Hard Drive specs?

KSC

KSC

Active member
I'm sorry to be a pest, but I've searched and have been reading threads for the past 5 hours and I just can't seem to get the answer I need. I know nothing of hard drives, nothing. eSata, RAID, Seagate, I'm completely confused. I just spent my weekend reading the entire 438 page manual for Vegas. My brain will not accept anymore information.

-This is my computer. I have upgraded the RAM to it's max of 2G. Other than that, it is completely stock as listed in the link I provided above.

-I will be editing on Vegas Pro 8 (I have the trial downloaded as of now)

-My camera is the DVX100b

-Will be shooting mostly in 24pa

-Looking to spend $300 or less. Will sacrifice size for quality.

-This is for independent use. My workload is NOT heavy in any way. I'm sure I don't need a Tb or anything close to it.

I'm not looking for to record directly onto the HD. I plan on using tapes like normal. After reading so many threads about having a dedicated HD just for capturing, I figured it was a smart idea to invest in one. I just need to know exactly what specs I'm looking for.

I've seen so many conflicting statements I don't know what to think. Some say don't get anything bigger than 300G while others claim they have 2T. Some mention to get one with USB 2.0, but I thought Firewire was the transfer method of choice? Speaking of which, I read that getting a hard drive with firewire 800 is optimal, but I thought the DVX only supported 400...???

The only thing I know for certain is that it should be 7200rpm.

Any help, would be so appreciated.
 
KSC,

You may have better luck finding what you are looking for in the Vegas/Premiere forums. Non the less, my system is a core 2 Quad 6600, 4G Ram, Geforce 8500 Gt 1G - 3x 320 G hard drives set in a raid 0-1.

In a nutshell, the hard drives are set up: 1 for operating software and programs only. The other two are mirrored so it only shows 320G not 640.

This drive is for capturing media files and is mirrored so that in the event 1 of those hard drive fail, I can throw in another and it will rebuild. I was going to have a raid 0 only but I thought I would just go this way for a little added protection while I am working on jobs. Once the job is done & approved, I save a copy on DVD, the master shooting tape and then wipe the drive and get ready for any other jobs.

As far as the Firewire 800 or 400 goes, it is just connecting the external hard drive to your laptop but you are still capturing with the dvx to your laptop not the external, the files(I assume) are just going to be sent there.

Do not go USB, Firewire is you best bet. esata will not work unless you have an esata port on your laptop. Firewire will work fine for you.
 
Thanks for the reply Steve. I'm not gonna worry about having a back-up at this point. I just wanted to have a single drive to capture that was dedicated only to that application and nothing else. No firewall, OS, antivirus, and ran at the desired 7200rpm.

So without sounding too ignorant, I'm to assume that I would need TWO firewire ports on my PC in order to benefit from having an external HD simply to capture with? One to connect the camera to the PC and another to connect the HD. The Camera itself is only capable of 400, but the PC will transfer the footage to the HD at 800 (if the HD is capable of such speeds)? In otherwords the footage would be transfering THROUGH the laptop then into the HD, not directly to it?

If I only have one firewire port and that is being used by the camera itself, then I would be forced to connect the HD via USB?

Sorry if that's confusing, but that's about how perplexed I am with the whole thing.
 
Most external HDD don't go though the firewire port, they go through the USB 2.0 port, but even if they spin at 7,200PRM, they are still WAY slower than an internal HDD because of the limited bandwidth of the USB2.0. And that is what eSATA is. It is only on the newer motherboards, so I doubt you have a eSATA slot, but that makes external HDD just as fast as internal HDD.
A 500GB external USB2.0 HDD costs about $150, and you can get 1T for $275.

Btw, That HAS to be an old laptop, or you paid very little for it. (I hope, cause those stats aren't too hot. :P)
 
KSC said:
I'm to assume that I would need TWO firewire ports on my PC
.
Click to expand...

Not at all.

With the system you have, grab a firewire external HD. Capture with the cam to laptop via firewire. Then unplug the cam from the port and plug in the external HD. Then tranfer the video files over.

The main problem is you have a 5400 rpm internal on that laptop so editing video files whether or not your files are on interal HD or external, your editing will definately slow down.

My personal recommendation in this case would be to skip the external and getter a faster machine with a 7200 rpm hard drive ( if you can afford it), as you are really just running around in circles getting an external cause the only true benefit in this case would be storage capacity only, not speed.

Steve
 
Ohhhh okay, that makes sense. I thought I had to have them both plugged in at the same time. Thanks for your help. I think I'll just go with This one for now.

wrek: LOL, it's like 3 years old I think. I don't think it was $975 or so on sale. Before that I had an old school iMac that I wanted to punch in the face on a daily basis. This one is a supercomputer in comparison! ;)

Btw, after all that worrying. I tried to capture last night with the current laptop and it's regular old internal HD and was completely successful. No dropped frames or problems of any kind. Granted I only captured about 5 mins, but it was a relief that I can proceed without spending any more money. I've spent a lot of money in the past month! Getting a new computer simply isn't an option.
 
You will not have any problems editing DVX footage with your machine, or with an external HDD, whether firewire or USB 2.0.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top