Battery powered firewire drive solution for offloading P2 in the field

Here is the cost of the original post:

HD Case from amazon 37.00
APC battery from Circuit City 59.00
80 gig HD newegg 59.00

so approx. $155.00 US

You might be able to make it cheaper if you use a 60 gig HD

Time with this setup?
It takes approx. 7-8 minutes to transfer a 4 gig card with verify on

Can you use any case/drive/setup?

As long as it is firewire and can be powered via usb. The case I used (macally) came with a usb power connector that fits right onto the battery.

I'm sure you could find other cases/drives/batteries that would work just as well, I was just throwing out a working and easy solution.


I've used it on about 10 location shoots right now and I've not had any problems.
 
Spartacus said:
How much time does the verify option take?
And did it work for you guys all the time so far?
I really hate carrying the laptop around, on the other hand I can play the files when the are copied and just relying that they are on my HDD without being able to check scares me a little...
Click to expand...


Just put a stopwatch on a full 4gig card download. Copy and verify took 5:50 minutes.

Have had no problems so far.
 
Absolutely beautiful!

I asked a few HD case manufactures why they stopped making products with onboard batteries. The reps couldn't telll me why.

I guess it's up to us (you).

-a
 
hello smart people !

Firstly, I'm NOT a tech person, so please, forgive me my ignorance, but wouldn't it be possible to do the following in order to utilize 100% (or so) of the HDD:

Before you connect your portable firewire drive to your camera, you can partition the drive to let's say 2 or 3 partitions (depending on the size). So in effect on a 160 GB HDD you would get 2 x 80 GB and hence not 15 partitions from the HVX, but 30 partitions - 15 on each 80 GB partition.

Question is: Would the HVX, after the first 80 GB partition is full, recognize the other 80 GB partition as a "NEW" HDD and would it be possible to then continue dumping the cards to the second partition thus obtaining 120 GB storage (using 4GB P2 cards) out of the 160 GB drive, rather than only 60 GB ?

Or would the HVX override the HDD partitions ?

Thanks for your input !
 
The first thing that you have to do when you finally get your battery drive parts together and connect all the necessary cables and such and before you download any p2 cards to this drive you must format the drive with the camera. You are then subject to what it wants and what it wants is 15 partion download maximum. You will lose any material, format, and file system structure that was on that hard drive before the format. So make sure there is nothing on that drive you want to keep before you format it with the camera.
 
what's the point, then, in using anything bigger than 60GB HD? if one uses a drive bigger than 60 GB anything above the 60 GB margin, or 15 partitions, remains unuseable, right? Seems like a big waste of space and money, because on 160 GB drive, you actually utilize only 30% of its capacity.

I'm a bit confused here
 
A partition is an individual P2 card not limited by size of card or amount of footage on the card. So if you have 16gig cards and a hard drive big enough to handle it you will be able to download 15 individual 16gig cards. This also means that if you only shot 1 gig of footage on say a 16gig card and then transfer that 1 gig to the hard drive then that equals and takes up one partition.
 
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Here in the UK its like USB... what???? there used to be one or two items but apparently they didn't sell so now you can't get USB-ON-THE-GO for love nor money! People would rather take their cards out of their STILL cameras and plug into a hard drive it appears :(

Indy....

bikefilms said:
I asked a few HD case manufactures why they stopped making products with onboard batteries. The reps couldn't telll me why. -a
Click to expand...
 
Thanks again mico. So if I understand correctly, with a 16GB card I can do 15 transfers total before having to use a new drive? 15 X 16GB = max 240GB?

Sounds good to me.
 
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Correct. The format from camera creates a seperate partition every time a P2 card is copied. It doesn't care what size the card is or how much space on the card is used up. One card one partition, 15 times only.
But i know of no 240GB 2.5" drive. Maybe in the future. On my 160 gb drive I can create approx. nine 16gb partitions before i top out the drive . The other thing to be aware of is a 16gb copy with verify will take over 16 min. each to finish if my 4gb card download times are any indication. Thats a long time not to be able to shoot and I do not know how the APC will handle 16gb cards . you may need a couple of APC's for 16gig cards.
Also someone in other thread tried to power the drive from the battery usb connector to drive enclosure usb connector and the firewire to camera. He and I did not have success with this method as I believe the circuit board won't allow that to happen. I get a warning on my lcd .
So just to be clear the battery has a usb connector on it and I power to the 3.5mm power jack on my drive enclosure with this

http://www.amazon.com/EFORCITY-Prem...8&s=musical-instruments&qid=1180127572&sr=8-4

I have had no problems using this with my setup that I described previously but may be differnet for other peoples setups.
 
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Morning ladies and gents.

On a similar tack I'm looking for a rechargeable, portable power supply for my g raid mini drive (it has a standard looking 12v power socket on the back).

I'm in Scotland, so a uk based company would be perfect, but I'm happy to source from overseas if that's my only option.

Anybody tired of shooting slo mo yet?

dg
 
In reading multiple threads on this issue I have discovered a fairly simple off the shelf solution. Hear this one out.
To transfer from the HVX to Firewire hard drive you need power for the hard drive because as we all know the HVX does not provide Bus power for device. If you are on a remote shoot far away from standard power this can be problematic....
unless you cobble together some form of power supply or...

Power any make or model hard drive with XPower PowerSource Mobile 100 by Xantrex
http://www.xantrex.com/web/id/233/p/docs/pt/5/product.asp

then just plug in hard drive as you would into a normal outlet.
So hook up the HVX to the Hard drive which now has AC power, enter Host mode and start transfer

data transfer complete. Format card and move on.

Not a salesman, just really happy to find a simple off the shelf solution.
 
This is a great find. on amazon it is $129. the same product under the Xantex brand is $75, and Duracell has an identically specced item for $69. (marketing!)
 
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