am continuing to write is anything more than someones advice, and I haven't tried it yet, so I encourage you to give your knowledge and opinions on the matter so we can have an ultimate solution set!

So....The discussion I had on the drive set-up scenario becomes strange if it is for a G5, seeing as the machine is only set up to hold 2 internal drives! Which leads me on too the guys at the computer store... One tech gave me a carbon copy opinion of the one I have just shared from the guy at the post facility. The other tech at the same place was a polar opposite. He said Panther HATES partitions and I should avoid them... he also said there was no speed benefit to having your applications running on one drive and the OS on another.

My Second overall issue is this: to G5 or not to G5!!!!!
Basically, I have a digidesign expansion chassis and an atto dual SCSI card, and from what I gather, there seems to be an extreem possibility that neither will work on a G5, so may be an upgrade to a dual 1.25 G4 would be a smoother and more obvious solution. Never mind the fact that the G5 will not fit in my ISO-Rack!

Opinions!!!!!

Thanks in advance.

C.

 

[JFreak]

G5 will be your best bet.

you will require at least one gigabyte of memory and the best thing is to have two hard drives - one for system and applications, and the other for protools audio files only. remember that the second drive will not have to be internal one, you can also buy a firewire hard drive and that's beneficial if you think that you even once in the system lifetime wish to take your session to another studio. one firewire hard drive is easy to transport.

i think you will not need that expansion chassis or scsi if you purchase the G5. there's plenty of room inside, and currently serial-ata is as fast as scsi.

if you cannot afford waiting for the next powermac update, then buy the 1.8GHz model instead of the two-gigger. protools uses only one cpu for audio and the second one is resered for system use and gui refresh. there's only a 10% boost going from dual 1.8 to dual 2.0 in protools, but getting the boost costs a lot more.

 

[Bhennies]

The g5 is much quieter than the g4 in addition to having much faster system architecture (FSB) and serial ATA drives. Mixing in the same room as an MDD g4 is certain to be a pain- it increases ear fatigue and you can simply forget about hearing fine details like reverb tails, etc. The MDD sounds like a lawn mower.

I am in the same boat- my PCI Pro Tools system is now obsolete because I want to step up to a g5 as well. For the second HD for audio files, I would recommend getting a Glyph firewire GT-050 or GT-051 (with hot swappable drives). They are fantastic- built for audio use (extremely quiet) and they have the Oxford 911 chip. This way, if you get a Powerbook or want to take the drive into an HD studio or something- you don't have to rip out your internal drive!

check out glyph- http://www.glyphtech.com

you can buy them at fullcompass.com or mtlc.com

EDIT: I would think that the new g5's will have more drive slots available. Some aftermarket manufacturers are already making solutions anyway (Terabyte internal RAID).

 

[WinterMute]

I'm running HD3 with the new accel cards on a G5 DPGHz, it has 4 gigs of RAM and twin 250gig HD's, one for apps and system one for audio, I also have a 250 gig lacie FW800 drive for portability.

ProTools likes the DP machines, it loves the RAM and it won't really do without the separate drives. I also run LE with an m-box on my 17 PBook, which is a remote tracking and editing rig really.

My advice echoes the above, the G5 is the mutts nutts, it love RAM and twin drives are a miniumum. The DP G4's are nice, but they the raw grunt for lots of plug-ins and ReWire feeds etc.

In my opinion twin displays are also a must, as are Dynaudio monitors.

 

[Leo carro]

HELLO AMIGOS Protools-Mbox-G4 1.25

I have a Imac G4 700 with the Mbox, and tomorow I will Buy a Power mac G4 1.25 (sigle).
The questions is:

Can I install systen and Protools in one internals disk, and the audio files in the other(scratch disk)??? Both internals...
You were talking about to use better an exterlan disK WHY???
It´s no better internal???

 

[WinterMute]

I have a Imac G4 700 with the Mbox, and tomorow I will Buy a Power mac G4 1.25 (sigle).
The questions is:

Can I install systen and Protools in one internals disk, and the audio files in the other(scratch disk)??? Both internals...
You were talking about to use better an exterlan disK WHY???
It´s no better internal???

The key is a second drive, one for system and app, the other for audio/video files, internal or external makes no real difference (apart from convenience).

The advice about 3 drives is relatively sound, but not really necessary, what is needed in a big system is lots of RAM.

I use an external drive with the PowerBook obviously.

So, yes you can use twin internal discs.

 

[wwooden]

I agree

The g5 is much quieter than the g4 in addition to having much faster system architecture (FSB) and serial ATA drives. Mixing in the same room as an MDD g4 is certain to be a pain- it increases ear fatigue and you can simply forget about hearing fine details like reverb tails, etc. The MDD sounds like a lawn mower.

I am in the same boat- my PCI Pro Tools system is now obsolete because I want to step up to a g5 as well. For the second HD for audio files, I would recommend getting a Glyph firewire GT-050 or GT-051 (with hot swappable drives). They are fantastic- built for audio use (extremely quiet) and they have the Oxford 911 chip. This way, if you get a Powerbook or want to take the drive into an HD studio or something- you don't have to rip out your internal drive!

check out glyph- http://www.glyphtech.com

you can buy them at fullcompass.com or mtlc.com

EDIT: I would think that the new g5's will have more drive slots available. Some aftermarket manufacturers are already making solutions anyway (Terabyte internal RAID).

My dad is professional musican. In his studio he has a dual 1.8 G5 with two displays, ProTools, M-Audio BX8 speakers, and 2 external glyph harddrives. He doesn't use or recommend any but the glyphs. I'm not really sure why that is, I'm not a music guy.

 

[cpjakes]

I would disagree with the three drive theory. But, two drives is a must. What I do is get a fully functional system and then back up the image with Disk Utility (or you can use Carbon Copy Cloner). That way, if you do have a system problem, you can reinstall the image quickly and not lose time.

Also at this point, I am skeptical of Apple's support for SCSI devices. While they work, there are problems sometimes. I had a case for two Adaptec cards in two separate machines not working properly with one of the OS X.3.x updates. It's fixed now, but I'm sure to test out updates before I push them on all of my machines. I would go with more internal SATA or external FireWire devices. As for which drives to use externally, that's another thread entirely.

cpjakes