Thinking about using a bunch of 100G FW Drives to archive-backup of my HVX feature project. What is the best price / quality portable 100G FW Drive? I'm using a G-Raid now and it's working very well. It was 500G for $500, or a buck per Gig. Is there a good portable 100G FW at sub-$100?
Best 100G portable FW Drive?
- Thread starter Bono
- Start date
Barry_Green
Moderator
You can get well under $1 per gig, but I don't know of any at the 100gb size at that price. A g-tech G-drive can get you 250 gigs for $195, but it's a desktop drive, not really a portable. Ruggedized portables cost more.
PappasArts
Veteran
Barry can the Iomega 40gig portable firewire/USB drive be used to dump p2 cards.
The firewire and USB on the HVX does not supply power as well correct?
If panasonic lowered there portable 60 gig drive to a sub 1K, I would just get that! That probably wouldn't happen, however it would be a good match to P2 card dumping overall....
The firewire and USB on the HVX does not supply power as well correct?
If panasonic lowered there portable 60 gig drive to a sub 1K, I would just get that! That probably wouldn't happen, however it would be a good match to P2 card dumping overall....
Barry_Green
Moderator
Any portable firewire drive could be used, so long as it has its own power supply (no bus-power is provided). Any USB-OTG drive could be used as well. But USB would require On-The-Go technology; if it's just a regular USB drive then it wouldn't work.
Green Hornet
Veteran
PappasArts said:
Yeah I would get one too....but for the $1600 they want for 60 gigs, is so hard to do. That is the simple solution, but I can't justify the bending over Panasonic is asking me to do:shocked: knowing the sum of it's parts should cost under $500, but I still would pay, say $800 for THAT 60 gig drive.
Zack Birlew
Veteran
Think about it, Bono. A quick look on Newegg.com or tigerdirect.com would show that a 100gb 2.5" notebook drive costs $200 alone. Of course there isn't a 100gb portable solution that is sub-$100. But, Western Digital sells an 80gb USB mobile hard drive for about $90 depending where you're shopping, I saw this at Best Buy. Not 100gb capacity but still ten times that of an 8gb P2 card and 20gb more than the P2 Store.
PappasArts
Veteran
Green Hornet said:
If that was $800, i would be sold. For 800 bucks I could live with 60gigs!
I wish they would lower the cost....
PappasArts said:
This is the USB2 drive enclosure I bought. It works great with the HVX, although the manual was written by someone who didn't speak english well.
http://www.mwave.com/mwave/viewspec.hmx?scriteria=AA30310
Notice the popup menu in the upper right where you can add the 60G 2.5" hard drive for $99.00
So, a small 60G USB 2 drive with On-The-Go copy button and rechargable Lithium-Ion battery power and charger for about $130.00.
The thing I like about this is that the HVX dosen't automatically format it as it would a FireWire drive. You can still use it as a regular mobile hard drive.
Green Hornet
Veteran
Am I missing something?
I know that it is possible to transfer footage from the camera to usb hard drive, but isn't that a very slow and intrusive way to do it?
Don't you have to totally stop shooting, put the camera in host mode, and slowly transfer the footage, then reverse to start shooting again?
That is why I was looking for a solution where I can still shoot and transfer cards, not stop the process and do a transfer. zthat workflow seems very very slow, and stops the shooting process.
For me, unless I am missing something, I need a continuous workflow, or at least one where it only took a few seconds of downtime, not 15 minutes worth.
Tell me what I am missing?
For now, I bought a $550 laptop and an external hard drive.
I plan to have someone taking the cards, and transfering footage while I am shooting on the other cards. I plan to have a 3 card setup.
Total cost, around $700.
When/if the p2 store comes down below $900, I will use that, more because it is smaller and easier to pack, less likely to get damaged/stolen than the laptop.
I know that it is possible to transfer footage from the camera to usb hard drive, but isn't that a very slow and intrusive way to do it?
Don't you have to totally stop shooting, put the camera in host mode, and slowly transfer the footage, then reverse to start shooting again?
That is why I was looking for a solution where I can still shoot and transfer cards, not stop the process and do a transfer. zthat workflow seems very very slow, and stops the shooting process.
For me, unless I am missing something, I need a continuous workflow, or at least one where it only took a few seconds of downtime, not 15 minutes worth.
Tell me what I am missing?
For now, I bought a $550 laptop and an external hard drive.
I plan to have someone taking the cards, and transfering footage while I am shooting on the other cards. I plan to have a 3 card setup.
Total cost, around $700.
When/if the p2 store comes down below $900, I will use that, more because it is smaller and easier to pack, less likely to get damaged/stolen than the laptop.
I am on location shooting a documentary right now and that is very similar to our workflow. We've been shooting for 3 days and I've been amazed at how the P2-workflow is actually working. I have 3 x 8G cards. My producer stands next to me with a G4 laptop plugged into a 500G G-Raid. I also have a P2-Store for more run-and-gun shooting, when there is no time to setup a laptop. I have been shooting both verite style and sit-down interview style, with absolutely no delay in workflow due to P2. In fact, I am shooting a lot more than I would have if I were shooting tape. The crazy part about the P2 is that I never have to stop shooting. We just cycle through the 3 cards. We had an interview that lasted 4 hours straight. Never stopped rolling for a second. Amazing.
My question about the 100G FW drive is about backup / archive. I need some reasonably priced hardware to put on a shelf in the edit suite. DVDs are cheap, but way too time-consuming to burn. Not realistic. I could buy another 500G G-Raid -- it's a good price for a good drive. I just thought it would aid organization in post if I could divide the footage onto drives per each shooting day or time-code hour.
Bill Southworth
Member
I agree with your comments about P2 workflow. I've found the same thing. Just did a three hour interview of several people around a table. The thing was flowing really well and I never stopped the camera. I just kept hot-swapping the P2 cards.
For B-roll shooting I find that the 41 minutes I'm getting with two 8GB cards works just fine. I haven't really used the P2 Store much at all. Normally I just pop the P2 cards into a Powerbook when I stop for a break.
Editing with FCP is a dream. It's just so much faster than capturing from tape.
For B-roll shooting I find that the 41 minutes I'm getting with two 8GB cards works just fine. I haven't really used the P2 Store much at all. Normally I just pop the P2 cards into a Powerbook when I stop for a break.
Editing with FCP is a dream. It's just so much faster than capturing from tape.
kevinM said:
Can you give us some offload times? Barry used this drive but his chief complaint was that it was really slow....like 10 mintues for a 4g P2 card. Maybe....just maybe Barry had faulty version that forced the transfer speed to fall back a little. Please let us know the speeds you are getting.
Thanks!
filmmaker1977
Carbonite Member
icicle22, I think Kevin is already answered you:
Isn't it?kevinM said:
icicle22 said:
I did a timed test with two totally full 4G cards. I actually took 12 minutes 9 seconds to copy. This is the first time I filled two cards completely before copying them. Sorry for the inaccurate info in my previous post.
It actually takes a little longer to copy than the duration of the clips.
