Hard Drives and Playback

M

morgan_moore

Major Contributor
Im running out of space !

As a photographer Ive always had a pretty slick workflow

file by date, put my images onto an external HD make a copy of same

---

Now ve got 4 or five motion projects on the go, each is 150gb with all the ProsRes files

This basically fills my onboard HD

I would move them onto external HDs but im finding I cant get a smooth play off and external HD so can only edit on my main disc on the pooter

my mac is not too new 2gb 6gram, Power PC with a 1TB on board HD

DO I need to upgrade my mac or are there faster external HDs I could buy, maybe firewire drives ?

Basically I need about 2TB of space that I can edit on

S
 
What kind of external drives are you using? Consider that you can get real time playback of the material from THE CAMERA off an SDHC card. It shouldn't take much to get real time playback off a decent hard drive.
 
Im using Iomega , maxtor different brands - USB drives - I have 19 (X2copies) now (!)

Im talking about playback during editing BTW

TIA

SMM
 
morgan_moore said:
Im using Iomega , maxtor different brands - USB drives - I have 19 (X2copies) now (!)

Im talking about playback during editing BTW

TIA

SMM
Click to expand...

Your problem is USB, at the minimum use Firewire as it is faster than USB. Essentially if you were editing HD footage on a external you would want a firewire 800 or even better an eSata. If your computer only has firewire 400 use that, as USB is not intended for HD Editing.
 
Indded - thats roughly what I was thinking buy one badboy 1 or 2 TB external HD to keep my 'live' projects on - of course I back them up externally too

'about this mac says'


======
FireWire Bus:

Maximum Speed: Up to 800 Mb/sec
======

Does that mean it is FW800 ?

Also the Mac has a second built in HD, 250mb - maybe I should bin that and put the new disc inside the mac - I guess thats a fast connection - I can edit fine on the current 250Gb internal disc

Thanks

SMM
 
morgan_moore said:
Indded - thats roughly what I was thinking buy one badboy 1 or 2 TB external HD to keep my 'live' projects on - of course I back them up externally too

'about this mac says'


======
FireWire Bus:

Maximum Speed: Up to 800 Mb/sec
======

Does that mean it is FW800 ?

Also the Mac has a second built in HD, 250mb - maybe I should bin that and put the new disc inside the mac - I guess thats a fast connection - I can edit fine on the current 250Gb internal disc

Thanks

SMM
Click to expand...


I'm assuming you have a Mac Pro since you said you have space to put another HD in? If so do that , as an internal drive 90% of the time will be faster than an external because it is connected directly to the computers Motherboard.
 
I dont know what it is - its not that new..

It does have a second drive - 250GB - too small but plays well - I think ill bin that and get something else dropped in

S

=====
odel Name: Power Mac G5
Model Identifier: PowerMac7,3
Processor Name: PowerPC G5 (2.2)
Processor Speed: 2 GHz
Number Of CPUs: 2
L2 Cache (per CPU): 512 KB
Memory: 6 GB
Bus Speed: 1 GHz
Boot ROM Version: 5.1.8f8
Hardware UUID: 00000000-0000-1000-8000-000D932F7C9E
======
 
Buy an eSATA hard drive. I have a Lacie Quadra 2TB with eSATA. You can get 4GB RAID varients and stuff now, excellent product - never overheats and is reliable and has 3 years warranty.
 
Cieloent said:
Your problem is USB, at the minimum use Firewire as it is faster than USB. Essentially if you were editing HD footage on a external you would want a firewire 800 or even better an eSata. If your computer only has firewire 400 use that, as USB is not intended for HD Editing.
Click to expand...

Yes and no...

USB 2.0 is faster than Firewire 400 at 480 mb/s vs 400 mb/s. So USB 2.0 > Firewire 400.

Firewire 800 is actually 780 mb/s so it is faster again.

But then, eSATA is 3 GB/s so it's WAAAAAY faster than FIrewire.

Then there's USB 3, at 6 GB/s.

Firewire 400 < USB 2.0 < Firewire 800 < eSATA < USB 3.0

Then again, I've edited DVCProHD off USB 2.0 smoothly with no problems. I'd worry first about getting a 7200rpm drive, then worry about what interface it uses. A USB 3.0 drive does you no good if it's only 5400rpm.
 
Jester2138 said:
Yes and no...

USB 2.0 is faster than Firewire 400 at 480 mb/s vs 400 mb/s. So USB 2.0 > Firewire 400.

Firewire 800 is actually 780 mb/s so it is faster again.

But then, eSATA is 3 GB/s so it's WAAAAAY faster than FIrewire.

Then there's USB 3, at 6 GB/s.

Firewire 400 < USB 2.0 < Firewire 800 < eSATA < USB 3.0

Then again, I've edited DVCProHD off USB 2.0 smoothly with no problems. I'd worry first about getting a 7200rpm drive, then worry about what interface it uses. A USB 3.0 drive does you no good if it's only 5400rpm.
Click to expand...



100% wrong on thinking USB 2.0 is faster then Firewire, you better go do some more research. basically USB 2.0 can reach 480, BUT it is never constant like Firewire. Also USB uses a Master and Slave connection which is another reason why it never worked good for audio and hd editing while Firewire communicates on equal levels.
http://www.usb-ware.com/firewire-vs-usb.htm

You can do more google searches if you want, it doesn't matter. I basically have studied this for the past 10 years of my life day and night so I know what I'm talking about. Also please don't let me debunk your 7200 rpm theory either as their is more than just throwing a faster rpm hd in your system that will make it faster.

As a matter of fact there are 5400 rpm drives that are faster than 7200 rpm drives as well. Also forget about USB 3.0 for now as it is still not ready.


Basically an Internal HD will be faster than an external, now if you have an external in a raid setup on a powerful esata connection then it can be faster than an internal hd. Basically just do some reading around the net and you will see exactly what I'm talking about.

peace
 
i'm with Cieloent on this one. buying an external USB drive is regrettable in my case when i have a FW800 port collecting dust. I wanted to save some coin, but it's just not giving me the peformance i need. Now i have to buy a new EHD, and probably a can of air for the port...live and learn!
 
Hello!

If you are serious about having persistent online storage and don't want to hassle with external single drives, buy yourself a NAS.

For example, Netgear NVX will give you 70MB/sec troughput and will store maximum 6TB of data when kitted out with 4 x 2TB drives. It's also using RAID-5 (a version of it) so it's immune to single drive crash. You acces it trough a network so you can have several workstations sharing the same storage.
 
Grunf said:
Hello!

If you are serious about having persistent online storage and don't want to hassle with external single drives, buy yourself a NAS.

For example, Netgear NVX will give you 70MB/sec troughput and will store maximum 6TB of data when kitted out with 4 x 2TB drives. It's also using RAID-5 (a version of it) so it's immune to single drive crash. You acces it trough a network so you can have several workstations sharing the same storage.
Click to expand...

I have a nas to run my business server, I dont like them as a backup solution because they are vunerable to flood, fire theft

6tb is nothing like my archive which is now 19TB and growing by .5 tb per month easily

AFAIK double location external HD are the only cost effective means of handling such data

Im getting a 2TB installed into my mac so I will have 2TB for live projects work in progress, all the raw will be stored offline too

hopefully this will prvide a good balance of cost, playability and data secruity

a nas would be better but would not replace the offline HDs and cost more - paid work could lead me in that way

S
 
morgan_moore said:
I have a nas to run my business server, I dont like them as a backup solution because they are vunerable to flood, fire theft

6tb is nothing like my archive which is now 19TB and growing by .5 tb per month easily

AFAIK double location external HD are the only cost effective means of handling such data

Im getting a 2TB installed into my mac so I will have 2TB for live projects work in progress, all the raw will be stored offline too

hopefully this will prvide a good balance of cost, playability and data secruity

a nas would be better but would not replace the offline HDs and cost more - paid work could lead me in that way

S
Click to expand...


I do storage for living. I consider a NAS as means of online storage which can survive a dead disc or two (if using RAID-6), but not a backup. Until data is replicated somewhere else (tape, another disc), I consider it "not backed up".

Regarding your 19TB, that's not a big deal but will cost more. I don't know what your budget is so I played safe and took up cheapest solution (Netgear NVX).

If you have the means, you can check Nexsan SATAbeast. It will swallow 84TB per 4U rack native and you can slave it with another SATAbeast for off-site mirroring (giving true redundancy). It's troughput is fast enough to work with raw RGB. But it costs a bit more per TB than simple 2TB SATA drives ;) There are lot's of solutions in-between.
 
Im poor

I now have 3TB on my mac that can play video and will contiune to backup using pairs of External HDs in two locations

Its not live backup just a backup of the Raw footage

S
 
NAS - SCHMAS - forget all that stuff for video editing.

The problem is, with more projects you will always need more storage - period.

Best bang for the buck solution is a external eSATA dock.
You buy cheap bare hard disks and just pop them in when you need them, like a big floppy disk.

No need to pay for an enclosure, fan, AC-adapter and so on every time you need more space.

Check this out:

http://www.ciao.co.uk/sr/q-sata+docking

http://gopaultech.com/blog/2009/04/thermaltake-blacx-esata-hard-drive-dock/

http://www.techfresh.net/dual-external-usb-sata-drive-dock/


Frank
 
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