I am trying to figure out what is the best external hard drive
solution for audio editing and recording. I have been searching for
months and there seems to be this unanswerable question. I want to go
Firewire 800 but will that handle the speed of a serial ata hard
drive? (I have found an enclosure that supports sata and has a
firewire 800 port) If not, is there a 'SATA' cardbus adapter that will
work on my powerbook G4? I need the fastest bandwidth available with
out going to scsi. What should I do/get?
The goal is to trash 80Gb drive with the constant read/writes and save
my system drive. I really do need the highest bandwidth i can get
though, but I dont know what protocol or combination of protocols
(i.e. sata to firewire 800) to invest  in.

Hi there,

Let me start with a few specs:
Cardbus runs at a maximum speed of 133Megabytes/sec.
FireWire800 runs at a maximum speed of 100Megabytes/sec.
SATA runs at a maximum speed of 150Megabytes/sec.
PATA runs at a maximum speed of 133Megabytes/sec.

Any FireWire external drive will have to go through another interface
at some point, either SATA or PATA. A cardbus to SATA adapter, if it
existed, would be limited to the Cardbus' speed. This would be further
reduced by overhead for each of the two standards, so that in reality,
a Cardbus-connected SATA drive would end up being barely faster then a
FireWire800 connected PATA drive.

Most important out of all of this, I would say, is that the vast
majority of hard drives only approach SATA speeds in very rare cases.
If you check out storagereview.com , you can see that even the fastest
non-SCSI drive, the Raptor, only manages a sustained tranfer rate of
72-55 MegaBytes/sec. The next drive down, the Maxtor MaxLine III, only
manages 65-37 MegaBytes/sec.

As such, I would recommend looking at the quality of enclosures, and
the drives themselves, rather than being too concerned about the
interfaces they are using slowing you down.

Now, all that being said, SATA-II is supposed to include support for
external applications, and Cardbus is being replaced by ExpressCard in
the near future.
SATA-II goes up to 300 MegaBytes/sec, and ExpressCard I believe is
312. Of course, even though that combo could double current interface
speeds, it would still be the drives themselves that were lagging
behind.

I'm in a similar position as yourself, not wanting to use my laptop
drive as main storage, so I hope you find a nice drive.

Passive

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Request for Answer Clarification by mrbibidy-ga on 19 Oct 2004 09:45 PDT

Ok so I understand all that. The FW800 will be the external port, now
I need to choose PATA to FW800 enclosure or SATA to FW800 enclosure?
If the FW800 (now i will be speaking theoretically because I know
these are only 'burst' speeds) can handle the max SATA-1 speed I
should probably get a SATA-FW800 enclosure like the one I found. The
only other option is this
(http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=872947&CatId=531),
but can the FW400 handle the sustained speed of the pata?

Ugh, point is I need the fastest most portable (battery powered and
bus powered preferred but not usb) solution and I just dont know what
to get, I searched for months and my head hurts now. What do I get?

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Clarification of Answer by passive-ga on 19 Oct 2004 10:18 PDT

Hi again,

Both SATA and PATA are faster then FireWire800, so there should be
little difference between them. So it doesn't matter which one you
choose. I would still choose SATA if the price is the same, but there
is no need to pay a premium for it.
The external HD you posted is an external laptop HD, and runs at 5400
RPM, so is likely to be significantly slower than some of the HDs I
mentioned in the original answer.

I will address your options, as I see them:

If you want an external HD on it's own, Lacie makes a line of
FireWire800 external HDs.
http://www.lacie.com/products/product.htm?id=10029
There are other manufacturers as well, but Lacie has a good reputation.

If you want an external enclosure, with a standard HD inside it, the
following companies (and others) make FireWire800 enclosures:
OrangeMicro: http://www.orangemicro.com/fw800usb20hd.html
StarTech: http://www.startech.com/ststore/itemdetail.cfm?ProductID=IDECASEU2FB&topbar=topbara.htm

StarTech tends to be a lower end manufacturer, so I would look elsewhere first.

Then, with the second option, you will need a standard HD to go in the
enclosure. If you visit www.storagereview.com , they provide
information on all kinds of HDs, including speed, noise, and
reliability.

I hope this is a bit more specific, and helps you decide.

Take care,

Passive

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Request for Answer Clarification by mrbibidy-ga on 21 Oct 2004 11:46 PDT

Ok I think I have a solution and I need your opinion. I have seen
these and recent just found them again. They claim 800-900 MB/min over
firewire which is their fastest rated speed (i think this is actual Mb
like data not MB like throughput but I am not sure) It is even faster
then their cardbus speed (which I dont get cause we went over the
limits of fw and I know that pcmcia is faster) Any way here are the
two drive (same company)
http://www.kanguru.com/25portable.html
http://www.kanguru.com/35portable.html

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Request for Answer Clarification by mrbibidy-ga on 21 Oct 2004 11:48 PDT

forget the 2.5 inch it runs at 4200rpm

The only choice for an external hard drive out of your two options is
the FireWire 800. SATA would probably be the better choice since it
has a higher interface speed, but since there is no cardbus SATA
adapter out yet you'd have to go with the FireWire.

List Of Interface Speeds in URL below:
http://www.bitzenbytes.com/Content-Arcanum-18-1-51.html

Sorry about the first comment, I messed up a lot of it so just ignore it.

Here is the clarification of what I meant to type:
The only SATA cardbus adapters that i have seen are only for PCs. Also
SATA is only capable of a maximum bandwidth of 150MB/sec. Firewire 800
on the other hand has a *theoretical* bandwidth of 800MB/sec. but
almost never goes past the 100MB/sec. mark. But if you still want a
SATA connection, it might be a while before they get the adapters out
for macs.
"Keep in mind that these are maximum speeds...just 'cause the pipe is
that fat, doesn't mean you're pushing that much data through it."

So yes, FireWire 800 should be able to handle the speed of a SATA hard drive.
That is based on the assumption that you have a 7200RPM 8MB-buffer
hard drive. If you need the hard drive that bad, then go with the
FireWire 800. And if you don't mind waiting a while, then just wait
for a SATA cardbus adapter to come out.

To make a long story short, I think you should go ahead and use the
FireWire 800 interface.

Hope this helps,
A sleepy, teenage, computer geek
:]

I just happened along and thought I'd give another but experienced
opinion as I use Firewire800...Definitely go with the Firewire800
solution, reason being no HD reaches their interface speeds (ie.PATA
66/100/133 or SATA 150 I or II/ and the new 300's) so what is more
important is compatibility and real time speed...I have some
benchmarks @ http://puters.ledm.us/images/Firewire800Cuda.jpg

I am pleased with my setup which includes a Firewire 800 Case and I
can pop in any HD that I want and it also is USB Hi-Speed compatible
so I can hook it to most any other Computer and transfer files plus if
you go the Firewire route then it also allows for DV Camera hookup
capabilities.

Hardware can be found @ http://www.firewiredirect.com