External Hard Drives

[greg mgm]

I've been using VS 10 for a few months now, and really enjoy using it. For me it was intuitive enough to not have to rely on asking for help. Anyway, I'm going to buy a second computer for photo and video use. Is it NOT recommended to use an external hard drive for video storage/ capture? I'm not sure if the USB connection is considered "fast enough" for editing. My videos are starting to be Hi Def, since I have a new Sony Hc3 camcorder. One of the computers Im considering only has one internal hard drive, so that's the reason I'm asking. Thanks in advance. Greg

[jparnold]

It is NOT recommended to capture video using a USB connection to the camera so using a USB external drive would also be too slow.

[heinz-oz]

When I put my video editing PC together it only had one internal HDD as well. Now it's got 4.

It's easy enough to add another HDD. Why do you want to risk it with an external?

Externals are OK for archiving but I would not have them involved in editing actions. There are also IEEE1394 external cases available. I have one but again only use it for back up purposes.

[Black Lab]

I'll throw in my 2 cents worth. I've been capturing to an external HD, connected via firewire (I think - I'm at work now) for over a year, and have not had one single problem.

[etech6355]

t's easy enough to add another HDD. Why do you want to risk it with an external?

An internal harddisk is much better but you can capture to an external USB drive with success, even for the HighDef Capture. I recommend adding both an internal & external drives.
On my system after plugging in the external drive I had to go under the properties of the drive and "TURN ON" windows write caching. Pretty sure I had to turn off the feature for quick removal. You may have to play with those settings. That was on a slow laptop computer. The desktop has no problems capturing to an external usb harddisk.

If your working with HighDef then most likely you'll need an external disk anyway. I would add another internal for direct capturing and external for storage/conversions and tranporting.

My external drives have both NTFS & FAT32 partitions on them.
The FAT32 partitions have a 4 gig filesize limitation. But the FAT32 partition formatted external USB drives are the most compatible for playing back Mpeg2 standard/HighDef, music files & pictures with the multi-media players on the market that have the USB inputs. Most of these new multi-media devices only recognize FAT32 drives on there USB ports. Some can playback the mpeg2@25Mbs and some can't. Depends if your mpeg2 video files are in transport or program stream. VideoStudio captures to program stream format.
The nice point for me capturing to an external FAT32 usb drive is the files are auto split at 4 gigs. This way I don't have to re-encode the mpeg2 files if they are very large on the internal harddisk.
So I can capture to my external usb disk Fat32 harddisk HighDef mpeg2 video. Then plug that into my multi-media player and immediately view them on the TV..

[greg mgm]

Well, I'm glad I asked my question on this site since the response time is awesome. The deal on the computer with 1 hard drive is very good, but I see how 2 HD's with an extra external for storage is best. But then again, Black Lab's set up seems to work OK. Thanks for the info. My present computer wasn't built with ANY video in mind and freaks out when I try to edit Hi Def. I want 2 computers anyway for different locations. Thanks for the replies!

[sjj1805]

I use Drive Caddies.

The part you an see on the left fits into one of your drive bays in the same way as your DVD Burner. The part on the right contains your hard drive.

The IDE cable that normally plugs into your hard drive will instead plug into the part you see on the left, plus the power supply cable.

Now with your computer turned off you simply slide in a hard drive in one of the enclosures you see on the right. Its a bit like putting a plug into a socket.
This means you have an internal hard drive that is quickly removed from the computer without having to take the panels off. You can have several hard drives sitting in a drawer and in the time it take you to turn off the computer and turn it back on again, you can swap your hard drive(s).

I have 3 of these caddies installed in my computer (The 4th bay is my DVD Writer) and I have about a dozen hard drives, the ones not in use are in a drawer.

[Vicki]

I use a 250 GB external hard drive connected with firewire. Works great for capture and file storage, but it is a pain to remember to turn on and off.
I think it was only about $60 at Best Buy and came with the IEEE cable.

[Black Lab]

Works great for capture and file storage, but it is a pain to remember to turn on and off.

Must be the same one I have.

[etech6355]

I have 3 of these caddies installed in my computer (The 4th bay is my DVD Writer) and I have about a dozen hard drives, the ones not in use are in a drawer.

Steve, I have a combo Firewire/USB external adapter box full size 5 1/4".
Took on of the Main Cartridge Adapter Enclosures and installed it into it.
So if I need the data on any of the cartridge drives I just plug the cartridge in and access the files via firewire or usb connection. Works good.

[sjj1805]

Yes I have tried those. I have 2 external enclosures 1 is USB only, the other is dual format where you can use USB or Firewire.

For a couple of months I was lucky and the "USB only" worked fine. Then suddenly when doing something involving heavy data transfer (such as video) the computer would suddenly lose its connection with the external enclosure.

Thinking the enclosure had developed a problem I purchased the other one with the dual connections. Same thing happened with USB and also with Firewire. Perhaps I was just unlucky.

As you are aware I have a multi-boot system - my method (previously posted on the forum) is a truly independant multi boot where one operating system does not rely upon the presence of another. This enabled me to eliminate any conflicts that may have crept into the computer.

I was hoping to use the external drives as 'portables' so that I could just plug the cable into another computer for the purposes of transfer of data, copies of setup programs etc.

Never had a problem with removable caddies because in practice they are simply standard internal hard drives, its just you can swap them without having to remove the case panels. On the downside, unless any other computers you have are fitted with the same hard drive bays then you lose the portability offered by USB/Firewire hard drives.

[etech6355]

On the downside, unless any other computers you have are fitted with the same hard drive bays then you lose the portability offered by USB/Firewire hard drives.

That's what I was saying. I plug the caddy into the external usb enclosure that I installed the main caddy holder into. Just plug the caddy in and then plug the usb/firewire connection into the other computer or device. The Main Caddy Holder is installed in the external usb/firewire device. Nice when you have alot of harddisks. Works on windows/mac/linux etc.

I've fallen back to using the FAT32 partitioning because of cross compatibility reasons. Also handling files over 4gigs becomes a hassle. I like the 4 gig auto-split when capturing. The FAT32 format is the most widely recognized so I can easily port my data to mac or linux and still read/write to the drives. The new consumer based multi-media players that have usb inputs expect to see a FAT32 partition file system.
I use Linux to format the FAT32 partitions due to XP's limitations.