[jefflash]

Does anyone use a Firewire harddrive as their primary storage drive? Are there any
(speed) problems associated with it? I'm thinking of getting an older B&W G3, a cheap one with 64MB and 6GIG, and using the cash I save (by buying a G3 as opposed to a newer G4) to buy more RAM and a big (60-80GIG) Firewire harddrive. With the prices so low, I can't say no ;-) The internal drive would be used for, well, just the basics, and I figure I'd load most of the applications and stuff (storage) on the Firewire drive. I've used Firewire stuff in the past and have not noticed a significant speed problem, but I'm wondering if anyone else has used it in this regard. Is Firewire good for this purpose (lots of I/O, especially when I'm doing stuff like digital audio/MIDI) or is it better to just use it for just storage and low-intensity-but-big-filesize stuff? Should you load applications onto it or keep those internal and just use Firewire for storage and portability? I'm not planning on using the Firewire drive specifically for portability sake, but it would be nice to be able to attach it to a laptop from time to time, for example. Would it be cheaper/easier to just add another internal drive and buy a smaller portable Firewire drive?

Also, in a separate but related project, I'm going to be setting up a G4 as a server (mainly a file server, but perhaps some light Intranet-related web hosting), and rather than installing a tape backup, I thought of using a Firewire harddrive as a backup. It would only have to be backed up once a week, so I figure we could put together an applescript to copy all the contents of the internal harddrive onto the firewire drive every Friday at 2am or so. Then, when I come in Friday, I unhook the Firewire drive, take it offsite so it's safe, and bring it back Thursday so it can backup again Friday AM. Anyone see any problems with this approach?

Thanks in advance for any responses...

[GORDYmac]

I don't use firewire as my primary startup disk, but I have my emergency startup disk on my firewire drive. It's really fast, it seems faster than my internal drive. I store all my documents on the Firewire drive so that I can move them to other workstations if necessary.

[Paul S]

I use a few FireWire drives. Some are the smaller ultra-portable drives that are only 4200rpm speed. Another is a full size 5400rpm drive. I use them for storage of all my digital video work. I can playback a 2 hour video from either of my FireWire drives with no loss of quality or dropped frames. In my book, if it can handle full screen digital video, it can handle anything.

I have an APS 7200rpm drive connected to a B&W machine. It is used mostly for storing large Photoshop files. I've noticed no practical speed difference between it and the startup drive and running apps through a firewire drive shouldn't be a problem.

One note: it's possible that the B&W models won't support booting from an external firewire HD...I haven't tried it.

Scott

[Misha]

Why not just buy a large internal drive, which will be cheaper than an external FireWire solution?

If you ever need to make it external, you can buy a FireWire case for about a hundred bucks.

[ddiokno]

Originally posted by jefflash:
Does anyone use a Firewire harddrive as their primary storage drive? Are there any
(speed) problems associated with it? I'm thinking of getting an older B&W G3, a cheap one with 64MB and 6GIG, and using the cash I save (by buying a G3 as opposed to a newer G4) to buy more RAM and a big (60-80GIG) Firewire harddrive. With the prices so low, I can't say no ;-) The internal drive would be used for, well, just the basics, and I figure I'd load most of the applications and stuff (storage) on the Firewire drive. I've used Firewire stuff in the past and have not noticed a significant speed problem, but I'm wondering if anyone else has used it in this regard. Is Firewire good for this purpose (lots of I/O, especially when I'm doing stuff like digital audio/MIDI) or is it better to just use it for just storage and low-intensity-but-big-filesize stuff? Should you load applications onto it or keep those internal and just use Firewire for storage and portability? I'm not planning on using the Firewire drive specifically for portability sake, but it would be nice to be able to attach it to a laptop from time to time, for example. Would it be cheaper/easier to just add another internal drive and buy a smaller portable Firewire drive?

Also, in a separate but related project, I'm going to be setting up a G4 as a server (mainly a file server, but perhaps some light Intranet-related web hosting), and rather than installing a tape backup, I thought of using a Firewire harddrive as a backup. It would only have to be backed up once a week, so I figure we could put together an applescript to copy all the contents of the internal harddrive onto the firewire drive every Friday at 2am or so. Then, when I come in Friday, I unhook the Firewire drive, take it offsite so it's safe, and bring it back Thursday so it can backup again Friday AM. Anyone see any problems with this approach?

Thanks in advance for any responses...

Hi,
Two things... i have a B&W G3 and installed a second drive (60Gb for around $200 and change). It works really well, but if you want to flexibility of having a portable FW drive for applications, that should work with no problems... i have an 80GB Maxtor FW drive and run applications from it (Virtual PC 4.0 with its several different drive images, Office 2001, and a couple of simple photo editing programs). I use the FW drive for these applications so I can use them between my Pismo and the Desktop.
hope this helps
dave