ext HD for DV Rack?

P

powerdog

Veteran
Bunch of questions, if you'd be so kind:

I've seen that LaCie makes a ruggedized portable HD with USB 2, FW 400, and FW 800 built in. Good choice for laptop running DVR? Is the FW going to make it self-powered?

Should I stick with FW instead of USB, and should I use FW 800?

Finally, are all FW cards the same, or is one preferred?
 
LaCie makes great drives, and thier triple interface line is great. They also have a line of FW drives that have an internal RAID 0, so that is also a excellent choice. I don't think any of their larger FW drives are bus powered, but I'm pretty sure they have some newer portable solutions that are. Me personally, if you are getting a LaCie drive, get a LaCie FW card, things will just play nicer together that way.
 
I'm not a fan of USB2 because it doesn't provide a constant speed like FW does. USB2 offers only peaks of 460mb/s and FW is a constant 400 and FW800 is constant 800. USB2 can lead to drop outs and such, but I know people that use it and get away with it, I just would suggest it. Go for the drive with the internal RAID array, that will give you the best performance in an external form factor.
 
Would that Lacie/Porsche portable drive be a good choice? Macworld gave it a top review and, unlike the ruggedized drive, it's available now.
 
I never used that, but usually the portable drives have a speed of 4200 or 5200 rpm, which makes them a little slower. It really depends on what kind of vid work you will be doing. Generally, having a 7200rpm will do you much better in the performance area, but they usually require outlet power and are a littel bigger/less portable.
 
Powerdog - i do the majority of my shoots w/ my 100a attached to my laptop (via firewire port of course) and use a USB external HD...the drive is an iogear 40 gig usb powered 5400 rpm - and never had an issue with drop frames. Capturing is done via Adobe PP 1.5 - when dvr first came out i tested the product but ended up not purchasing do to the cost when it was first released - it's $200 bucks cheaper now, so i will probably purchase in the future - but it worked fine with the setup I described. The reason I went with a USB drive is that my laptop only has one firewire port and 4 usb ports. I hope this helps!
 
Does a FW card provide bus power to a portable drive? If so, does that reduce laptop's running time a lot?

Infinteloop: Could you explain your comment that speed of drive = type of video work I do? As long as it's 24p or 24pa, does the drive know or care what's in the footage? Maybe I'm missing the point.

Dewman, do you know there's a $75 rebate on DVR now? That's what pushed me over the edge.
 
Just to update: I've been researching this online, and it seems it's really hard to have a completely self-contained laptop/ext FW solution. Cardbus doesn't supply bus power, and most FW cards and portable drives require A/C for non-bus powering. So you're still stuck with a power cord. I'd have at least thought there were some rechargeable battery HDs that would resolve this. Not sure what the DVR folks see as the ideal solution.
 
thanks for the heads up on the rebate. I will check it out. I'm no expert so let me say that first...but your external HD shouldn't care what mode your shooting in (24p, 24pa, 60i, etc) - except of course High Dev which has it's own requirements. The file will be an AVI or what ever format you choose via DVR.

One thing that did happen to me is when I installed SP2 for XP - I started to get an error (underpowered) on my bus powered usb drive. This didn't happen prior to SP2. So sometimes I do have to plug it in and sometimes I don't.
 
I guess everything's a compromise. If I need a/c, I basically can never shoot outside...and that seems unavoidable with FW.

The Serious Magic website does say that USB 2 should work fine with DVR, and I'm assuming that the laptop port provides bus power. (I hope.) Maybe USB drive bought from a vendor with a liberal return policy is the best bet?

I may call SM for advice, and if I get anything useful I'll post it here.

BTW, here's the rebate that brings total cost under $200:

http://www.videoguys.com/dvrack.html
 
Nope. I have an nNovia QuickCapture -- same idea as the Focus -- but the ability to preview my shots in DVR really appealed to me. (When I got the QC, I didn't yet own a PC laptop.) Also the QC is a bit flaky sometimes, changing from QT to AVI for no reason, and that once caused me a HUGE and expensive headache. Can't have everything, huh?
 
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