Battery powered firewire drive solution for offloading P2 in the field

I can confirm that this works very well.

I used a OWC 160gb 2.5 inch firewire 800/usb 2.0 drive

A retractable usb to 3.5mm power cable from amazon

the APC mobile battery pack from amazon


I have downloaded 8 4 gig cards and still had half power in the battery.

A really good battery powered firewire drive

Remember max of 15 partition downloads for this firewire method. So on a 160gig drive 4 gig cards only 15 downloads equaling 60 gigs of space used only. 8 gigs cards x 15 120gigs used. 16gig cards approx 9 cards or 144 gigs used . i believe I can get all 15 downloads on one battery pack with the 4gig cards.

Heres a pic

http://img524.imageshack.us/my.php?image=tmp3000ar1.jpg
 
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That looks like nice setup, mico, but how much did it cost you overall? Isn't just that harddrive over $150?
 
Yes the hard drive enclosure and hard drive was over $150. But OWC has enclosure/drives as low as 97.00. I wanted a 160gb drive and I wanted the firewire 800/usb 2.0 combo. Thats me . The point is any bus powered drive can be modified with the APC pack and you get a lot of download time on it as opposed to those hard to find battery firewire drives where I think Barry Green got maybe 2.5 4gig cards downloaded and then ran out of power.
 
No need to carry around a laptop. Lite and portable to offload cards too. The HVX does not supply bus power thus the need for the battery. It is a bus powered hard drive, it can run off bus power from a laptop if you want to carry a laptop around with you, your choice. You need a hard drive to backup to anyway now it has two ways of downloading footage, off the camera directly with battery power and bus power connected to a laptop.
 
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If you download straight from the HVX, does this new battery-powered firewire drive still permit the camera to perform the "verify" function, like other firewire drives?
I'm goin' to the Galapagos Islands--one of the uninhabited islands--and need
something battery-powered, reliable and VERIFIABLE thru the camera. If this
will do it, I might be in business. Was planning on bringing a laptop and some kind external hard drives. Not sure what exactly to do yet...
Thanks for any suggestions.
 
Yes you turn verify to the on setting in the camera and after copying it will verify. You can watch this process on the lcd screen. Remember though the one major drawback to using the battery powered hard drive download is you cannot shoot at the same time.
 
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Mico,
Are you using a 5400 160 gb HD? How long does it take to dwnld a full 4gb card? Would a 7200 HD on FW800 dump faster? Would a SATA drive be even faster ?
I/t takes less than 5min on my powerbook w/7200 & FW800

chris/wash. dc
 
Yes I'm using a 5400rpm 160gig. It is an sata drive in the enclosure. Didn't time it but it felt like a 4 minute offload from camera for a 4 gig card. I think speed is limited by the cameras firewire 400 speed so I don't believe you can get more out of it. I got the firewire 800/ usb 2.0 combo enclosure for when I'm using it as a hard drive off my laptop where the speed will be noticed because I can use it on a firewire 800 bus. Read a Toms hardware article on these drives and some people believe that the 160gig 5400rpm is very close to speed of the 100gig 7200rpm because of the extra space on the 160 and also because it uses a different way of placing info on the platters.

Heres the drive:

http://eshop.macsales.com/item/Other World Computing/MS8U5160GB8/

This kit comes with a bunch of cables but NOT included is a firewire 800 to firewire 4 pin cable which you will need to connect to camera if you go with this enclosure. I already had one I bought from granite digital a while back.
 
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Mico,
Are you using powerbook or Mac Book/Pro w/SataHD? Can Sata hd in the OWC enclosure increase dnld speed over PATA hd? I use powerbook w/100gb 7200 PATA (IDE) HD in FW 800/400/usb OWC bus powered enclosure. I would upgrade to SATA if I can get significant speed boost. Barry Green mentioned on another thread that on his internal SATA on his laptop he could dnld a 4gb card in 2 1/2 min. !
 
I'm using a macbookpro. The true test of speed will be when I get the duel adapter connected to the express card slot and connect the OWC drive to the firewire 800 port. Apparently firewire 400 and firewire 800 are on the same bus and using them both at the same time I've heard the bus will go to the slowest which will be the 400. So I need to do the duel express card test and then see what the download time is. And as there are no drivers for the duel card for 10.4.9 and I am unwilling to do the patch that other people are using.
The duel card sits on my desk waiting for drivers so I cannot at this time give you a download time from card in macbook pro to OWC firewire 800 because the only way now for me to download cards is to use the camera connected to the 400 port and the OWC drive to the 800 port and as I've said that will not give a valid download time.
 
I love this set up, but I have a question that may seem dumb. Does it matter what drive or what enclosure I use (as long as it has firewire)? Tell me if I'm missing something.
I've got a spare hard drive, a spare laptop hard drive and case with fire wire, won't those work?
I return to the States frequently and will go to Circuit City and grab one of the APC Mobile Power Packs but do I need specific drives and enclosures? Though I do return to the States frequently I don't usually have a lot of time to track down parts here and there.
 
The only thing you need to make sure of is that your enclosure can be bus powered and has a 3.5 mm power jack so you can use a usb to 3.5mm cable to power the drive off the apc pack. A Bus powered drive because one that isn't capable of it will need more power than the apc can provide. in other words a 3.5inch drive in a firewire enclosure cannot run off bus power so it cannot be used .
 
I just remembered that weibetech has a 3.5inch hard drive enclosure that runs off bus power. I beleive they were the first and maybe only ones. So it will probably work with the APC but then the problem is how much faster is the power going to get sucked out of the APC battery as opposed to using a 2.5inch drive.
 
mico said:
Remember max of 15 partition downloads for this firewire method. So on a 160gig drive 4 gig cards only 15 downloads equaling 60 gigs of space used only. 8 gigs cards x 15 120gigs used. 16gig cards approx 9 cards or 144 gigs used . i believe I can get all 15 downloads on one battery pack with the 4gig cards.
Click to expand...

Thanks for all the info mico. I didn't know about the 15 partition downloads, why is that? I'm planning on getting the same 160GB drive as you have and use it with a 16GB P2 (when they come out).
 
whats the difference between this and any other firewire drive, besides the battery? I have a bunch of firewire dirves that are normally powered off my mac, but they have a jack for a battery..could I use them?
 
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...
 
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