Your 2 Cents on SATA Drives

R

RossS

Active member
I'm shooting with an HVX200. I have one precious 16GB p2 card and an FS-100. Editing on a MacBookPro with Final Cut Studio 2. Looking for any and all advice/comments on external case SATA drives for this system (anywhere between 600GB and 1 TB). By the way, I also travel with this stuff...do the SATA drives travel ok?
:dankk2:
 
do you really NEED eSATA? if i traveled a lot i might look into a bus powered firewire situation.

SATA drives travel fine. i reccomend anything from caldigit or OWC.
 
I have a Wiebetech enclosure with eSATA, fw 400 and fw800. I am using Wiebetech's Express34 card. I put a 750 gb Seagate into this enclosure. Note that this card is also port-multiplier aware so you could use a port-multiplied raid.

SATA drives travel as well, or as poorly, as any hard drive.

I have traveled with this 750 gb drive in carry-on luggage, had it man-handled by the security monkey at Heathrow, and schlepped half-way around the world. So far, so good. I'll be getting their 2.5" SATA enclosure for trip in 3 weeks and will throw a Seagate 160 into it or possibly a WD 250 if they are available yet.

Definitely go SATA but it is nice to have the firewire option for less edit-critical things.

Ned Soltz
 
eSATA is the way to go with a EC/34 SATA card on that MBP.

Also consider a solid bus powered FW drive, preferably FW800.

Wiebetech.com is a pricier vendor, but makes exceptional hardware.
 
Here's a more specific question. Sold on the eSATA format, and bearing in mind I am looking for portability as well, would you go with a single drive enclosure or a 2 drive hot-swap kit? Some of the prices I have seen are an eSATA Express34 card for 117.49, a SATA II 2-drive hot-swap Raid case kit for 149.99 and a 320GB Western Digital SATA II Raid Edition HD for 92.50 each. Any other recommendations or price ranges?
 
Tried to edit the above, but couldn't due to site upgrades. Anyway, I wanted to add this info:

Plug 2 drives of whatever capacity and you're good to go with a fast RAID.
 
One question:

Why a RAID?

I've edited DVCProHD from an internal 5400 SATA boot drive. And also captured to it.
 
David S. said:
One question:

Why a RAID?
Click to expand...

One answer: Because I can. :)

Actually, I needed at least three simultaneous streams of DVCProHD and I wasn't getting that from any Firewire solution or single SATA drive, but some of that could have been my old system. I really don't know because I upgraded my Mac and did the external RAID at the same time. I didn't have time to troubleshoot, so I went for the sure thing.
 
I understand the concept of paying for quality, but everything seems to be in the same general price range, so I was looking for a sampling of who likes what and why.
 
I like wiebetech eSATA enclosures.

They are more expensive and use Hitachi drives, I believe. Among the best made.
 
Western Digital makes very dependable drives, but do NOT go over 500GB. To get over 500GB they went to a 'stand up' bit technology and it is too new for anything mission critical.

Bob
 
RossS said:
I'm shooting with an HVX200. I have one precious 16GB p2 card and an FS-100. Editing on a MacBookPro with Final Cut Studio 2. Looking for any and all advice/comments on external case SATA drives for this system (anywhere between 600GB and 1 TB). By the way, I also travel with this stuff...do the SATA drives travel ok?
:dankk2:
Click to expand...

Hi,

i am in a similar position. I also like to know what are the best opions for external drives on a MBP. The problem is, that i am relatively new to the HD scene and that i don't know anything about pc/mac hardware.
Let me begin with the most simple question of them all... What is a raid ?

My first plan was to buy a 160gb portable harddrive, which is more shockresistant. And then combine this with a 500+ external harddrive.
But since the price of a raid ( whatever it may be, but it seems quiet powerfull and all :) ) is near the price of a harddrive, i don't follow anymore.

So basicly.... what is a raid ? And what is important when looking for a hardrive in general?
 
I've purchased over 75 WD myBook 500GB firewire/usb2.0 drives for my clients.. Never had a problem (knock on wood).

I have the 1TB drive and it works well, it's just NOISY after 1hr of use.. The fans kick on, and the high pitch noise is really not fun!! (it's actually 2-500GB drives in one case)

Keep with the 500 or less drives as its safer as well.. Don't put all your eggs in one basket..

I'd buy a 1TB P2 card in a heart beat though.. ;-) COULD you IMAGINE?!?!?!?!??! Lets see.. 8GB=20min 720pN 1TB=2500min (think)
 
I've had great luck with a couple of OWC Mercury Elite quad-interface drives, running eSATA from a firmtek e34 card on my MacBook Pro. I have noticed that copying from one eSATA drive to the other (the firmtek card is dual) is about twice as fast as copying from my internal drive to one of the eSATA drives. I guess the e34 architecture is some kind of bottleneck. BTW, I always buy three drives of equal capacity so I can have: Work Drive/Local Backup/Offsite Backup. -Les
 
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