External Hard Drive - any recommendations?

maxfrost01 · Post by **maxfrost01** » Sat Jul 01, 2006 1:29 pm

I need to upgrade my external hard drive which I use for back-up. Working in High Definition Video is taking up a lot more space than DV!
Wondered if any forum members had any recommendations?

Would it be smart to make sure the hard drive has a firewire connection (as well as USB)? Is there any way that the right external drive would make editing in HDV quicker/easier?

skier-hughes · Post by **skier-hughes** » Sat Jul 01, 2006 2:37 pm

I always go for Firewire connected external drives, though I know of a few people who succesfully edit with USB ones.

This is all in the dv realm,

I was under the impression Hdv was not any larger than dv-avi, better quality as hdv but then compressed to mpeg2?

Or is it because you are converting the hdv to a i frame based file which takes up more space than hdv and is also extra to it, ready for editing?

maxfrost01 · Post by **maxfrost01** » Sat Jul 01, 2006 3:03 pm

Graham,

Thanks for the response.
Your techie language is leaving me way behind.............

All I can tell you is that when I capture an HDV tape onto the hard disk it is much much bigger than the file I get when capturing DV. I thought this was pretty standard for example, much of the forum dialogue around VideoStudio 10+ is about its ability to handle the larger HDV files.

Don't even know what an i-frame is.....................

Are you using your external drive purely for back-up or for editing too?

sjj1805 · Post by **sjj1805** » Sun Jul 02, 2006 1:51 am

maxfrost01
I can only speak from my own personal experience, I have heard of many forum members using external USB and Firewire drives sucessfully.

I bought a couple of external hard drive enclosures, one would connect via USB2, the other could be connected with either USB2 or firewire.

I tried various IDE hard drives in the enclosures and tried both the USB2 and also the firewire connections. For a while I did manage to get one hard drive to work OK with a USB2 connection but even that developed the fault I am about to mention.

I found that when I tried to transfer large amounts of DATA to/from the external drives the computer would suddenly lose connection with the external device. For this reason I no longer use them.

What I do use and they are extremely robust and trouble free are Hard Drive Caddies I've described them a few times previously such as in this post:
http://phpbb.ulead.com.tw/EN/viewtopic. ... 1769#41769

A few pictures here

Briefly they are normal IDE drives attached to the motherboards IDE slots in the normal way - except think of an extension cable. The hard drive fits into a carrier. The carrier slides into a rack. The rack fits into the drive bays you see at the front of your computer - like your DVD burner.

You turn the computer off, slide the carrier out of the rack, slide in another carrier containing another hard drive and turn the computer back on.

Its the same as taking the lid of the computer and exchanging one of the (internal) hard drives - just a bit more convenient as you don't have to take the lid off.

maddrummer3301 · Post by **maddrummer3301** » Sun Jul 02, 2006 3:07 am

I have a firewire / usb combination external drive. They are nice and windows easily works with both types of formats. For external I would go with firewire as a perference. Only my opinion.

If your not that skilled with computer hardware have a tech setup a removable drive system posted above. That is the fastest & reliable transfer.

I would recommend one of the new Western Digital SATA High Performance 16meg cache drives. Made for Video/Audio work.

maxfrost01 · Post by **maxfrost01** » Sun Jul 02, 2006 7:35 am

Steve/Maddrummer

Thanks for your replies but I feel like I'm sliding into a techie world that I do not understand

Take a look at my configuration and then answer me this......

I need to get a bigger back-up system. My current 50gig external drive is not big enough as I start working on more HDVs. Do I:
a) simply get a bigger drive for back-up or
b) get a particular kind of drive hooked up in a particular kind of way which will give me the back-up I need AND more speed when working on editing/rendering HDV?

I don't want to spend money on a bigger external drive to find a couple of weeks later that I could have done it better differently!

Or as someone once said "Hell is truth seen too late" (Steve, you should recognise that one).

sjj1805 · Post by **sjj1805** » Sun Jul 02, 2006 9:39 am

Max

This picture may help describe in simple terms how a hard drive caddy system works. Think of an extension lead - such as for your lawn mower to reach a bit further down the garden.

You get an empty caddy

Then place a hard drive into that

Notice that plug at the front of the above picture. Instead of the IDE Ribbon cable plugging into the hard drive, it plugs into that, the hard drive plugs into the other side of it, just like any other form of extension cable.

Plenty of articles on the internet about these things
Here's one
http://www.pcstats.com/articleview.cfm?articleID=405

Or click here for a Google search

maxfrost01 · Post by **maxfrost01** » Sun Jul 02, 2006 11:08 am

Steve,

Thanks for the info - very clear and looks like a good way to go!

skier-hughes · Post by **skier-hughes** » Sun Jul 02, 2006 1:16 pm

Joining back in.

When I'm away from base I use a laptop and externally connected (by firewire) hard drive. I use this for capture/edit and producing finished movies for viewing later that same day, so it then plays out to a projector onto a large screen.

I also use ext hard drives for back up. I'm not so picky here whether it is connected by USB (only 1.1 on my office pc) or firewire. If I know I will be capturing or even networking the ext drive between the office pc and the editing pc, then I only use firewire. This is handy as I can edit and work on a file and then access it directly on the offic pc to put it onto a web-site for example.

Steve's hard drive caddies are excellent, but for my use, working away from home and portability, use with a laptop, it just wouldn't work out.

Graham

sjj1805 · Post by **sjj1805** » Sun Jul 02, 2006 1:22 pm

Of course the best solution is to use both. No reason why you can't.
I think I was just unlucky with my external cases which may have been faulty cases or simply the hard drives I had weren't completely suitable. Those same hard drives are fine when placed in the hard drive caddy system.

As I said I had one working for a few months and my intention was to have a portable drive like Graham has mentioned. I was then going to use the portable drive to keep all my set up disks, downloads, system tweaks and the like on. I do the odd repair job for friends/family and being able to plug a portable drive in would be a big bonus.

maxfrost01 · Post by **maxfrost01** » Sun Jul 02, 2006 1:37 pm

Graham,

So if I get what you're saying..........firewire is the way to go if I want to edit? (rather than just use as a back-up facility).

Any recommendations on manufacturer for external hard drives?

I'm currently thinking about a Maxtor one-touch or maybe a Western Digital.

skier-hughes · Post by **skier-hughes** » Sun Jul 02, 2006 1:53 pm

What I'm saying is that if you want an external hdd, then ensure it has firewire.

I buy external enclosures seperately from the hdd.
I then buy a decent hdd.
The ones I buy tend to have two firewire pots adn one USB2.

Because of this I can daisy chain, handy for editing while away, as the cam plugs into the hdd, the hdd plugs into the pc, both with firewire.

The new one touch ext drives are handy for backing up etc as they come with software to do this quickly. This is of no interest to me, so I wouldn't pay extra for that facility. I just want storage space, and lots. I currently run with 1250gb, and this isn't enough when you have two or three shows of 2+ hours and 3 cams covering..... along with all the other projects that may be on the go at the same time.

maxfrost01 · Post by **maxfrost01** » Sun Jul 02, 2006 2:42 pm

Steve

That's clear - thanks.

maddrummer3301 · Post by **maddrummer3301** » Sun Jul 02, 2006 7:03 pm

>>>Steve's hard drive caddies are excellent,
I tried some from Comp USA. Haven't had luck with their connecting system between the carriage and the main holder. Had to switch to another brand.
As the old saying goes, you get what you pay for.

Just to add I have a few firewire/usb combo external drives and one usb only.
I miss not having a firewire connection on the usb only drive.

The biggest difference between carriage drives & firewire/usb is the external firewire/usb are hot-swappable while the internal carriage drives aren't.
But the internal carriage drives will perform much faster data transfers being connected directly to the Motherboard disk controller.