External Hard Drive ( HDD ) thread

Using the G-Raids 2...
HVX on the FW400, 2 G-Raids in a row on the FW800...
Flawless and reliable...
One downside: the enclosures finishing seems a bit too "industrial" - my partner cut his fingers on one of the edges...
And if I´d buy now, I´d probably get a Expresscard to eSATA adapter and buy the G-Sata drives....
 
Questions about G-Drives" I have a G-Drive 250gig, it clicks with the flash of the LED when it is working. Does your do that? And is this normal? Just seem louder that I am used to.

thanks
 
JasonFox said:
What I couldn't find is a defininitive answer as to whether that slows down the 800 port to 400 speed.
Click to expand...

Yes, that's exactly how Firewire works, unfortunately. But if everything works fine for yoiu; there's no problem; and you can get an expresscard FW adapter if you want a second FW bus (either 400 or 800).
 
Knock on wood on this one... Have been using the cursed by everyone Lacie D2's for about 2 years and they all work fine. 3.5tb storage and still going strong. So I can only recommend them. But its my own personal experience!
 
SurJones said:
Questions about G-Drives" I have a G-Drive 250gig, it clicks with the flash of the LED when it is working. Does your do that? And is this normal? Just seem louder that I am used to.

thanks
Click to expand...
same here... sometimes I work in hotelrooms and render over night, better to have some earplugs ready... and tape for the insanely bright and blinking LED!

Why is everyone adding really bright LEDs to their cases? Is this because of the PC modding trend...?
All I want is a small glimmering indicator telling me, my HDD is on and busy...
:furious3:
 
Spartacus said:
...And if I´d buy now, I´d probably get a Expresscard to eSATA adapter and buy the G-Sata drives....
Click to expand...

So if you are using the Express Card slot for the eSATA adapter, how do you read the P2 cards? Do you use the camera or P2 store connected to the computer via USB-2?
 
we are using a glyph 062 1TB drive for editing striped for speed and using redundancy on a firmtek seritek sm2 expresscard style adapter. On the firmtek we use western digital cavier drives, out of the seagates and the other good drives we did lots of tests and found the caviers to be awsome. we have about 16 of them mirrored for storage in raid 1 and we have been using them with p2 footage from the hvx, and hpx and some dvx with the sony a1u as the sneak it in the club camera.

i say go glyph, its a no brainer, their management software sucks and you should rely on disk utility but that for speed and the firmtek for backup is the way i think its good to go.
 
i personally have two 230 gig Lacie's. They have worked very well for me, and are cost efficient, if you want one bigger than 300 hundred i believe they do carry larger hard drives. good luck!
 
Does any body have any experience, or input with Western Digital external drives??? I was looking at one from Costco online, called My Book Pro with firewire400/800, with 1TB capacity for about $300.
 
Yep I use the Western Digital drives. Costco has a smoking deal on them. $150 for 500 mb, $300 for 1 TB, and $600 for 2 TB. The 2 TB drive is nice because you can configure it as a striped raid at 2 TB, or a mirrored raid at 1 TB.

I used to use a G-Drive until it crashed with a horrific sound one night and I lost everything on it. I went back to the Apple store and the guys there confided to me that they're junk and crash all the time and recommended the W.D. instead.
 
does the wd 2tb have a software raid1 or hardware raid 1? i've been looking for something like that, and like the new lacie raid. or either building a esata raid 1 with 2 1tb drives in it.
 
Hi,

Am looking for information with regards to the apparent firmware updates available for the Firestore FS 100 from NTSC to PAL...

Is this possible (I hear it is) to change the NTSC to PAL with a firmware installation???

1. Can this be downloaded and installed manually by the consumer.
2. If Not, then whom do I contact to get this done?

Many Many Thanks
DDM
 
I bought an 500Gb Acomdata E5 USB 2.0 & Firewire 400 ([FONT=Arial, Helvetica, Geneva, Swiss, SunSans-Regular]HD500UFAPE5-72)[/FONT] drive for $140 from Newegg.com. It is awesome and I'm actually thinking of getting another one. The only thing I did to it was reformat it with disk utility (I run os x) to a Mac OS Extended (Journaled) format just because I heard that it was more reliable than fat32 with the mac. Its fast and holds a lot:Drogar-Happy(DBG):.

Heres the link: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...HD500UFAPE5-72
 
You know what's driving me nuts? If you read the newegg, circuit city, etc. reviews of drives... there's 25% or more who couldn't possibly be happier, and 20% or so that couldn't possibly be more angry... with their choice.

I gather that when you buy an economy priced external drive that it's a total crap-shoot.

Today I'm going to buy either a Seagate Free Agent, or a WD Essential. I already have one of each... both in 500gb, and I've had no problems with either... but the fear of losing an entire video, or two, is pretty scary. The one thing about the Free Agent drives that blows my mind is that it's a SEALED enclosure (except on the bottom)...

We used triple redundancy for Unsolved in OKC... with MyBooks... and I don't know what the redundancy was for Engagement on the Salt Flats, but we had Seagate out there... in both cases data loss was simply not an option, and in both cases I never heard any complaints about the drives.

So here I go again... about to roll the dice. I wish there was more conclusive info about the "economy" drives.

Considering that Glyph uses Seagate drives... and so far I've been OK with the Seagate I already have... and Seagate comes without any stupid unwanted software, and DOES come pre-formatted for NTFS... I think I may try another one. For the most part my external drives are for the clients that have a record of returning to a project... so the drive may be chock-full of already digitized footage that I may have to revisit for a new video from the same "stock" footage... so the actual drive use is pretty light... but just the same, it's got to be there.
 
I have been looking for a straight answer somewhere on this board and can't find one. I already have an external USB 2 hard drive with AC power without a firewire port. I do not have a laptop and want to dump the contents of my P2 card onto the drive by directly hooking it up to the camera. Can I do this or do I need a drive with firewire capability?

Thanks for your help.

TJ
 
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I bought myself a WD MyBook 500GB Home Edition and another WD MyBook 1TB Home Edition too. I purchased them both at Costco with coupons and they resulted dirt cheap. They are triple interface meaning USB2, Firewire 400 and eSATA.
I use both via eSATA but one is formatted as FAT32 and the other is NTFS. I decided to go FAT 32 with the 1TB and I use it as a cross platform storage for my MBP and my PC's. The 500GB is just backup for my editing work on my PC. So far so good, can't complain especially considering the price. My two cents...
 
Texas Jones said:
Can I do this or do I need a drive with firewire capability?
TJ
Click to expand...

i don't know about usb(that's going to be so slow!)

but with a firewire drive, yes, the camera will have to format the drive, meaning erase it, before it can use it the first time. it's going to slow down your workflow though, get a laptop if you can. i'm kinda in the same situation but i'm getting a fast laptop as soon as possible, it makes better sense. time to take the bottles/cans and get the deposit. i wouldn't mess with cam to usb hdd though, if you got an hvx, you probably want to spend your time shooting with it
 
Dabhand Digital Media said:
1. Can this be downloaded and installed manually by the consumer.
2. If Not, then whom do I contact to get this done?
Click to expand...

1. no!
2. go to your local Focus site and write them a mail.
for mine it was about 200 Euros to have the PAL firmware played on the firestore (wich pissed me off) . 200 Bucks for a simple firmware upgrade, done in a view minutes. Would be a solid dealbreaker if I would know that before.

I will never buy anything from Focus again. I am waiting for CINEFORM to relase that recorder.

Frank
 
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