4gb P2 transfers to 60gb FW battery power HDDs

H

Hawkeye

Active member
Hello folks,
I'm considering an inexpensive and practical way to transfer my footage while filming around town / in exterior locations where setting up Powerbook - for xfers everytime my two 4gig P2 cards are full - is just impractical.

I can't afford the P2 Store or Firestores so please don't discuss them in this topic.

I have two LaCie TB drives that I use via my Powerbook for interior location work and for editing my projects.
However these are not practical for about-town filming where often a park bench or a window-sill is the only place to pause for transfers.

Barry mentioned before that there's a 60gig limit for Hard Drives when transfering 4gig P2 cards by host mode - anything above that capacity is a waste - quote:
"if you're using 4GB cards, the biggest drive the HVX can use is 60gb. Any capacity beyond that will just go unused."

Does this mean that the HVX-200 will transfer 15 seperate times to one 60gb hard drive using 4gig cards? How does it indicate that it has reached its capacity for recording to that drive after 15 xfers?
Anyway, that would give me 60 minutes of best DVCproHD footage per drive which would be enough for most of my daily needs when filming like this.

So I'm considering this option - a battery powered hard drive enclosure (Cutie DX HD-254UF+ with Built In Power) and a couple of firewire 60gb hard drives that can be swapped in the same enclosure to give me approx two hours of filming exterior before I need to set up the Powerbook.

However, I'm not sure about the techy stuff because there's a note on the Cutie DX sales website that says, "AC Adapter is included for all customers that use 5400 or 7200RPM Notebook/Laptop Drives!" so does this mean that it will not run battery powered using drives in it that are 7200rpm speed?
If so, do I not need this speed of drive for making transfers in host mode?

Another option I've seen advertised is the AMS 2.5" Rechargable FireWire enclosure that claims to have over ten hours of battery before recharging necessary.... can be used with the IBM 80G Travelstar hdd.... anyone know anything about this possible combination?

What 60gb Firewire drives will work in this enclosure when battery powered?
Will the HVX verify transfer success when using these FW hard drives?
Will the drive enclosure battery be sufficient to make the 30 transfers from my 4gb P2 cards to fill both 60gb drives and give me that 2hour recording while filming about town?

Thanks! for any advice that users with this kind of set up can give me or about any other battery power FireWire 60gb drives available for this kind of set-up.
 
Last edited:
I think you could also get a used PC with a PCMCIA slot for very little on ebay. At least this way you could double check that the transferred indeed happened.
 
SomewhereinLA said:
I think you could also get a used PC with a PCMCIA slot for very little on ebay. At least this way you could double check that the transferred indeed happened.
Click to expand...

Hi - thanks for the reply - I do have a Powerbook G4 with PCMCIA slot for that purpose ....... I realise you're probably refering to the cheaper laptop as an alternative for street set-up but I don't want to have to set up any notebook in the street when I'm filming - I want a small device I can download to easily without removing the P2 cards, like a battery powered enclosure.
 
Steve Shovlar said:
I have just purchased a P2 store and will be selling my OTG Cutie. Works fine.
Click to expand...
Ok I'd be interested, can you tell me how the cutie works re the various questions I had in my original post above...... like type of drive to use with it... re size and brand, what speed they will run battery powered - 7200rpm, will the battery last for 30 transfers, will the hvx verify using this... and so on??????
 
I've also got a 60 gig cutie. Battery on full charge is rated at 3 hours of use and it takes abou real time to offload (2 cards about 8mins approx). Of course if it's cold etc you might get less.

I don't know what the drive in it is but I think it's 7200 and is removable to upgrade.

I think the 15 card offload is firewire only when formatted by the camera(though I may be wrong). As I understand it with the usb as host it will literally take as much data as it can hold as it doesn't partition (you just get folders for each P2). So size is not an issue (I saw this somewhere when I was going to buy - probably a post from Barry or something - worth a search).

As far as verifying goes - the cutie has it's own verification (led based confirmation) that data is copied and the camera is just acting as a device. Takes a bit of trust before wiping the cards (I use the cutie for personal/non paid jobs and hire a p2 store for paid).

Hope that helps

Jeff
 
Thanks Jeff - that's very reassuring to hear that it does work from someone using the system, thanks for posting!
 
Steve Shovlar said:
I have just purchased a P2 store and will be selling my OTG Cutie. Works fine.
Click to expand...

The site that sells these appears to have stopped online orders as there appears to be no way to place an order on the site... emails to them have also gone unanswered!

Maplin used to sell the V-Tec Cutie drives but stopped a year or so ago no reason given!
Just one huge fustration! :(

Indy....
 
For transfers in the field I carry several 80 gig Firelite hard drives. They run right off the laptops power so I just plug them in and start transferring over.

I fill up the laptops drive first then I just dump the files over to the Firelite drive and erase them off the laptop. I've used that workflow sitting in -9 temps in Minnesota to 86 temps in Hawaii sitting on a bench by the beach. Works great for me.
The drives are small so I carry them onboard with me and then transfer them to bigger drives when I get home.

Heck, I do this with a 17" laptop. If I had one of the smaller ones it would be even easier. I just pack my laptop in my camera bag and take it everywhere I go.

I'm sure allot of people would say that -9 in the snow isn't practical but it worked fine for me.

If you can lug the HVX around, a small laptop isn't going to be that much more to carry around.
 
Last edited:
If you decide to go with a laptop (as you should), then the "SmartDisk FireLite" is a nice, tiny, bus powered HDD.

P.S. Regarding your LaCie tarabyte drives. I hope you have them backed up somehow. :)
 
The Firelites are nice.

I happen to use a couple Seagate ST90000U2 100 mb models. They're not USB, but are very clean, compact and there cable has an extra hookup so if you bus isn't powerful enough you it will draw enough power from your other USB port.

Speedwise, relative to P2 transfers its been all good, no complaints. I am dumping those tiny drives into an intel mac when I get on the ranch so the USB has been just fine there.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top