External Harddrives? Your input needed! help

uleadboy · Post by **uleadboy** » Sat Dec 11, 2004 11:36 pm

Hi

Just wondering if you are wanting to backup perhaps a memorable capture for later working on - like if I'm building a series of family events - and storing them to external harddrive for working on later type of thing, how has users found external drives for this purpose? I have no experience of them. Do you just work directly from the external HD or do you copy back onto your own harddrive first to work on?

Also, Has anyone here captured directly to external harddrive? I assume things would be slower since its external but just wondering??

If I was buying one I would consider the Firewire ones.

Thanks!

rwindeyer · Post by **rwindeyer** » Sun Dec 12, 2004 12:43 am

I got an external HDD a little while ago, and it's the best thing since sliced bread

It just attaches to the laptop via USB2 connection; I now do ALL video storage and processing on that drive, and capture directly to it.
I have been doing some copying from VHS tape; the other day I did a 4 hour capture without one dropped frame.
Also, there is advice that in an ideal world you should have your operating system on one hard drive, and video capture on another. This ensures that if the system needs to access anything it doesn't interrupt video capture. An externall HDD meets this ideal nicely.

THoff · Post by **THoff** » Sun Dec 12, 2004 3:08 am

I have an external Maxtor drive with both USB and Firewire interfaces. I can capture to it just fine (using DV) without dropping frames.

It's also quite fast for doing other stuff like system backups (Windows' NTBACKUP writes to it at >1GB/min), but in my experience Firewire is the faster interface, despite USB2's theoretical advantage because of a higher peak throughput. Thus, by my choice, the only time I use the USB interface with the drive is when I need to attach it to a system without Firewire support.

david reece · Post by **david reece** » Mon Dec 13, 2004 1:38 pm

i am making no comment on this one!

mikewillnot · Post by **mikewillnot** » Mon Dec 13, 2004 6:01 pm

I've been using external HD's for a couple of years. Mine are set up for firewire interconnect, though, as is my digital camcorder of course. I have yet to get both to work at the same time. Daisy-chaining doesn't work, and I've tried several brands of firewire cards / hubs, with both devices plugged in directly. It never works. Therefore, I've been unable to capture directly to the external HD from the digital camera. This may not be a problem if your HD is USB 2.0. It may also be a fixable problem, I've just never figured out the fix.