External hard drives bit of advice please??

indybones

indybones

Well-known member
Hi peeps

Looking for a bit of purchasing advice please

I am currently using an
apple G5 2GHz power PC
with 2GB DDR SDRAM
Version 10.4.11

with final cut 5.1.4

shooting with an HVX-200

I am currently using a Lacie 500GB external hard drive.
The Lacie is almost full so I need to buy another one.
I wish to use the hi def on my HVX-200 both 1080 and 720 so i need to find an external hard drive that can cope with Hi Def footage and something with a relatively large capacity I guess.

Also something that doesn't mean me having to upgrade my MAC???

Many thanks for your time and advice

Indy
 
I use Maxtor 1TB external USB 2.0 drives. So far no problem with them.
 
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I've had luck with both Western Digital MyBooks and Lacie drives, and I would recommend either one though Lacie might have a better track record. You shouldn't have to upgrade your computer. Just consider an external drive with a terabyte of storage or more.
 
LaCie and HD

LaCie and HD

I own two 1tb LaCie's, and shot a feature in HD (on a JVC HD-110u), and had no problems. I have the 2.67 ghz Mac Pro, but the bottleneck is obviously transferring information from the externals, and I've had no problems (other than JVC's incredible incompatibility with the Intel Mac's of course...).
 
bigbossbmb said:
you should really be using Firewire (preferably 800) for DVCProHD... USB 2.0 will be painful.
Click to expand...

Painful as in the amount of time it takes to dump the footage from camera to FCP.
Or painful as in render times and how FCP will behave with HD footage?

Thanks

Indy
 
indybones said:
Painful as in the amount of time it takes to dump the footage from camera to FCP.
Or painful as in render times and how FCP will behave with HD footage?

Thanks

Indy
Click to expand...

Both. Capturing via USB does not allow you the log and capture options and control that FW does (at least, that is my understanding), so I am not sure how you would get the footage from the camera.

As far as rendering and using the footage from a USB drive, you will have slower performance since USB does not work independently of your Computer's processing ability the way FW does. FW's speed is pretty constant, while USB fluctuates depending on what else your system is doing.
 
Thanks Jim...
I have been able to dump footage from my HVX-200 into FCP 5.1.4 using a firewire cable (Same cable that I was using to log and capture SD footage from a small camera).
Importing P2 footage Via the drop down menu in FCP.

However I see your point about the rendering, speed, tests so far of HD footage that I have done using my USB 500GB Lacie external hard-drive does prove to be very slow. Having to render every piece of raw footage that I place into the time line even before I start to edit, and that's even before any post...

So generally as you say it does seems as though a fire wire external hardrive would be best suited to my HD needs.

Thanks

Indy

PS I have found this one do you reckon that would fit the bill? Thank you for your help.

Buffalo DriveStation Duo 1.0TB USB 2.0.0 & FW Hard Drive

Two High Speed 7200 RPM SATA Hard Drives in One
No Need to Install Drivers with Auto Setup
Pre-formatted Hard Drive for Immediate Use
Supports RAID 1 and Full Capacity Spanning Modes
Dual Interface USB 2.0 and FireWire
SecureLockWare™ Software for Windows® PC encrypts your data from theft, misplacement and unauthorised access.
Easy-to-Use Windows® RAID Utility for Changing RAID Modes
Memeo™ AutoBackup Software automatically backs up your files from your Windows® PC.

http://www.misco.co.uk/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=260156&CatId=2267
 
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