Help with new Hard drive and VS

[wasunbeatable]

Hi new to editing so ps bear with me.
Can you ps advise on what is a good hard drive to buy (external)? And would it be better to get one with firewire as i understand its better for capturing. I want it just for video editing / capturing as i understand its better to have windows on a seperate HD. Also will i need to reinstall my XP before i install VS 11.5 . Would 500GB be enough. I was looking at western digitals 'my book' any good? My budget is aprox ¢G100. Thanks

[Black Lab]

I have a Maxtor 200 GB (firewire) and it's plenty big enough. BTW, I capture dv-avi files (13 GB per hour).

[Ken Berry]

It would be much better if you had a new drive installed internally. External drives, whether firewire or USB 2.0 can cause problems at times, though not always. I used to swear by external firewire discs. But depending on the one you buy, the chip used in its firewire connection can develop write caching delays. You would need to Google for this, but it is a very well known problem with all sorts of verrry convoluted ways of getting around it. I had this with two of my quite different firwire enclosures, and finally gave up and went over to USB 2.0 drives which have never -- repeat never -- given me any problem.

But I still don't capture to them either. While notionally around about as fast as a firewire connection, USB suffers from the fact that it shares its bandwidth with all other USB devices you have connected to your computer, and these days, that can be a lot of things. And the USB speed is usually reduced to that of the slowest device connected.

The other problem, in a sense, with external drives generally is that you have to make sure you keep the drive turned on and connected while you are editing your video. Seems obvious? Yes, it is but it is also curious how many people turn it off then find that their project in VS comes up with all sorts of white boxes where their thumbnails used to be...

[wasunbeatable]

Thanks guys. I do have a FW connection on my audigy 2 sound card, is this OK? I also have a sata 250gb samsung internal drive but its on IDE as i had probs installing mobo sata drivers on my asrock dual sata mobo. should i reformat this HD in my computer or is it better to use another prob; ie partition magic etc? Also i have not installed VS yet would it be better to format HD then instal? Thanks again guys

ps any other tips would be appreciated!

[skier-hughes]

Creative have never been good at driver writing and their firewire implentation is woeful, so I wouldn't want to recomend you use this firewire connection.

Do you not have another ide connection in your pc? Most ide connections will run two drives, a master and slave.

I just bought two 1TB drives from Ebuyer to runa raid set up. Admittedly they were sata2, but you should find you get much more space for your money with an internal drive.

Unless you are having problems with your OS, running slow etc, then I'd not do anything to this drive and just install VS.

[John Moran_2]

Hi new to editing so ps bear with me.
Can you ps advise on what is a good hard drive to buy (external)? And would it be better to get one with firewire as i understand its better for capturing. I want it just for video editing / capturing as i understand its better to have windows on a seperate HD. Also will i need to reinstall my XP before i install VS 11.5 . Would 500GB be enough. I was looking at western digitals 'my book' any good? My budget is aprox ¢G100. Thanks

The older Western Digital 500GB My Book drives had an ON/OFF switch. The newer ones do not. I keep mine in the box, except when backing up files on all my computers. Mine works fine when connected by USB for file transfer purposes and also comes with a firewire cable.

After reading a large sampling of user reviews it was apparent that there were occasional reliability problems with the older switchable model, which may have been heat related. I make certain it gets plenty of air space when in use.
JM_2

[sjj1805]

I have a 1TB Western Digital "My Book" external USB drive.
You can use it for editing and rendering videos but it is slower than doing the same task using the internal drive(s).

A good compromise is to do all the donkey work on the internal drive and then when you have finished you can transfer anything you want to keep to the external drive thus releasing space on the internal drive for the next project. That is a task that can be done at a time that suits you such as overnight so speed of transfer is not important. Having said that you can transfer several gigabytes to an external USB drive reasonably quickly anyway.

[wasunbeatable]

Thanks for fast replys!

Sorry i should of explained more, the HD what i mentioned is actually a 2nd SPARE that is on my PC. I have the windows on a (C) Maxtor 250GB and there is the samsung 250GB with my old files that i rarely use. I was going to format the samsung before i installed VS on the (C) maxtor and use the (E) samsung for capturing. Also what would be my alternatives if i do not use the audigy for FW, should i buy a seperate IDE FW card? If so i will need to looose the audigy as i have no more ide slots...Thanks, great site.

PS Re Raid (2 HD) raid config is way above my ps knowledge-lol

EDIT: I just looked and i have a FW slot on my mobo, which is connected via a lead to FW slot on front of case. Would this be a better option than the audigy 2 or is it better to use a ext HD with FW connection. Sorry for noob Qs

[Accolades]

Hi,

Internal drives are getting cheaper all the time...

I just purchased a 1TB Samsung (HD103UJ) SataII 32MB cache Internal to replace one of my 3 internal 300MB maxtor units for $216 Aust.

Very quiet drive and runs at 10 Degrees cooler than the Maxtor's!

(maxtors (ST3320620AS) (6L300S0) running at 45/46 and the Samsung at 35c)

My External Lacie 1TB (2x500GB) USB2 has had a few issuees with picking up the drive after being disconnected and is getting replaced under warranty!!)

[wasunbeatable]

Thanks for replying! So should i stay with my 2nd HD for capture ps?

[2Dogs]

You don't need to limit yourself to USB or Firewire - both are pretty slow. Instead, it's possible to hook up an external drive by eSata. You can buy an eSata enclosure for a hard drive, and many come with an eSata port for your pc, for example, this one from Newegg:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6817113048

Not too many pc's have eSata ports - yet.

The benefit of connecting the drive by eSata is that it will perform almost as well as an internal drive - but have all the advantages of an external unit.