FireWire Drives

[Jejouelesguitares]

I was looking into getting a digi 001 and it said that what it recommened was a FireWire drive. What is this? Is this a external Hard Drive because if it is, I'll just buy a 100gig drive from Best Buy, thank you very much Did you see how much the FireWire drives are!?!??!!

[Kremlin]

Firewire is just a type of connection. Most firewire drives you'll find are actually IDE drives that have been jimmyrigged onto firewire and are no faster than a normal IDE drive.

[JESTER700]

You can buy a FW case for $70 or so and put an IDE drive in it, too...

[darren wilson]

FireWire is a high-speed bus invented by Apple, but is being adopted throughout the industry as a standard for digital video and audio applications. It also goes by the name of IEEE 1394, i.Link (Sony) and maybe a couple of others. However, the 1394 Trade Association is now really pushing the FireWire brand name.

If you're going with a do-it-yourself FireWire enclosure and drive, make sure you get an enclosure that has the Oxford 911 chipset, which is supposedly the fastest of the ones available. And for host adapters, go for cards that have a Texas Instruments controller chip.

On the hard drive side, also make sure you get a 7200 RPM drive with a nice big cache onboard.

[Polaris20]

Originally Posted by darren wilson

FireWire is a high-speed bus invented by Apple, but is being adopted throughout the industry as a standard for digital video and audio applications. It also goes by the name of IEEE 1394, i.Link (Sony) and maybe a couple of others. However, the 1394 Trade Association is now really pushing the FireWire brand name.

If you're going with a do-it-yourself FireWire enclosure and drive, make sure you get an enclosure that has the Oxford 911 chipset, which is supposedly the fastest of the ones available. And for host adapters, go for cards that have a Texas Instruments controller chip.

On the hard drive side, also make sure you get a 7200 RPM drive with a nice big cache onboard.

Right on Darren. This place was recommended by the people over at the Digidesign board, and I contacted the place. They informed me that all of their enclosures are Oxford 911 based.

Someone had also said that the majority of firewire drives are Oxford 911 based, because that's the only chipset being made right now.

It allows for up to 40MB/sec transfer rate.

[Lonely Raven]

I was an early alpha and beta tester for the Firewire chipsets and
add on hard drives specifically for Digital Video Editing.

Darren is 100% dead on!

[Jejouelesguitares]

But I guess what I'm asking is, do I need one to use Digi001 or will my Hard Drive work fine.

[darren wilson]

Find out exactly what the specs Digidesign requires (seek time and sustained throughput are the main things you need to look at).

An UltraATA/100 bus and drive will be fine if it's a high rotational speed drive (7200RPM) and it has a nice big buffer on it. Having the drive (and the bus it sits on) dedicated to nothing but digital audio is also a plus.

Check out all the Digidesign drive requirements here. (Or here if you use a Mac.)