ATA vs. SCSI hard drives

[pigpants]

I'm contemplating a new Mac to replace my four-year-old 450 mHz G3. My G3 has 2, 9 gig SCSI hard drives in it. I'd be moving up to a dual-processor G4 with ATA drives. Running a MOTU 2408 ( soon to be upgraded to the MK3 ). Are the ATAs fast enough hard drives to keep up? I know the processor speed will be a huge step up, but will the ATA drive be a step down?

thanks,

-Michael

[DeafinONEear]

I really woudn't think of it as a step down... Yes, SCSI drives spin at 10K and yes, most ISE drives spin at 7,200, but really, especially with the average seek time of 8ms (or is it nano seconds?) you aren't really suffering any.
The digidesign user confrence has a post for "Best 001 machine for under $1K" and there are a ton of people there using ATA drives getting 32 track count.

How many simultaneous tracks do you normally use? That's one to consider.

Also, I don't know if this has hit the Mac world yet, but there's the new Serial ATA drives out now that apparently have the same bus speed as SCSI (if not more)(correct me if I'm wrong) which means that the only setback you would be having is access time, which isn't all that different.
Also keep in mind that Apple doesn't even ship drives with SCSI anymore.
Also keep in mind that ATA's are a lot less of a hassle.


Also keep in mind that PC's are cheaper, faster and more expandable, and every bit as capable in the audio word these days as macs. (i know, i know.... i don't want to hear the flaming... just let me say it.)

[JES]

Yeah, if you're starting out, it's six of one, half dozen of the other. Upgrades are another story.

I upgraded from a g3/300 to a dual gig mac last summer and I'm totally 100% satisfied. Threw in an extra 80gig 7200rpm HD for audio and haven't had a single problem with track count or anything else HD related. Thought about a PC but while I would have saved $$ on hardware, the crossgrades on software would have killed the savings AND wasted hours of my already too-limited recording time with new learning curves.

FWIW, I still use the 2408 mkI -- eventually, I'll upgrade but I'm not doing 96k audio and really all I need are better convertors.

Best,
--JES

[cassembler]

ATA's are wonderful. At Frye's, they've got a WD 7200rpm 80 gig drive for like $60 right now...

[DeafinONEear]

ATA's are wonderful. At Frye's, they've got a WD 7200rpm 80 gig drive for like $60 right now...

Ahh, Fry's. I love that place. I used to just go in and walk around once a week and see what specials they had, and the daily specials section on the back of the buisiness section (or was it sports?) in the LA Times ALWAYS had a great deal. But now the closest one to me is in Palo Alto and I just dont' like that town and it's just on the other side of too far. Nor to I get the printed specials.

Cass, what theme is your Frys? The one in LA was alice in wonderland which kicked serious ass, the one in Palo Alto is old westerned themed (lame!) and the one in Burbank is, like, alien takeover or something! It rocks beyond compare!

[eeldip]

if you are getting a new computer, you might want to consider a firewire drive, you will have to lay out some more money, like $150 or so, but you get an external drive with 80 or go gigs, fast enough for 24 tracks at 24 bit, that you can take to other studios, or plug into a laptop, etc...

[@?,*???&?]

Forget the mobility issue of Firewire or SCSI, go for raw speed. Internal ATA drives are now available at blazing speeds of 10,000rpm and 15,000rpm. Don't even bother with a 7200rpm drive. If you got two as data archive drives and ran your unit in 'round robin' record mode, you're system would be unbeatable.

[pigpants]

Thanks one and all for the info and advice. I'm pretty committed to going the Mac route ( just a personal preference ), but the folks at Apple have pretty well pissed me off with the whole OSX-but-we-can't-sell-you-a-rig-with-9.2-on-it bullshit. I know it's silly, but I'm soooooo used to the old OS and I just fucking HATE the idea of not knowing OSX as well as the old OS.
Plus, the damn "Apple Store" doesn't offer much in the way of customizing options for the new G4s.
Bastards.

thanks again, I really appreciate all the replies.

-Michael

[cassembler]

Cass, what theme is your Frys? The one in LA was alice in wonderland which kicked serious ass, the one in Palo Alto is old westerned themed (lame!) and the one in Burbank is, like, alien takeover or something! It rocks beyond compare!

Year, right. Here in Arlington Tx, the theme is "Big fucking warehouse chock full of crap. Find it your damn self."

But hey, I still love the place, it's really a great place to spend a couple of hours just looking at deals & 96 foot TV's and digital cameras and video games, and, oh yeah, computer stuff.

PS a Mac screwed my life today by having a font available in Quark, but nooooooOOOOOOO!!!!! Not in Photoshop, NO FONT FOR YOU!!!!

What sucks is instead of just replacing the font with something close, it decided to take a line of text at random and move it somewhere random... *$%$*^%*^#^#$*^ MACS!!!!

Maybe it's jealous of my PC...

[joel hamilton]

ATA drives in a new mac will be way fast enough at 7200rpm. Remember, faster spindle speed= more heat, higher chance of failure. I have gone through a couple of 10,000rpm seagate drives. Now I use a digidrive (firewire)which is 7200rpm and a seagate ATA 7200 drive along with about 12 other firewire drives, and on any of them I can quickpunch 24 tracks of 24/96k with PT HD3 system.

I ran an 001 for years with internal drives at home, (I actually bought one of the first 100 001's out the door) with ATA drives. A 7200rpm IBM deskstar 75 gig. That always worked really, really well. That was in a g4 450, 1 gig of ram. I always wanted to try a sonnet ATA controller card to free up more CPU for the plug ins. I know that getting a more aggresive video card can do the same thing.