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Kris.K · Sep 6, 2005, 08:48 AM

Hi there!

I am really new to Mac use so forgive me if my Q´s are silly.

I have just bought a new Power Mac, G5, dual 2.0 ghz! This machine rules friggin big time and I am so happy I own this awesome piece of technology! I feel so empowered I am practically ready to conquer the world. Soon.... Sooooon....

I work for a local tv station and I am going to use my mac for editing. I am already using Final Cut Pro, and again, this is just a fantastic program.

The mac came with 1 GB ram and I have already ordered another 1 GB from a good dealer (2 X 512´s). This should help a lot I am told.

Also the mac came with a 160 GB hard drive, but I need a lot more than this. As much as possible I guess. But what kind of hard drive should I buy? The dealer I already contacted did not seem to know much about this?

I really appreciate any good tips regarding hard drives. Also, if anyone has good tips in general for people who mainly use Final Cut Pro, that would be totally great as well! I mean, best ways to store material and general maintenance of our beloved macs

Thanks!

K

SVass · Sep 6, 2005, 09:46 AM

An external firewire drive can be used as a clone of the internal drive and be used for booting in case of drive failure. This is important for machines used for real work. Two large external drives would be even safer. sam

OreoCookie · Sep 6, 2005, 10:03 AM

How much storage do you need? What's your budget?
The largest hds on the market are 500 gig in size (400 are more economic, though). If you need more than 2x400 gigabyte, the best bet would be an external SATA case for two or more drives).

harrisjamieh · Sep 6, 2005, 10:38 AM

I use a single 1.8 G5 PM for video editing (which is going back, but thats a different matter..), and I use a Lacie Bigger Disk 1TB. Its firewire 800, so blazingly fast, and not huge for the capacity. Sure its on the expensive side, but if your in the pro business, you need it.

OreoCookie · Sep 6, 2005, 10:42 AM

Please keep in mind that RAID0 and JBOD decreases the security. This means, the LaCie Bigger Disk should either be used as two separate volumes or a big scratch disk.

angelmb · Sep 6, 2005, 11:31 AM

Originally Posted by Kris.K

But what kind of hard drive should I buy?

Basically you want SATA (Serial ATA) hard drives, G5 Power Macs are the first computers from Apple to take advantage from Serial ATA drives instead the 'old' ATA drives. Take a look here to get an idea about how much GBs money can give you.

Kris.K · Sep 6, 2005, 02:48 PM

Hi again!

Thank you all for the good feedback! I will look into all of this info.

OreoCookie wrote:
"How much storage do you need? What's your budget?"

Now I am building my little "home studio" of sorts. All the cash comes from my own pocket, so I need to get the most bang for my buck. As for how much I need? I really don´t know that yet I guess, but I am hoping to finish a 30 minute info-program in about a month or two. That means the mac will have to deal with quite a bit of video. Hours of digital video, in other words. Sorry for the poor estimate. Like I mentioned, I am really new with Mac. Previously, I have only edited on PC´s and the occasional mac, and unfortunately that alone does not give you much understanding of what goes on the inside of the system:-)

Have fun!

K

action · Sep 6, 2005, 03:09 PM

minimum, 4gb of ram. i would upgrade to the fastest video card x800 at the moment. i would purchase 250gb sata drives and a sata card to hook up to a 4 box sata enclosure.

from my experience, i would not raid either 0 or 1 and just use it as a bunch of discs and clone your data onto two separate discs and have a regular backup schedule using dela vu in from the preference pane.

obviously the above setup costs some money but it's something you can in a modular fashion as your needs dictate.

chung lee

OreoCookie · Sep 6, 2005, 04:13 PM

Originally Posted by Kris.K

Hi again!

Thank you all for the good feedback! I will look into all of this info.

OreoCookie wrote:
"How much storage do you need? What's your budget?"

Now I am building my little "home studio" of sorts. All the cash comes from my own pocket, so I need to get the most bang for my buck. As for how much I need? I really don´t know that yet I guess, but I am hoping to finish a 30 minute info-program in about a month or two. That means the mac will have to deal with quite a bit of video. Hours of digital video, in other words. Sorry for the poor estimate. Like I mentioned, I am really new with Mac. Previously, I have only edited on PC´s and the occasional mac, and unfortunately that alone does not give you much understanding of what goes on the inside of the system:-)

Have fun!

K

DV streams are the same on the PC and the Mac. If you're doing it `for free', I would say, you could start by putting a 250-400 GB drive in your Mac, although every SATA (serial ATA) drive works. It's just standard pc hardware and virtually takes seconds to put in. Depending on your projects, your budget, I would say 2 GB of RAM are plenty. You could start with 2 and monitor the RAM usage during your projects. So if you find out in a month or two that you need more, buy more, as it gets cheaper with time.

I think advices like 4+ GB of RAM, external 4-bay SATA enclosure, etc. are overkill for what you do. And if you find out, you need/want that kind of equipment, you can still purchase it later on. Just to give you an idea: my last DV project (20 minute movie, 2 hours of material, 1 backup copy, multiple copies of encoded material) took something like 30 GB. So if you double the amount to account for the plus in length and material, you need around 60 GB per project that you work on. You can obviously kill all the superfluous material after finishing your project.

So roughly, a 300 GB drive would allow for 5 concurrent projects. Especially in your situation (you pay for your own equipment), I don't think it makes sense to max out the machine before actually knowing what the workload will be.

osxisfun · Sep 6, 2005, 04:54 PM

Kris, if you go to newegg.com you can pick up a seagate (5 yr warrenty!) 250 gig SATA (for the g5) for $112 pre tax and ship.

Kris.K · Sep 7, 2005, 10:36 AM

Yo!

Thanks guys for all the help, I really need it.

I will boost my ram up to 2 Gb.

For hard drive I am considering:

Seagate Barracuda 7200.8 250GB SATA 8MB 7200RPM NCQ (for the internal boost)

and:

Maxtor OneTouch II USB2.0/Firewire 300GB 16MB 7200RPM (as an external back-up or clone)

Any comments?

PS: Thanks for offering good deals, but I am Norwegian and prefer to shop from a seller here in my country. It will be less hassle if I need to return stuff I think. To my knowledge www.komplett.no offer the best online deals for Norwegians.

Take care,

K.K

osxisfun · Sep 7, 2005, 10:39 AM

Yah. I would buy a external FW /USB2 case and add the ide version of the seagate drive.You should save some cash there