Hard drive ?'s again

Tony_Reyes

Tony_Reyes

Well-known member
OK, I've decided I want to put my money into a hard drive. I'm thinking that I want an external drive, about 250 GB. External because I would like to take it with me on occasion and I don't want to deal with the install + my comp. doesn't have an open bay. If I use it on a PC can I in the future us it on a Mac if need be?

Out of these hard drives what looks good?
http://www.bhphotovideo.com/bnh/controller/home?O=NavBar&A=search&Q=&ci=6538

I'd prefer to spend between 200 and 250 bucks. Something that is reliable and won't have any issues installing is really what I'm looking for. Currently i'm using a 160 GB 5400 RPM that came with the comp.
 
Re: Hard drive ?'s again

Hi Tony,

If I use it on a PC can I in the future us it on a Mac if need be?
Click to expand...

I'm not sure how that will work but you can definetly give it a try. I have a portable 250 gig firewire drive that I got for 200 dollars and it works perfect. Those avid ones are way too pricy for me.

I'm sure you can find something more affordable that can do the exact same job. I'm really happy with my firewire drive. You can go to bestbuy and get something with more drive space but cheaper.
 
Re: Hard drive ?'s again

It is my understanding that most video applications need a drive speed of 7500rpm as a minimum.
 
Re: Hard drive ?'s again

[quote author=Tony_Reyes link=board=dvd;num=1108079389;start=0#2 date=02/10/05 at 16:07:37]What brand is your drive?[/quote]

maxtor, and you its 7200rpm. You'll start droping frames when your drive is spinning at 5400. All video is recommend at least 7200 rpm and up.
 
Re: Hard drive ?'s again

OK, I talked to the video guy I know... and he highly reccomended that I get an internal drive. He said with an external firewire drive that you are using one bus and that you'll start dropping frames as well. So I don't really know what to think.
 
Re: Hard drive ?'s again

[quote author=Tony_Reyes link=board=dvd;num=1108079389;start=0#6 date=02/11/05 at 00:21:02]OK, I talked to the video guy I know... and he highly reccomended that I get an internal drive. He said with an external firewire drive that you are using one bus and that you'll start dropping frames as well. So I don't really know what to think.[/quote]

no offense to your video guy friend but I have 2 300 gig firewire/usb drives and I haven't had 1 single dropped frame. I really don't know what he's talking about. I also bought a non name brand enclosure with segate drives. 3 months and working flawlessly. Maybe I'm just lucky I guess. :)
 
Re: Hard drive ?'s again

So you don't get any dropped frames when you're importing video to that external drive through the same firewire bus? Like, your camera is plugged into one port and camera is plugged into a port connected it it??? I think that's what he means. No offense taken by the way, I appreciate the info.
 
Re: Hard drive ?'s again

Well, the thing about FW that makes it even more superior to USB 2 is that with USB 2, that supposed "480 Mb/sec" burst rate gets divided between all the devices on the bus, but with FW, you can daisy-chain devices and each will be assigned its own 400Mb/sec pipeline. Could that be the answer? I'm sure someone older and wiser than I knows the answer...

But yeah, I've chained a DV camera to my comp through a FW HD quite a bit, and I've never dropped a frame.
 
Re: Hard drive ?'s again

Tony:

Yes you can use a PC harddrive on a Mac. Mac will read most PC formats but if you ever decide to use that same PC harddrive for critical applications on Mac, it would be better to reformat it to Mac beforehand.

You have 3 main data streams on your computer.
1) IDE
2) Firewire
3) USB 2

Think of each as a stream of data. Each is only so wide and so deep and can only carry so much water.

Your internal harddrive is usually on the IDE and your operating system is on that hardrive using that datastream. If you add another harddrive to the IDE, then TWO harddrives are competing for that same limited datastream whenever the processor needs to access data from both at once (which is often in video).

In my opinion, it's a better use of resources to add a harddrive to the firewire and/or USB if those datastreams are presently unused and available.

Luck,
Moe
 
Re: Hard drive ?'s again

good description moe... so ur thinking that with 2 internal hard drives they will be on the same bus and i will inevitably/possible drop frames anyways?

kappa22, what is this dasiy chain that u speak of?
 
Re: Hard drive ?'s again

Well first of all, 2 internal HD's won't necessarily be on the same bus. Motherboards have AT LEAST 2 IDE channels (usually 3 or 4 now), and each can support a master and a slave. So, if you assign your boot HD to the IDE channel 1 master and your DVD burner (or whatever optical drive you have) to the channel 1 slave, you can then assign your capture HD to the IDE channel 2 master, and then something else to the channel 2 slave. And anyway, I've never had a problem with dropping frames, even with 3 internals. If you're using a SATA-equipped machine, it will be able to handle it even more easily.

And Tony, all daisy chaining means is hooking a bunch of devices up in series to a single port (basically just hooked into each other like christmas lights). FireWire can support 63 sequential devices on a SINGLE port, each with a 400Mb/sec pipeline (assuming the rest of your system can handle this kind of bandwidth, which is almost certainly can't) and a USB 2.0 port can suppot 127 daisy-chained devices, all of which share the same 480 Mb/sec pipeline. An example of this would be to look at an external FireWire HD. Most have 2 6-pin FireWire ports, which means you could run one of those ports to your computer, and then plug another FireWire HD into the second port. The computer would then recognize each of the HD's seperately while still using only one port. You can imagine doing this 63 times... I sometimes run a DV camcorder into an external HD in this fashion and capture to the external with no dropped frames. This seems risky, since the video signal is traveling into the computer through the FireWire bus, being processed in your capture program, then being sent back along the same bus to the HD, all in real-time. But, due to FireWire's independent pipeline architecture, it actually handles it easily.

Hope this isn't too confusing...
 
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