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awcopus · Jun 25, 2003, 11:03 AM

A few comments.

Gul,

re: 500 GB serial ATA drives, I'm pretty sure these aren't available yet, but your point is that they will be available. I'd be psyched for that, who wouldn't be? I suppose over time this kind of drive size might address my current concerns, we'll have to wait (how long?) and see.

Those who've mentioned Firewire solutions:
My experience is that Firewire drives take MUCH LONGER TO RENDER than internal EIDE drives on an ATA/133 bus. So I can't help but think of this suggestion as a step backwards. Until I start reading more about results with Firewire 800 being comparable or even better compared to my current setup, and Apple actually goes on the record and backs Firewire 800 for FCP4, I'm going to stick with my system.

Firewire 800 external drives are not cost-effective. I would want a company like Granite Digital to offer FireWire 800 enclosures that I could pack with my own drives.

Those who have suggested using my boot disk as a scratch disk:
Yeah, the disk could handle it. But here's a few reasons why that isn't a professional solution.

1. The same disk that is running my operating system and FCP4/Sountrack/Livetype is being asked to work intensively on accessing a/v files. Over and over again. Day in and day out. Doing this will represent wear and tear on my startup volume, to say nothing of the disk fragmentation issues that will arise as I dump and capture anew. Right now, if a scratch disk crashes, I simply take out the Granite tray that mirrors that drive and replace it. I'm back up and running in under an hour, not including the time it takes to place an order at hypermicro.com for my replacement back-up drive.

nerd, my tapes are labeled, but that doesn't help me when my boot disk is fried. I see no good reason to increase the stress levels on that disk, to be pennywise and pound-foolish.

2. When I finish a project, I take out the scratch disk(s) that contain all of its assets and store them in a cool and dry place. If I need to go back to it, I just pop the drives in my machine and when I reopen the project file in FCP, bang, I'm up and running with all links to all assets intact. This would be disrupted by using my startup disk unless I actually made space on it to copy the files back onto it...again, just adding more steps here....pain in ass stuff.. and time is money.

3. Everybody says scratch disks should be isolated drives. They say this for a reason. There is a difference between what you can get away with and what you should do. I prefer the latter. And I resent the implication (and the reality) that Apple's G5 product design exapandability....compromises (feeling charitable)....represent a reason for me to abandon an approach that works, cost-effectively and performance-wise.

RE: the X-Serve. A G5 version would be yummy. But you've all seen the size of the G5. It's a monster. I think the 1U enclosure isn't going to work for a G5, not for a while or ever. Still, the prospect is very appealing. I would seriously consider this an upgrade path that's superior to the PowerMac G5, if in fact it doesn't compromise on any of the G5's system architecture advantages.

Finally, ngrundy, I'm not panicking. Just playing out the impact of the loss of expandability in the G5. For some of us, it actually requires some serious thought and research to deal with Apple's latest product compromise, in order to live the dream of its new chip and system.

External serial ATA solutions may provide the best bang-for-buck solution. Check out:
http://shop4.outpost.com/product/3626795
Only for the PC, but Sonnet will make something like this, I'm sure. External SATA enclosure connected to Mac via a PCI-X slot? Yeah, okay. Hope springs eternal! Maybe somebody will make one of these with TWO external SATA connections.

Very funny conversation with Adaptec this morning. Everybody's saying: "It's a little early, isn't it?" And I say, "Well, the machines are coming out in 2 months. How long is it going to take you to build and sell me a solution?" All good-natured. It's all good.

OreoCookie · Jun 25, 2003, 11:55 AM

What about my suggestion to boot off an external FireWire hd and use the internal drives for your dv material?

Include an extra partition on one of the internal drives, just in case you need to boot from it.

Shaddim · Jun 25, 2003, 11:55 AM

Originally posted by Axo1ot1:
Install your OS on an external FW 800 drive and boot off that, then the two drives in the mac are free for whatever you want.

BTW SATA is fast as all hell. Might not be such an issue if you get a large capacity, high-RPM HD. Either way, just because apple doesn't oficially support firewire drives, doesn't mean you cant use them. I've done almost everything I've ever edited in FCP on external firewire drives. Just get the high end ones and they're plenty fast.

That's my thought, for the OS and apps FW800 is plenty fast.

awcopus · Jun 25, 2003, 12:26 PM

Oreo,

Your idea is absolutely worth testing. My gut response is that Panther will run faster on an internal SATA drive, but more importantly, especially for video editing, I'm wondering about stability issues.

Also, there may be sleep issues if you're running the OS off an external drive....honestly, it's an idea worth testing, but it's a little, well, Frankenstenian. I appreciate the suggestion though. Will try it out eventually.

Right now I am exploring external SATA options, which appear to exist on the PC side and should emerge (with the help of companies like Adaptec and Sonnet) in our world.

It's SO early in the game. There are no PCI-X cards for the Mac yet, let alone ones that enable RAID controlling or external SATA setups. It's just way too early to even be doing this research, I've learned.

The machines will come out, then Panther will come out, then FCP4 will be patched and "enhanced" a couple of times, then there will be user reports, then there will be PCI-X products to review and compare....then, I will polish my credit card and bust an informed move. Hopefully, all of this will happen before the end of the year.

I'm prepared to wait for a stable video-editing solution to emerge.

thunderous_funker · Jun 25, 2003, 01:07 PM

I think you should be more creative with logical drives and partitions.

You can effectively protect your system files, personal files, boot volume and keep it seperate from your "scratch drives" with some simple partitioning.

No need to keep thinking withing the limitations of physical drives. Just think of space. You've got 500 GB you can divide up as many times as you want. Dedicating an entire 160 GB to nothing but system files and apps is pretty westefull.

Give yourself a nice 30 GB system partition so the only thing you need to worry about is HD failure. Which, as you say, is rare and protected against already.

awcopus · Jun 25, 2003, 01:32 PM

ThunderFunker, partitions do nothing for me. Honestly, I'd rather not add that kind of overhead to a hard drive's job. I like keeping it simple. This physical drive overe here is just for clips. Period. This other one has my apps, personal crap, and OS. Period.

You don't effectively protect your OS volume by partitioning it from video assets on the same drive. The drive doesn't distinguish between one partition vs. another when it crashes, so why should I? It's not a professional option.

Actually, I tend to only fill drives up approximately 50%-60%, about 80GB to 100GB of a 160 GB drive. Plenty of space in there for my apps and games and music files and other stuff. Wouldn't be wasted.

***

In other news, check this out from Wired Magazine interview with Ives:

"It became an exercise to reduce and reduce, but it makes it easier to build and easier for people to work with."

The internal bays for accommodating extra hard drives are good examples of that philosophy in action. A set of plastic mounting fixtures sit next to the drive bays, ready to be used if and when the owner wants to add an extra drive.

Likewise, the ribbon connectors await, neatly tucked away above and below the drive bays. Ive said they can be simply pulled out and plugged into the new drive. It's very neat, ordered and simple.

"It seems so simple to (add an extra drive) because we care a lot about making it easy to get to, and upgrade, and to do that in a good way," he said. "But none of that effort is apparent."

http://www.wired.com/news/mac/0,2125,59381-2,00.html

DeathMan · Jun 25, 2003, 01:46 PM

No disrespect, but it seems like you have more of an issue with the principal of having only 2 internal drives. I think that there are plent of solutions for you.

HD 1) Partion 20 or 30 gigs for system/apps
Partion 2 or 3 gigs for system swap
Partion off a few gigs for the rest of your stuff (documents, etc)
That leaves you with 200 GB for the rest for DV files that are actually in production. This is where you would keep your rendered files.

HD 2) Use this as a the capture scratch disk

Firewire Disk (250 gig optional) $350
Nightly back-up of your render disk/system.

Anything you're working on (Like the past project you were talking about) Should go offline anyway. there is absolutely no need to archive stuff on your harddrive when you should have your originals all filed and labeled anyway.

So for about $350 you could have redundancy on all the files that matter (the capture disk could die, and all you lose is the raw capture files anyway.

I don't think this is a bad solution. I haven't personally had any trouble capturing to a firewire drive, but if you think that would be a a problem, this should work just fine for you.

OreoCookie · Jun 26, 2003, 05:00 AM

Originally posted by awcopus:
Oreo,

Your idea is absolutely worth testing. My gut response is that Panther will run faster on an internal SATA drive, but more importantly, especially for video editing, I'm wondering about stability issues.

Also, there may be sleep issues if you're running the OS off an external drive....honestly, it's an idea worth testing, but it's a little, well, Frankenstenian. I appreciate the suggestion though. Will try it out eventually.

Right now I am exploring external SATA options, which appear to exist on the PC side and should emerge (with the help of companies like Adaptec and Sonnet) in our world.

It's SO early in the game. There are no PCI-X cards for the Mac yet, let alone ones that enable RAID controlling or external SATA setups. It's just way too early to even be doing this research, I've learned.

The machines will come out, then Panther will come out, then FCP4 will be patched and "enhanced" a couple of times, then there will be user reports, then there will be PCI-X products to review and compare....then, I will polish my credit card and bust an informed move. Hopefully, all of this will happen before the end of the year.

I'm prepared to wait for a stable video-editing solution to emerge.

Well, I'd also consider the Gigabit Ethernet option -- you mentioned that you already have a Quicksilver or so with 2x200 gig HD. That should be plenty for some projects. I would use the gigabit server for stuff that you don't need right away and keep only the current projects locally on your hd.

Deathman's suggestions should be worth a shot. Partitioning your hd really keeps things safe from each other, there is no esoteric reason to think that one partition affects another.

The only reason I can think of not to do it is that apps, OS and some data share the same hd throughput. But nowadays hds are really fast, so this doesn't have to be an issue at all.

I have used FCPro3 and I must say that everything works fine even on my iPod. Ok, I haven't done anything professional, but my guess is that you should simply try it out.

I would suggest a scheme similar to Deathman's proposed one:

hd 1
partition 1: OS X, apps, personal data, music
size: depends on the amound of your personal data and music library (mine is about 14 gigs plus 3 gigs of data). I'd use about 40 gigs.

partition 2: dv material, use the rest of the space (250 - 40 gigs).

hd 2
dv scratch disk

Quicksilver
use it as a backup server, put stuff that you don't need rightaway on it.

If you are really into experiments, how about a RAID0 which means that you use both hds together, the capacity adds up, the performance is significantly higher than that of one drive (downside: if one drive gets screwed, your data is lost -- that risk would be acceptable for scratch disks).

My message: try it. Even the solutions that you now think are not what you want. Maybe you'll be surprised ...

FauxCaster · Jun 26, 2003, 06:17 AM

I'm curious if a hd could be put in the optical drive bay. I'm not sure what bus is there for the optical dirve, but could a second ATA/SCSI/SATA card be installed and cabled to the hd in the optical spot? Since no optical drive can saturate firewire, having an external optical drive externally would seem a solution.

OreoCookie · Jun 26, 2003, 06:38 AM

Originally posted by FauxCaster:
I'm curious if a hd could be put in the optical drive bay. I'm not sure what bus is there for the optical dirve, but could a second ATA/SCSI/SATA card be installed and cabled to the hd in the optical spot? Since no optical drive can saturate firewire, having an external optical drive externally would seem a solution.

Technically, maybe. But I wouldn't advise anyone to do so.

CIA · Jun 26, 2003, 07:38 AM

Seems to me he's more concerned with actual physical wear and tear on the drives. Partitioning does nothing to prevent that.

Second of all. I can understand your dilemma, but no sense getting angry. Just write Apple, I'm sure they will change the case just for you.

Use the 2 internals and get a fast FW800 external for backups. The drives will eventually die, but by then you will have LONG since sold the computer to buy a new G6. I have a 20meg SCSI hard drive from 1989 that still runs fine. I wouldn't worry to much.

OreoCookie · Jun 26, 2003, 11:22 AM

Originally posted by CIA:
Seems to me he's more concerned with actual physical wear and tear on the drives. Partitioning does nothing to prevent that.

Second of all. I can understand your dilemma, but no sense getting angry. Just write Apple, I'm sure they will change the case just for you.

Use the 2 internals and get a fast FW800 external for backups. The drives will eventually die, but by then you will have LONG since sold the computer to buy a new G6. I have a 20meg SCSI hard drive from 1989 that still runs fine. I wouldn't worry to much.

If he'd be really worried about `wear and tear', I'd suggest a RAID!

Putting your OS and apps onto another drive won't reduce wear and tear, that is esoterics.

macdevil · Jun 26, 2003, 02:18 PM

MacRumors has a link to a Danish source of possible solutions in the works: http://www.macnyt.dk/default.tpl?news=20030625203430

Probably wishful thinking that it will be available within a year. More likely a new case/motherboard design to be available within a year IMHO.

DaedalusDX · Jun 26, 2003, 03:01 PM

Originally posted by awcopus:

Firewire 800 external drives are not cost-effective. I would want a company like Granite Digital to offer FireWire 800 enclosures that I could pack with my own drives.

Many companies offer external Firewire 800 enclosures ( 0GB drives, in other words.)

They all use Oxford's new 922 chipset that offers FW800, FW400, and USB 2.0 connectivity..

FW800 products have been out for a number of months now, and are pricey, but not prohibitively so ($180 average for an empty case )

Wiebetech, which is well known for their firewire products, offers one www.wiebetech.com

You can also go to www.firewiredepot.com. They also offer empty firewire cases.

According to testing done by Barefeats, Firewire 800 hardware based on this 922 chipset and with ATA/133 hard drives (best performance from the Hitachi/IBM 180GXP), firewire performance rivals internal ATA in most areas.

Check this out yourself. Firewire 800 is more of a viable solution than you'd think, but I agree with you that the new G5s are less optimal for digital video pros.

CIA · Jun 26, 2003, 03:05 PM

It seems like they could just add about 2-3 inches in height, but keep the same form factor. Then you could stick more drives in and even a second optical drive.
The flipside to this may be the xStation, it very well may be comming, and very well may solve your issues....At a Pro Price....

Also there may be some heat issues we are unaware of. I'm sure apple spent a lot of money to design a cool case....

Also, firewire800 products are gonna drop in price quickly as the adoption rate picks up...

awcopus · Jun 26, 2003, 03:16 PM

Originally posted by OreoCookie:
If he'd be really worried about `wear and tear', I'd suggest a RAID!

Putting your OS and apps onto another drive won't reduce wear and tear, that is esoterics.

Of course it reduces the wear and tear on a drive not to use it as a scratch disk. Scratch disks are the ones chugging along whenever I access clips or modify them.

The OS disc isn't subjected to any of this wear and tear because I don't partition it and use part of it for editing. I leave it only for the OS and my apps and "static" documents. So, no, this isn't esoterics or semantics or dynamics or anything like that.

C'mon Oreo Cookie. Geesh. All you people suggesting RAIDs in such a cavalier fashion seem to have no idea what the hell you are talking about.

awcopus · Jun 26, 2003, 03:23 PM

Originally posted by DaedalusDX:

Wiebetech, which is well known for their firewire products, offers one www.wiebetech.com

You can also go to www.firewiredepot.com. They also offer empty firewire cases.

According to testing done by Barefeats, Firewire 800 hardware based on this 922 chipset and with ATA/133 hard drives (best performance from the Hitachi/IBM 180GXP), firewire performance rivals internal ATA in most areas.

Check this out yourself. Firewire 800 is more of a viable solution than you'd think, but I agree with you that the new G5s are less optimal for digital video pros.

Deadalus, yeah, I'm starting to look into these places and their solutions. Firewire 800 looks like it can finally deliver the consistent throughput needed to make video capture, editing, and complex compositing really work. So my antenna are perked for FW800 products and some confirmation on Apple's part about FW800 being fully compatible with FCP.

Thanks much for the thoughtful input. I'm also keeping my eyes on Granite Digital for a possible serail ATA external enclosure solution, and for FW800 products.

I really do wonder why Apple didn't emphasize FW800 as a fully supported option in the User Manual for FCP4. I mean, they literally don't even address it at all. They mention SCSI as fully supported, as well as internal EIDE drives on an ATA bus as fully supported, but with Firewire they just say that for capture of the DV codec it should be fine (yay) but that there may be performance issues once one begins compositing multiple tracks (doh). More than anyone else, Apple is in a position to promote FW 800 with considerable authority, but Apple doesn't do this. The silence is deafening.

awcopus · Jun 26, 2003, 03:29 PM

Originally posted by CIA:
It seems like they could just add about 2-3 inches in height, but keep the same form factor. Then you could stick more drives in and even a second optical drive.
The flipside to this may be the xStation, it very well may be comming, and very well may solve your issues....At a Pro Price....

CIA, I just don't think so. I don't see Apple parading Mathemtica, Luxologicologicky (sp?), Photoshop, and Emagic software performing pro tasks....and then releasing a product that's REALLY professional. Just doesn't ring true.

I feel confident assuming that the G5 as it is will be Apple's high end workstation for the foreseeable future. There may be a revised XServe that's pretty sexy, and I'll be interested to see what that looks like. I honestly don't see how Apple can maintain a 1U enclosure given the cooling requirements of the G5 (let alone dual G5s), to say nothing of its sheer size. Maybe the new fab processes will make a 1U possible, but that's far away from where we are now (at least a year), and I doubt I'm going to wait a full year to upgrade. Probably more like 7 months.

zigzag · Jun 26, 2003, 03:47 PM

Originally posted by awcopus:
Also, there may be sleep issues if you're running the OS off an external drive....

FWIW, awcopus, I just read a thread about this on macintouch.com yesterday. Someone pointed out that Cocktail (free utility) has a feature by which you can specify drive sleep modes, including "never."

bamburg dunes · Jun 26, 2003, 03:54 PM

Originally posted by awcopus:
Of course it reduces the wear and tear on a drive not to use it as a scratch disk. Scratch disks are the ones chugging along whenever I access clips or modify them.

The OS disc isn't subjected to any of this wear and tear because I don't partition it and use part of it for editing. I leave it only for the OS and my apps and "static" documents. So, no, this isn't esoterics or semantics or dynamics or anything like that.

C'mon Oreo Cookie. Geesh. All you people suggesting RAIDs in such a cavalier fashion seem to have no idea what the hell you are talking about.

Jumping in here, but I got to agree with awcopus. Partitioning is not the answer, the capture drives go through more wear and tear than the system disk.

At our studio we deal with film, digital film hdtv, uncompressed video, etc, and our capture drives need to be defragegd every night, we fill them up every day and are in non-stop use. Luckily we use mostly SGI's which have plenty of room inside the boxes for drives. Apple's G5's are a pain in regards to internal drive expansion options, an awckward step backwards IMO.

Having to go buy a scsi controller, then a raid system is just arcane in today's world for film/uncompressed editing, why not give us the scsi option in highend machines adn plenty of room to house a number of disks?

OreoCookie · Jun 26, 2003, 04:02 PM

Originally posted by awcopus:
Of course it reduces the wear and tear on a drive not to use it as a scratch disk. Scratch disks are the ones chugging along whenever I access clips or modify them.

The OS disc isn't subjected to any of this wear and tear because I don't partition it and use part of it for editing. I leave it only for the OS and my apps and "static" documents. So, no, this isn't esoterics or semantics or dynamics or anything like that.

C'mon Oreo Cookie. Geesh. All you people suggesting RAIDs in such a cavalier fashion seem to have no idea what the hell you are talking about.

I am sorry, but this is nonsense. Your harddisk is not going to die any faster when you have more random reads/writes.

If your harddrive breaks, it's almost certainly not because you have `used it too much'. Me suggesting a RAID was just in reply to someone else. If security is really a concern, use RAID1. Would it be useful for you (I mean, as scratch disks)? No. Absolutely not.

If you are worried about wear and tear, go call a harddisk company -- say Seagate or whatever. Ask them about that. Wear and tear.

OreoCookie · Jun 26, 2003, 04:05 PM

Originally posted by awcopus:
CIA, I just don't think so. I don't see Apple parading Mathemtica, Luxologicologicky (sp?), Photoshop, and Emagic software performing pro tasks....and then releasing a product that's REALLY professional. Just doesn't ring true.

I feel confident assuming that the G5 as it is will be Apple's high end workstation for the foreseeable future. There may be a revised XServe that's pretty sexy, and I'll be interested to see what that looks like. I honestly don't see how Apple can maintain a 1U enclosure given the cooling requirements of the G5 (let alone dual G5s), to say nothing of its sheer size. Maybe the new fab processes will make a 1U possible, but that's far away from where we are now (at least a year), and I doubt I'm going to wait a full year to upgrade. Probably more like 7 months.

Apple just thought that 500 gigs (and growing) are enough for -- say -- 95 % of the users.

awcopus · Jun 26, 2003, 05:10 PM

I'm not some loony bird in left field when it comes to not wanting to use my boot disk as a scrach disc. Every video editing guru on every site dedicated to discussing professional video editing says the same thing: don't use your boot disk as a scratch disk. The risk of bringing that disk down goes up when you use it for video editing and the price you pay is too high when it's your boot disk.

Oreo Cookie, I don't know. You expect me to believe that the MTBF of a drive is a fixed constant? That accessing files once a week versus once a day versus several times per second consistently for hours on end day after day has nothing to do with making that drive more or less prone to failure. You know something I don't about HDs, then.

And, BTW, nobody's going to put 500 GBs of data on two 250GB drives. The drives will format to something like 220GB, and smart folks won't fill them up all the way. On long DV projects, you'd be surprised by how quickly you fill drive space up.

Apple spoiled me with the Quicksilver's enclosure and its mammoth HD capacity. Now I'm suddenly part of the 5% of professionals who miss all that HD expandability?

Don't think so, Oreo Cookie.

I was at B&H Photo today buying tapes and struck up a conversation with a guy in the audio department there who has a Quicksilver loaded with THREE scratch disks. He's concerned about Apple's move to one extra drive bay. As was a random guy I met in the video area who I overheard discussing FCP4 features. These guys are going to wait patiently to see what kinds of solutions emerge to address Apple's curious move here. I'm with them.

I'm done beating this HD issue to death. I'm starting to annoy myself!

I will start a new thread when my research turns up a robust solution, either before or after I upgrade to a dual G5. Good luck to us all! Pax vobiscum.

DaedalusDX · Jun 26, 2003, 07:05 PM

Originally posted by awcopus:

Apple spoiled me with the Quicksilver's enclosure and its mammoth HD capacity. Now I'm suddenly part of the 5% of professionals who miss all that HD expandability? Don't think so, Oreo Cookie.

I think that the whole hard drive issue is significant given the targeted audience of this machine.

My father has a Dual 1.25 MDD for , and we've stuffed its built in ATA controllers with hard drives and are gonna put in another ATA/133 controller to take advantage of those other drive mounts... it all represents one huge video project that he's got media in fly.

Apple has been pushing the Mac for video for a long time, and they've done an excellent job of pitching it to the video prosumers of the world. This is a step back. We'll see what happens.

mamamia · Jun 26, 2003, 07:58 PM

While still in the realm of rumor and speculation, this little blurb on macrumors.com suggests that apple may have plans to address this problem on their own:

"In wake of early criticisms regarding one optical drive bay as well as limited (3 PCI) expansion on the new PowerMac G5's, MacNyt.dk (Danish) publishes two interesting reports based on Apple reseller documents:

"The first MacNyt.dk report claims that Apple is currently in cooperation with a "PCI Chassis Developer" on a product to provide the new PowerMac's additional expansion beyond the three internal PCI slots on the PowerMac G5.

"A second MacNyt.dk report on the same document reports on Apple's plan to introduce an Apple-designed external optical devices which can be shared amongst multiple Macs."

Who knows, maybe the expansion chassis will also be able to accept additional harddrives.

johhhn · Jun 26, 2003, 08:28 PM

If you use your Mac to make $$$$, and you are this serious about 'drive failure', then invest in some Firewire 800 cases. And when I say 'cases', I *ASSUME* you backup your video work, right?? So this would require multiple cases.

Apple came out with the machine of the Future, and all you can do is gripe about internal expansion? Get some external cases and stop whining.

There are NO issues with video editing on the G5.

nvaughan3 · Jun 26, 2003, 09:29 PM

nm

JB72 · Jun 27, 2003, 12:28 AM

Originally posted by mamamia:

"In wake of early criticisms regarding one optical drive bay as well as limited (3 PCI) expansion on the new PowerMac G5's, MacNyt.dk (Danish) publishes two interesting reports based on Apple reseller documents:

"The first MacNyt.dk report claims that Apple is currently in cooperation with a "PCI Chassis Developer" on a product to provide the new PowerMac's additional expansion beyond the three internal PCI slots on the PowerMac G5.

"A second MacNyt.dk report on the same document reports on Apple's plan to introduce an Apple-designed external optical devices which can be shared amongst multiple Macs."

Who knows, maybe the expansion chassis will also be able to accept additional harddrives.

A pro expansion enclosure with a couple additional PCI slots and space for a few drives would be insanely great. It would be a perfect fit for that 133Mhz PCI-X slot.

Also, it alsmost looks like a one or two drive add-on bay could fit in the front portion of the PCI section.

clarkgoble · Jun 27, 2003, 02:02 AM

I'd thought of adding the 2" to the case as well. But in his interview Ives seems to indicate that it was difficult getting the case to its current size as is.

"By removing material here and here," Ive said, indicating the cut-out section, "it gives you a substantial part of the enclosure. To get aluminum at this size and to our cosmetic standards was a huge, huge challenge."

http://www.wired.com/news/mac/0,2125,59381,00.html

So this may be as big as it gets.

The stuff about an external case sounds good. I've often wondered why most external firewire cases are single drive. It always seemed like dual or triple drives would be better. But you rarely see them.

Crusoe · Jun 27, 2003, 06:35 AM

I'm thinking the best bet is to use your old system, optimize it for file sharing and connect via GB Ethernet.

Another thought:
Can't you bind two Gigabit Ethernet connections and get 2GB/s?
So keep you old system, buy 2 GB E-Net Cards($100 each for each system), bind the built in GB with the PCI card on each system and ...voila'.

Binding goes way back, we use to do it on dial up connections, 2 modems + 2 lines + 1 ISP = 112 kb/s modem connection.

dfiler · Jun 27, 2003, 08:27 AM

I agree that a limit of two internal hard drives seems a bit low. Certainly there are work arounds that we are all aware of. Yet, If the case was a mere 1 inch taller, we would have nothing to complain about.

With all that said, here's something to consider. The G5 architecture has dedicated bandwidth to outboard serial connections like USB2 and Firewire. Perhaps, capturing to Firewire drives will be a non-issue. Its entirely possible that loosing the G4's shared bus will make firewire viable for video scratch space... Anyone see tests on this yet?

Hydra · Jun 27, 2003, 08:00 PM

I don't know if this has been mentioned before but part of the Serial ATA standard embraces hot-swapping. Does anyone know if Apple is embracing this part of the standard? If you look at page 20 of the G5 PDF on Apple's G5 web-page the drives are attached to rails and snapped in place w/o any kind of cable-play whatsoever ( there is a photo on that page as well - looks very nicely done).

If the G5 does allow for Serial ATA hot-swapping I would just leave the door off the side ( the clear plastic cover doesn't appear to extend up to the drive section of the case) and swap away. Sound like it could be a very sweet way to keep massive amounts of storage at your fingertips.

-Jerry C

awcopus · Jun 28, 2003, 02:29 AM

Originally posted by dfiler:
The G5 architecture has dedicated bandwidth to outboard serial connections like USB2 and Firewire. Perhaps, capturing to Firewire drives will be a non-issue. Its entirely possible that loosing the G4's shared bus will make firewire viable for video scratch space... Anyone see tests on this yet?

Sure would be great to hear Apple address Firewire 800 affirmatively, proactively, excitedly as a solution for no compromises external scratch disc performance (at least) matching the speed of ATA/133. Everything about the new system architecture gives one reason to hope for and even expect great things. Benchmarks in the real world with released products will tell us all we need to know.

In early... September?

Video shoot in DC this week. Hope it's less humid there than in NYC.

nvaughan3 · Jun 28, 2003, 02:50 AM

I dont understand why you'd embrace external hard drives. Apple seems to quite often think that getting rid of internal devices for no apparent reason is good. Floppies, aiport, hard drives, optical drives...I dont understand the reasoning.