Pacific Pro Audio: Oxford 911 FireWire Hard Drive

Client storage is increasingly an issue as more and more recording projects and studios move into the digital domain. Most of the smaller budget studios I've worked with seem to send their clients to Fry's Electronics for an 80G internal IDE drive to record onto. In the spirit of Larry's end rant on archiving in Issue #30, I think this is a half-assed way of doing things. I've seen at least one of these drives go into oblivion, and the thought of my client's music being moved in and out of a studio computer with the circuitry exposed doesn't strike me as the best way to do things. On the other hand, these PPA drives have a robust external case and could hold most artist's entire life's work. Yeah, you can buy something similar at Fry's but why support "The Man" over a small independent dealer that's researched just about every available drive and chipset to find the one that works best for audio. It says "Pacific Pro Audio" on the drive which looks more "pro" to clients than sending them to Fry's; and if you have a problem or even just some questions about digital audio, you can call Pacific Pro and get a knowledgeable human on the other end of the line who will help you out. Try calling Fry's to ask about your Pro Tools sessions. PPA claims these drives can handle a higher track count than most other drives. In practice, they handled anything I threw at at them (usually 24-40 tracks at 48k) without any problems. As a test, we even played back 32 tracks at 96k from a Digi 002, and it worked fine. Keep in mind this last test has not only the drive, but also the 002 on the Firewire bus. Granted, you might spend a little more on this drive, but not much; and in my opinion, my client's music is worth it. ($230-$299, pacificproaudio.com)