"FireWire hard drives optimized for digital audio"

[Lover of quiet computers]

"EZQuest...introduced a new line of FireWire 800 hard drives that are optimized for digital audio."My question is, why is it optimized for digital audio, and not, say, digital video? Is it just the low noise?

[Arena2045]

Well... Hopefully these quotes will help.

EZQuest has introduced a new line of  FireWire 800 hard drives that are optimized for digital audio.  EZQuest Pro Audio drives  are pre-formatted for Macintosh systems.  With a data transfer rate of 800MB/sec, a  rotational speed of 7200 RPM and a larger 8MB buffer, these drives are ideal for video,  audio, backups and transferring large amounts of data.  The drives come in 120GB,  200GB and 250GB versions.“Our FireWire 800 hard drives are the only ones that have been qualified by Digidesign  on their Pro Tools HD system.  This is one reason the audio community has embraced  our drives,†said Ebrahim Zmehrir, EZQuest president.  “Because our drives have been  so well accepted by this group, we decided to develop our Pro Audio line just for them.â€

Digidesign is the leading manufacturer of computer-based digital audio production systems. We provide  the professional music, broadcast, multimedia and film industries  with tools for creation, production, collaboration and distribution  in today's digitally connected world.Digidesign is also an innovator of core technologies that have revolutionized the audio profession and advanced the art of recording. Our Pro Tools digital audio workstation has been recognized as the industry standard for digital audio production, receiving the 2001 Technical Grammy Award.

Also of interest: http://www.digidesign.com/compato/osx/hd/drives.cfmSo, from what I see, the announced drives meet the strict requirements of "DigiDesign."One of my friends uses a few of the fan-less iMac models for digital music recording... she strives to get everything as silent as possible... I could see her using an ultra quiet external hard drive.