• Apple Final Cut Pro Legacy

  Upgrading storage drives for DV50 project

  Posted by Stephen De vere on May 20, 2005 at 1:11 pm

  Could anyone advise the best upgrade configuration of hard drives to maximise video media storage internally on my Dual G4/1.25GHz/1GB MDD, for a DVCPro50 edit please ?

  The current setup is:

  ATA133 ACARD in a PCI slot – 2x120GB WD Caviar drives, RAID 0 striped
  1x80GB system drive and 1x120GB drive on the ATA66 channel

  I have purchased 2x300GB ATA100/8MB Maxtor drives to replace the 2x120GB drives but now I wonder if I really need the Raid 0 since I don’t need to do uncompressed and the 7200rpm ATA drives can handle DV50 capture on their own.

  I was thinking of a setup similar to PaulD described for his same Mac (but don’t know the purpose it was used for) over on the OSX forum:

  2x300GB Maxtor drives on the 100ATA channel,
  2x120GB WD Caviar drives on the 66ATA channel,
  1x80GB system drive under the Superdrive, connected to the ACARD 133ATA PCI card.

  but would this be suitable for a DV50 online edit in FCP4.5 ? I’ll have 350-400GB of footage (mostly DV50 and a little DV25) to put online, there will be very little effects work (but a lot of colour correction) and I plan to play out the finished edit to a DigiBeta deck via my Decklink Pro.

  Stephen De vere replied 20 years, 11 months ago 2 Members · 4 Replies
• 4 Replies

• 

  George Loch

  May 20, 2005 at 6:10 pm

  If it were me I would be saying “so long” to ATA drives and “Hello!” to SATA. It just doesn’t make sense to invest in ATA as the SATA drives are about the same price and will offer a lot more performance. If you get a SATA PCI card for the G4 and an external enclosure you will be set – even for HD.

  gl
• 

  Stephen De vere

  May 21, 2005 at 4:57 pm

  Thanks, that sounds like good advice – I’d missed the SATA option.
  Can’t yet find a supplier in UK of a box to house more than one SATA drive but they must be around.
  Any reason I couldn’t mount the new SATA drives inside the Mac ?
• 

  George Loch

  May 21, 2005 at 5:02 pm

  You can mount up to 4 HDs (I think)in the G4 as the sata drives are the same form factor as the ide/ata drives. So you could easily stick a pair inside.

  Of course, advantage of the external is the hotswap but that may not be a crucial advantage for you.

  gl
• 

  Stephen De vere

  May 22, 2005 at 10:03 am

  I’ll go with the internal as I don’t see a need for hot swop at the moment.
  Thanks so much for the help – the Cow is an amazing resource – hardly ever need to post a question !
  Be nice if there was a DV50 forum though.

Reply to this Discussion! Login or Sign Up