Harddrive Space for Student?

D

designsunlimited1991

Member
Hi guys,

I'm looking for some advice on increasing my digital storage space. I'm a student filmmaker at Ithaca College and I recently purchased an HVX200A with Letus Ultimate adapter. I'm thrilled with the camera setup and wouldn't do my purchase differently; however, I'm balking at the storage space issues I now face.

This semester I'll be directing and co-producing a college TV show now going into it's second semester. At the beginning of last semester, my co-producer and I gained access to a business park building and built our own 26'x32' office set for our ensemble comedy about a college newspaper office. The first season was a great success, and for the 3 thirty-minute episodes we produced, my co-producer and I only sank in a little over $500 to create the show. If anyone's interested in checking out some of the show, you can visit www.ictv.org/ToAPulp or check out our facebook page at http://www.facebook.com/#!/pages/To-A-Pulp/146521018705291

Anyways, I wanted to take our production quality to the next level, mainly in camera and lighting, so I finally was able to purchase the camera setup described above. I mention this all because now we're looking at an unaffordable expense for more harddrive space. We keep duplicate copies of everything, and with 3 more thirty minute episodes to shoot, we don't have nearly enough space as is.

Does anyone know of a possible place where a student like me could acquire something for cheaper than the commercial rate? We currently give spots to our food sponsors at commercial breaks, but I'm not sure if that would be something a company would be interested in having.

Any ideas, I'm happy to hear them. Regardless, check out our show if you're curious. A much higher-res version will be hosted on Vimeo in the coming weeks, but for now it's streaming in low quality on ICTV.org.

Thanks in advance everyone!
-Nathan
 
Just a thought, but I know you can get a TB or 2 for About $100 at Best Buy. It's USB 2.0 only, but you could transfer everything from a FW drive to that one, and clear out the FW drive.

Not sure if $100 is too much, though.
 
No, 100 isn't too much at all. And I was certainly considering that. I'd have a system where all current editing would be done on firewire drives I own, and then once a portion of the episode is edited I'd move it to a USB drive. Lots of transferring though...
 
what about installing a hard drive rack in your computer or using a docking station with eSATA. then you could use smaller, less expensive internal hard drives for each project. the transfer rates will be faster than firewire.
 
Honestly, hard drive storage is one of the cheapest links in the production chain. Considering how much storage (both FW, USB, and eSATA) can be obtained for very little money, why worry about it? Keep an editing drive or two (FW800/eSATA), and then use inexpensive USB 2.0 drives for archival storage.
 
Perhaps I'm missing something, but HD storage goes as low as 4 cents per gigabyte if you shop.

I don't think you'll find a "student rate" lower than that.

Add a Voyager GT from OWC for $90.00 and you have a pretty cheap solution.
 
Thanks everyone for your help.

@David S, I didn't mean to come off cheap and I'm aware that hard drive space is even cheaper than last month. And yes, I'm aware that storage is one of the most inexpensive pieces of the production chain. However, having just spent over 5 grand on a camera package and needing to finance a TV show that has no budget (along with my own college tuition), any cost is significant, and I'm interested in saving wherever I can. 6-8 TB costs a significant chunk of change. Didn't mean to come off like I haven't done my research.

In the past, some student friends of mine have received storage space for free because it was a display model, a return, refurbished, or something along those lines. Having put in the work that my friends and I have already done, I thought I'd see if there was anyone out there looking to sponsor or donate to a production that has already established itself on its own zero budget.

On another note, I had not seen the OWC Voyager series, and that does seem to be a pretty neat option. Thanks for that tip...I'll look into that as well.

I appreciate all the advice! Thanks again.
 
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