A solid external drive for working with video?

D

DaveGlardon

Member
Hey all,
Due to some travel I have to do, I am forced to complete a few video projects while on the road (with my laptop, which is pretty beefy) and I need something fast and solid to work with video.

Each project will be made on Vegas, about 2 1/2 hours each, and sent to a DVcam for DVD authoring, at that time will wipe the footage off the drive.

I was looking at this: http://www.lacie.com/products/product.htm?pid=10847

But to be honest, I'm not sure what is out there.

Any ideas or products I should be looking at?

Kind regards,
Dave
 
Maxtor firewire 800's. La Cie is not reliable. I lost all the data off from the one I have. I could not record even dv to it after that. I sent it back to LaCie and they replaced it, but the record speeds are nowhere near what the Maxtor's are, at least according to my Kona speed tests. I think that there are others on the boards here that have had bad experiences with LaCie.
 
I recently got a 500Gb HD for $130 at http://shop3.outpost.com/product/5080555 and an enclosure for $30 at http://www.premiertek.net/ which is an e-bay store. Putting it together yourself is cheaper, and the Maxtor is on sale, so this is a very good deal.

DISCLAIMER: I don't know if it's the best setup for video. 500Gb is supposed to hold ~ 35 hours of AVI files. I am a newbie to this and needed a way to back up many hours of miniDV tape, but not sure how well it will work for assembly of final product.
 
I've been using seagate drives via USB2 with no regrets. Fast, affordable and, so far for me anyway, no problems with lost data.


I seem to recall some mixed reviews with Lacies from others on this forum...do a search and you'll find plenty of discussion on them in particular and external drives in general.
 
My 2 cents
For something quick get a Seagate or Maxtor, I have those 2 as well as 2 LaCie's. For long term we are looking at Glyph Tech Firewire 400/800 , (050Q) model, for their great service and reliablity. Likely, that will be our next upgrade.
We did not have great luck with LaCie. Chuck
 
I use an Acomdata that seems to be doing well or you can order a Metal Gear Box from http://www.ebobselectronics.com/ with a Seagate HD inside.

Seagate is a beloved brand around many parts (many for the warranty). Lacie's are always said to be unreliable. But then again I don't know how they stay in business if they're so bad. Well I take that back, they're cheap.

Maybe good for a throw away drive but a lot of people don't like them. This store sales them on eBay. I've got two, one 80gb and one 300gb. I'm loving them too. Hook them right up to the Macbook and I'm ready to go.

-Nate
 
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I got this one: http://www.globalpremier.com/HD-343-U2S.html 3.5" SATA to USB 2.0 with fan. See if your laptop has USB 2.0, because USB 1.1 will work but it is sloooow.

A friend who knows hardware told me to get a SATA and not an IDE, because SATA is faster. You all probably already know that. You also probably know that you have to create an NTSF partition on the new drive. Premiertek has instructions in their support section; it's very easy.

Another disclaimer: this hard drive has been in use for one week only. My research revealed that some folks say Maxtor is junk just like someone above said LaCie is junk. Other folks say every one of the cheap brands will have their lemons, and you should always keep a backup no matter what brand you use.
 
funny how people slam lacie but love seagate or maxtor. why don't you crack open your lacie and see what's inside.... every lacie i have ever had has had seagate, maxtor, or ibm. great drives imho. same with glyph. they use mostly seagate. i use whatever is on sale and they seem to be as reliable as anything else. i have had high end drives crash just like cheapo's so for anything important, i use two drives. one as the working drive and one as the backup. at the end of each day i copy from the work drive to the backup. if one shts the bed, i'm covered.
 
So far, my experience has been that, for drives made in the last 2 years, Seagate has been the most reliable, and Maxtor the least reliable.

I have had probably a half dozen Maxtor failures, and have yet to have a Seagate failure (knock wood.)

Western Digitals used to be awful, but the last three or four I've had seem to be holding up fine.

Samsungs, if you can find them, have also been enormously reliable in my experience.

And IBM (now Hitachi) also used to be abysmally bad (successful class action lawsuit, they were so awful) but since Hitachi bought them, the quality seems much better.

I have a theory that every year, all the drive manufacturers get together and decide which one of them will have a run of crappy drives that year, and it rotates between manufacturers. At one time or another, every major brand has sucked. The only brand I would stay away from now, based on my own experience, is Maxtor.

Also, if you buy a LaCie or any other brand of enclosure *other* than Maxtor, Seagate, Hitachi, or Western Digital's own brands the enclosure made by somebody else will almost certainly have one of those brands inside of it.
 
Definitely use eSATA disks cause, now you dont need to cripple speed with USB or any FW.
Compare!
Just buy eSATA PCI or PCMCI or Express card and you get same speed like internal disks
And I think that Seagate is right brand, LaCie is just another packaging.

Look for new 10k or 15k 2,5" speed disks from Seagate too

There are also some LAN disks with ethernet conectors
 
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have ten lacie drives, one was crap

have been thinking of getting a housing and then inserting a drive, seems cheaper, but a little risky as you can perhaps damage the drive easier if you take it in and out, or leave it in some storage box, but then as it is cheaper, you could triple back up the files, instead of just double as I do now
 
I think what is most valuable is experience of people who use it extensively on daily basis - cause all type and brands of disc crash or broke, even some production series of disks of very same type and brand works way differently, they can be from different plants even countries.

There are 2 paradigms with disks/storage:
- no one disk is big enough
- no one disk is safe

At work we have several very expensive storage array with service and from time to time (1 or 2 year) some crash. Even some disks are dead on arrive. Ooops :)
 
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