Best 100G portable FW Drive?

Barry_Green said:
USB-OTG enclosure requires FAT32. Won't work with NTFS.
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I take it that you need to format the firewire drives FAT32 as well?

BTW, I am talking with a large hard drive distributor to create a 2.5-inch firewire drive with lithium battery with some long battery times.

Do most people see this as a good option purchase if the company delivers?
 
I take it that you need to format the firewire drives FAT32 as well?
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No, because the camera does its own formatting. You don't format the drive at all, the camera does (and it formats each partition as FAT32).

I'd take a large-battery firewire drive enclosure, sure.
 
Barry_Green said:
No, because the camera does its own formatting. You don't format the drive at all, the camera does (and it formats each partition as FAT32).

I'd take a large-battery firewire drive enclosure, sure.
Click to expand...

I'll keep you posted when I learn more . . .
 
Hi Folks,

Got the USB OTG in the mail today. I formatted it FAT32 with both the Mac and a PC laptop and the camera won't talk to it. I get an error warning every time. Drive works fine getting files off my mac and pc, just not camera. I am definitely in USB device mode. Any suggestions?

Thanks,

Rob
 
A couple weeks ago I ran across this when researching HVX accessories... I don't think anyone has brought this particular USB on-the-go unit up...

http://www.coolerexpress.com/byal2usonebu.html

Who knows, it might be faster than the MWave one? The price is right for testing.

It includes what appears to be a more beefy external battery pack than the lith-ion built ins you normally see, which can also be sold separately and used with USB and Firewire cases...

http://www.coolerexpress.com/otg940btry.html

Regards,

Jim Arthurs
 
I am using the p2 store, so I have not tried the camera to usb hard drive workflow, but if people are looking for that route, why not just go with a non battery powered usb hard drive.

I bought the segate one, and it uses the usb power.
I would think it could use the camera usb power.

If no one has tried this, I will try it tonight... seems better than worying about the rechargable battery dying, and the added bulk.
 
Green Hornet said:
I bought the segate one, and it uses the usb power.
I would think it could use the camera usb power.
Click to expand...

My understanding is that the HVX will not supply bus power via USB or Firewire, thus the need for an external source of power for those drives...

Regards,

Jim Arthurs
 
I bought the MWave USB OTG 60GB drive and I can't get it to communicate with the camera either. robweiner- have you been able to get yours to work? At this point I have to take my PowerBook and a drive with me if I want to shoot. It could prove to be difficult shooting skiing. http://www.kidswhorip.com/videos/nke_tucker.mov
I recently used a Varicam to shoot some skiing and looking forward to using the HVX.
 
A bump here.

I'm waiting for the P2 Store, but have the HVX and two 4GB cards. For an upcoming 720 24PN 40 minute sit-down interview, I'm thinking the P2 Store would be optimal.

Workflow would be a continuous swapping of cards into the P2 Store. At the conclusion of each interview, the P2 Store would be offloaded into a Seagate USB 2.0 drive to give to the client.

Okay, so that's if my P2 Store shows up by then. As another option...

Must the USB 2 OTG drive, when connected directly to the camera's USB port, interrupt workflow? In this thread, it looks like production stops while the cards are offloaded to the USB 2.0 OTG drive? Or... does the camera act as the controller for the drive, allowing for one button REC Start, REC Stop functionality?

Or... is this possible with (or only with) an external firewire drive? I'm a little confused about what everyone thinks is the optimal workflow (without the P2 Store available) for long-form recording where magazine changes aren't desirable. Naturally, the P2 Store would resolve these issues with one card swapping out once the second one starts recording.

I'm confused.

e
 
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I am using the same MWAVED and TOSHIBA 60GB 5400 RPM that was purchased at the same time I got the enclosure. As KevinM

Two test resulted in 7minutes 7 seconds and 7 mintues 20seconds to copy one 4GB P2 card. I did the formatting with SwissKnife.

Barry did you ever get a chance to try formatting your drives with your MAC to see if for some reason that would make any difference? My results are not in the 6mins like the others, but its much better than the 10s

I also noticed each P2 took only 3.45 GB on the disk.. but P2 was supposedly full.. I was able to cycle the camera power and then record another 24 second clip. Now when I cycle the power it says full which made it 3.52, which would tack another 10-20 secs on my times.. Might be worth checking the folder size when comparing these test..
 
overlandfilms said:
Must the USB 2 OTG drive, when connected directly to the camera's USB port, interrupt workflow? In this thread, it looks like production stops while the cards are offloaded to the USB 2.0 OTG drive?
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Yes workflow has to stop for offloading to the USB-OTG drive. Your camera needs to be put into USB Device Mode and the only thing you can do is watch it download the files. When it's done you need to cycle the power go into MCR and format the P2 card. The copy process can take anywhere from 6-10 mintues per 4 gig card, based on different peopls results from earlier in this thread. The format process will take you another 20 seconds or so.. and then your ready to go.

I get a full p2 4BG card copied in the mid 7 mintues..
 
Joe Kocsis said:
Barry did you ever get a chance to try formatting your drives with your MAC to see if for some reason that would make any difference? My results are not in the 6mins like the others, but its much better than the 10s
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Forgot to before, you just reminded me.

Formatted on the Mac, and copied two chock-full 4gb cards over. Took approximately 15:30, or about 7:45 per card. Which is still way too long, but a whole lot better than 10 minutes!

Trying again with just one card to see how long that takes...
... just finished, about 7:45.

So it's better, but it doesn't make any sense as to why! :)
 
Barry_Green said:
Forgot to before, you just reminded me.

Formatted on the Mac, and copied two chock-full 4gb cards over. Took approximately 15:30, or about 7:45 per card. Which is still way too long, but a whole lot better than 10 minutes!

So it's better, but it doesn't make any sense as to why! :)
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Hmm.. Well I've been trying to figure this out..
Odd that now that you've reformatted you getting very similar times to me. I formatted with SwissKnife on a PC though.

The only thing I could even begin to guess at is the cluster size?!?

From what I've read tonight it appears that the larger the cluster size, the faster the read performace, but the more disk space is wasted on small files. Since we're dealing with mostly large files, I would think setting the cluster size as high as possible would benefit us.

I believe cluster sizes up to 64k are possible. I've tried several windows programs but the max I they would all do is 32k.

Can someone who's formatted on a mac check they're cluster size?

I don't know how to do it on a mac, but on a pc you can go to a command prompt and type "chkdsk <drive letter>" like
chkdsk c:

toward the end of the output you'll get a line
32,768 bytes in each allocation unit.
which is your cluster size.. in this case it's 32k.

This is probably a long shot guess, but maybe the mac is formatting it at 64k??

Otherwise I'm stumped.. Maybe the other guys can verify they're folder size? Maybe it has something to do with the number of clips? I had 6 different clips on my P2 in my test.
 
32k.

But here's the part I don't get -- if I run it as a regular USB device, connected to my desktop, I can copy a full card's worth to the USB2 drive in 4:21.

So why does it take nearly twice as long when it's in USB host mode? Is it doing an automatic verify step? That'd be really nice if it was, and I'd quit complaining! :)

When this same drive is put in a firewire enclosure, it can copy (without verify) from the HVX (using the HVX as host) in just over 4:00. But when in the USB2 enclosure, it becomes 7:45. So either USB2 OTG is really slow, or it's doing an automatic verify step after copying...
 
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I highly doubt it's doing any verify. The HVX in this situation is just a dumb device. Unless verify is part of USBOTG specs, it's not going to happen.
I'm going to guess it's the implementation of the copy process. The OTG chip must be the bottleneck. Perhaps a different unit or some type of firmware optimization could help this unit. I dunno. I'm searching for USBOTG specs right now, but can't find much. I've searched for hours and can't find any better ideas...

After rerunning my test and making sure my P2 was 100% full.. My latest result was a 7:50 and then 7.57 copy time Oddly my folder size only increase to 3.5GB, but my copy time increased by 30 seconds. But these were also the 4th and 5th cards put on the drive, and I wouldnt be surprised to see the speeds slow a bit as the drive fills... Anyhow..
 
Lots of info on OTG out there, and not a spec of it references "verify".

So maybe it's just slow.

I ordered that other drive enclosure Jim Arthurs referenced up above; when it gets here I'll put it through its paces and see if it performs any better.
 
Feeling like dope here. Just got the box from MWAVE with the TOSHIBA 60GB 5400 RPM. Put it together, but my MAC (I'm new to macs) hangs up when I try to add a partition using disk utilities. Should I be using some other app?

note: I don't want to format on a PC for fear it'll make is slower,, like Barry's drive - seems to be the only diff from other's faster drives (who formatted on Macs)
 
Barry_Green said:
I ordered that other drive enclosure Jim Arthurs referenced up above; when it gets here I'll put it through its paces and see if it performs any better.
Click to expand...

Got that enclosure; it calls itself the "MiO pocket". It's not really a battery-powered unit; it has a 5v DC input, and it has an external 4-AA battery pack that you can plug into it. So -- it's bulkier/clumsier, but on the other hand you're not at the mercy of a rechargeable battery either. Eh. Six of one, I guess...

Anyway, put in the TravelStar drive and tried an offload. Took 7:45. Exactly the same amount of time as the other enclosure. Oh well...

Weird thing is, this same drive, when put in a firewire enclosure, can do an offload in 4:00.
 
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