What kind of scratch disk should I get for iMac G5?

G

graziemile

Member
Hi All,

I'd greatly appreciate it if you could please recommend a scratch disk for my iMac G5 with FC Express? What brand? What model? etc...
Thank you very-very much.
-graziemile
 
There are a few ways you can go about this.

Buy ready-made type external firewire/usb hard drives. Companies like LaCie, Fantom, Smartdisk, EzQuest, Maxtor make these kind of drives usually starting at about $100 for a 80gig firewire only drive.

The other way is to build your own external drive. Usually this method is the most cost-effective way and (IMHO) the best way as you get to choose what components are put into the external case of your choice. You don't void any sort of warranty if you want to upgrade/replace just the hard drive if ever the hard drive fails (and hard drives will fail, it is just a matter of time and how you treat them). I don't know if you are able to replace the internal drive of your iMac but you could also do this but would suggest against doing any serious editing off of just the internal drive. This will tax your OS and Final Cut Express resulting in slow system/program performance. It is advised to always capture and edit from using an external or if you have room, which isn't your case, an internal hard drive.

Building your own external firewire/usb drive isn't difficult at all. You can purchase a case that has Firewire 400 or 800, Firewire 400 & 800, Firewire 400 & USB 2.0, or a combination of all 3, at you a nearby Fry's or from your favorite online vendor. Or my favorite:

http://eshop.macsales.com/Catalog_Page.cfm?Parent=1087&Title=&Template=1

I also end up buying the harddrive from the same vendor. And for that part I use Seagate Barracuda's or an IBM or Toshiba (these are the leaders):

http://eshop.macsales.com/shop/hard-drives/3.5-IDE-ATA/

Make sure the drive you get is spinning at 7200rpm for the best performance. You can get 10,000rpm drives but that comes usually in the SCSI or LVD or SATA type drives which you can't use with an external firewire enclosue (yet). 7200rpm should be plenty of speed.

Putting all the pieces is fairly simple, as the case should come with instructions. It's a matter of connecting setting the jumper on the drive to MASTER, connecting the IDE cable, screwing the drive into place, and then snapping or screwing the case closed.

Hope that helps.
 
Hi ian lucero,

Thanks for the info. I think building my own is a bit too much for me. If you were to recommend a ready-to-go brand name hard drive, which will it be for HD editing on FX express?
thanks.
-graziemile
 
Lacie seems to be the best to me, and i have heard many good things about them. Also, look into Fantom, Smartdisk, EzQuest, Maxtorm they are good too.
 
SkiUtah said:
Lacie seems to be the best to me, and i have heard many good things about them. Also, look into Fantom, Smartdisk, EzQuest, Maxtorm they are good too.
Click to expand...

graziemile - LaCie seems to be the popular choice for external drives. They are built really well. But don't take my word for it. Do a little searching around this forum for what people have to say about LaCie external drives as you will find an EQUAL amount of disatisfied and satisfied users of LaCie hard drives. A local wholesale tape stock store sells Fantom drives as a kit with hardcase for safe transport of the drive. So that seems to be a solid choice if that's what they like to sell. I'm sure whatever external system you get will work fine, just make sure that if and when you transport the drive to do so carefully. One thing to look for in purchasing an external drive is to see if the drive itself has a mechanism that loads and unloads the read/write head to help protect the disk during non-operation, when being transported. Meaning it physically moves the read/write head out of the way so it doesn't scratch or damage the platters in the case that physically holds your precious data. If you think you won't be transporting (meaning the possibility of moving your project from one Mac to another) then don't worry so much about this feature. In fact most newer drives should already have this feature.

good luck
 
I too use Lacie drives. I have 2x250GB drives in my G5 plus 2x250 external firewires and I've never had a problem. Lacie is pretty rock solid from what I've seen. I'm actually going to drop the $1300 for a 1TB big boy this week.
 
graziemile said:
All,
Thank you very, very much for your help. It seems like this LaCie drive may be a good candidate:
http://www.lacie.com/products/product.htm?pid=10489

Is www.lacie.com the best place to get the drive, or are there resellers that can possibly have better prices?
Thanks again for all your time.
-graziemile
Click to expand...

There's always http://www.macmall.com -or- the ole http://www.pricewatch.com/ -or- http://pricescan.com/

the last 2 links are places where you can search for good deals. I would never buy straight from the manufacturer unless of course that was the only place to find the product.

cheers
 
i haven't had any problems with my Lacie's yet... i'm running 3 1TB "bigger discs", and two 500gig "big discs", and never had a problem (knock on wood).
 
Whatever you do, don't go for Maxtor. I've had two fail on me in the past three weeks. I'll go with Lacie or Western from now on.

-Tim
 
Go with Seagate or Hitachi. (Yah, they're more expensive, but spend the extra 10-20% price up it'll be worth it later down the road). Never had problems with those nor know anyone who has.

Lacie.... I'm kinda of 50/50 on these... one facility where I use Lacie, works like a charm... at another facility with Lacie drives... they are my worst nightmare. I know some people (one who actually drop kicked it into a wall) who have had problems. Then there's other people I know who swear by it.

Avoid Maxtor like the plague.
 
I have LaCie drives in the following flavors: 120GB, 160GB, 200GB, and 400GB. I've had no problems with any of them.

However, I also have two LaCie external drives (20GB & 30GB) dating back to 1999 that have both bit the dust. In their defense, they worked long and hard before giving up the ghost.
 
I bought a Lacie 250G yesterday. Boy is it a lemon. system crashes, drive won't mount or unmount slow running applications. the works.

To add insult to injury, the support line is not a 800 number so it means calling long distance and being put on hold .
both times I tried calling and held for 10 minutes before hanging up in disgust.

Their waranty is only for a year where the competition has at least a two year warranty.

Im switching to EZquest.
 
Hooligan said:
I bought a Lacie 250G yesterday. Boy is it a lemon. system crashes, drive won't mount or unmount slow running applications. the works.

To add insult to injury, the support line is not a 800 number so it means calling long distance and being put on hold .
both times I tried calling and held for 10 minutes before hanging up in disgust.

Their waranty is only for a year where the competition has at least a two year warranty.

Im switching to EZquest.
Click to expand...

Another good reason for building your own drive is the longer warranties that you get for the drive mechanism itself. Seagate offers 5 YEARS, others like Western Digital or Hitachi/IBM offer 3 years with the vendor offering an additional 1 year!! But of course you have to build the drive. Which like I said before is a piece of cake.

Not to sound preachy :evil: but get the best drive you can afford because it is going to be filled with the most important content, your content OR maybe even worse content that is not yours but your clients - imagine losing that. :beer:
 
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