External Hard Drive for editing/Movie trivia bonus question

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10fingers10toes

Member
Okay, so I've seen number of posts from people mentioning their hard drive set ups. Then I think I've gotten the advice I need, I read another post from others who feel differently. USB 2.0/Firewire800/SATA?

This is to supplement video editing on my laptop. Not a pro or anything, but I'd like to have enough power to remain useful for years. I'll be getting into more complex compositing at some point.

So computer specs aside, here's what I'm thinking for the hard drive. Seagate barracuda 250GB SATA (maybe larger - 1st link below). Then a SATA enclosure with possibly a variety or outs - firewire400/800 & USB2.

So my question is, can anyone recommend a killer enclosure?

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16822148144

Any comments are welcome!

And for fun, what movie is this from: "A boy's best friend is his mother"
 
Awesome! Thanks for the suggestion SilverWolf. Just wondering if I should try to include firewire 800 in there somewhere. I have a PCMCIA card from LaCie that is a FW800 adapter, so I thought I'd try to get as much out of it as I can. Can the PCMCIA card even handle that kind of throughput?

And no guesses on the movie quote? It's a classic.

Also if anybody feels partial to their enclosures, let me know! Trying to shop around here.
 
Oh the quote is from psycho.

As far as the FW 800 goes , it can't hurt to have it on the enclosure but there are more enclosures and options available without it. Since computer generally don't come stock with firewire 800 it's harder to find equipment for it
 
Thanks again for the reply SilverWolf! You're right about FW800, but I'm trying to plan ahead and be equipped for the (near) future.

**EDIT** Actually, for the case you suggested, it says it's an IDE interface. The drive I linked to (Seagate barracuda) is a SATA drive. Are these compatible? I guess this is venturing into computer questions here.

Anyone else crazy about enclosures? Share...
 
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What kind of footage are you gone edit?
SD or HD?
What codecs?
What platform are you working on?
If you´re doing eg DV USB2.0 and FW 400 external drives will be enough (FW for the mac and USB for the PC...)
If it is DVCproHD I´d suggest you better take something like a G-Raid for editing with your laptop...
The enclosures interface must of course fit that of the drive you´re gonna put inside.
 
Also, depending on what your editing, you might thing of eSATA get a pci adaptor for your comp and go that route. That way you can have the full bandwidth of an sata II 300gb/sec.

Jason
 
10fingers10toes said:
Thanks again for the reply SilverWolf! You're right about FW800, but I'm trying to plan ahead and be equipped for the (near) future.

**EDIT** Actually, for the case you suggested, it says it's an IDE interface. The drive I linked to (Seagate barracuda) is a SATA drive. Are these compatible? I guess this is venturing into computer questions here.

Anyone else crazy about enclosures? Share...
Click to expand...

If it's a sata drive you will have to find an enclosure that supports sata drive. Most of the enclosures still only support the IDE interface but there are sata drives out there. Pretty much trying to find a drive that supports FW800/400 + USB 2.0 + Sata is going to be pretty hard. If you do go the esata route that pretty much kills your chances of taking it to someone elses machine because they would have to have the external sata connection
 
Thanks for the replies!

Spartacus:
- Editing / authoring DVDs in SD
- XP Pro
- Premiere Pro/AfterEffects/Encore

Yeah, and I haven't had any luck finding an eSATA enclosure with FW800. I'm gonna check out the PCI connection option. Maybe it's overkill, but it'll be nice to have when I upgrade. Just a thought. Of course, I may just end up getting an external from Seagate/Maxtor. They just run a bit more expensive.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16822144052

I have 2 LaCie's that have had not problems whatsoever, but I've been hearing problems about LaCies enclosures having issues, so I'm ready to try something new.
 
10fingers10toes said:
Thanks for the replies!

Spartacus:
- Editing / authoring DVDs in SD
- XP Pro
- Premiere Pro/AfterEffects/Encore

Yeah, and I haven't had any luck finding an eSATA enclosure with FW800. I'm gonna check out the PCI connection option. Maybe it's overkill, but it'll be nice to have when I upgrade. Just a thought. Of course, I may just end up getting an external from Seagate/Maxtor. They just run a bit more expensive.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16822144052

I have 2 LaCie's that have had not problems whatsoever, but I've been hearing problems about LaCies enclosures having issues, so I'm ready to try something new.
Click to expand...

I don't really like those externals. The main reason if something goes wrong you can't really troubleshoot it yourself. If you bought just the enclosure you can swap you own drive if it fails plus by the time your drive would fail prices would have dropped saving you even more money.
 
Ramjet1979 said:
Well for sd, it may be overkill. but with esata you wouldn't need firewire. just the sata cable and a pci sata adaptor card
Click to expand...

What has jet to be found on a laptop... ;o)
there are eSATA to expresscard cards out there now, but I don´t think your laptop will support this...?
eSATA will probably become big soon, as stated by Ramjet its even faster than FW800 in its eSATA II form...
Buying a finished external drive can save you the trouble of enclosures not working in the best way with the brand of HDD you chose to put in.
I´m using the Maxtor OneTouch III with tripple interface and its flawless so far (though some people have similar issues with maxtor as with LaCie...)
 
Okay, so I found an eSATA expresscard from Firmtek (link below), but it runs a bit expensive and so do the eSATA ready enclosures. But I think my laptop would support it. I have a Sager 5690 P4 3.2GHz w/HT. Becoming outdated quickly, but has served me well so far and hopefully will for a little while longer.

http://firmtek.stores.yahoo.net/seritek2sm2e.html

Since I'm looking for a cheap, but fast and reliable editing solution for my laptop, I may go with this IDE Barracuda (1st link below) and the enclosure SilverWolf suggested (2nd link).

http://www.newegg.com/Product/CustratingReview.asp?item=N82E16822148139

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16817145657

Let me know what you think.

That Maxtor looks good too. Just not many troubleshooting options.
 
that expresscard eSATA is too expensive.
How bout this one. 45 bucks. almost a 3rd of the price

http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=2329302&CatId=1455

Jason

also this eSATA enclosure is cheaper than the one you were looking at, and has good reviews.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16817106097

They have them starting at like 16 bucks and going up to around 100. You can find the one you like. Just search for "eSATA enclosures"

And you can get the sata II version of the hard drive you were looking at for 3 gbs/sec transfer. It costs the same :)

Jason
 
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oops. And here is another eSATA II expresscard. It has 2 sata ports that you can also use in a raid 0 or 1 from what I can tell browsing quickly.

Jason
 
Awesome. This is great. Thanks Jason. I'm gonna looks at these.

Thanks again for the help guys!

Try out another Movie quote (probably too easy, but hey...):
CHARACTER 1: This city is headed for a disaster of biblical proportions.
CHARACTER 5: What do you mean, "biblical"?
CHARACTER 2: What he means is Old Testament, Mr. Mayor, real wrath-of-God type stuff.
CHARACTER 1: Exactly.
CHARACTER 2: Fire and brimstone coming down from the skies. Rivers and seas boiling.
CHARACTER 3: Forty years of darkness. Earthquakes, volcanoes...
CHARACTER 4: The dead rising from the grave.
CHARACTER 1: Human sacrifice, dogs and cats living together - mass hysteria.
 
Bingo! Ghostbusters! Nicely done GenJerDan. But the first is definitely from Psycho. Maybe Waters used that line for Pink Flamingos too?

Any input on hard drive side of this post?
 
Well, if you want to edit off your external drives, it seems to me that gong the eSATA route would be a win win. It is only going to cost you about 40 bucks more than going usb or firewire, ultimately and you will be getting better performance.
In fact I have gotten myself looking at going this route with a laptop setup again after I decided I was just going to go ahead and get a workhorse desktop.

Jason
 
10fingers-

Here is the lowdown. SATA is the best for what you want, but can only be connected to your computer via a SATA interface to get the speed you want. Check out Granite Digital, they have some great products for this.

If you want an enclosure that will hook up to any computer via FW 400 or 800 (or USB even which I would not bother with), you have to use a regular PATA drive (sometimes called ATA). Most people do not make enclosures that hook up to FW for SATA drives and that is because there is a bottleneck of speed doing it this way.

Ted
 
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