Laptop for HVX editing, HDD question!

B

benandaim

Well-known member
Hi all,

I've been hunting around for a decent laptop to use with my HVX and i'm thinking of going with the Dell inspiron 1520 w/maxed specs. The buying options only permit one HDD though. I was wondering how you would work with this. Would you partition the 200gb 7200rpm into a section for apps and a section for renders??? I'm used to using mutiple HDD on my desktop. Any advice would be helpful.


Thanks.

Ben :thumbsup:
 
I would use an external drive for editing on. If your'e at a desk, just get an external fw800 3.5 drive. If you need to be portable use 2.5 drive for editing on. (I found decent enclosures at eshop.macsales.com and then just get a decent drive at newegg) It's not advisable to use your system hd for editing. That being said, I'm more in the Mac world and just tried out a 15 inch macbook pro with a 2.6ghz intel core 2 duo, 4 gigs of ram and I played around with some 720 24pn footage from the HVX on fcp 5.1.4 and it edited very smoothly. Granted I didn't try any fancy compositing or compressing, but it seemed to be running much easier than when I cut on my powerbook g4 (Which can edit 720 24p footage also)
 
I go for the external drives too....i got a couple of Maxtor 3 ...fw800 runs fine, even USB2 does the job for most of the tasks..
 
Thanks guys,

I have a Lacie 250gb 7200rpm (USB 2.0) which i use for backups. I could use that in the meantime. Then i'll get a Firewire 800 drive.
 
did you end up buying the Dell inspiron 1520? It looks pretty good but i was told you should not buy Dell because they use second rate parts??
 
Yeah I did buy it it.

The thing is i've sold PC's for about the last 6 years and i'll telll you this, Dell might use second rate parts sometimes but for the money there was nothing that could touch the 1520 in AU. I googled this model extensively and it seemed to get rave reviews.

I did the find the Nvidia 8600m GT 256 card had been detuned a bit in the memory dept. (DELL model only) but it still remains to be a good card.

I think if you spend a of cash with Dell you'll get something decent. I have to admit i never thought i'd own a DELL....lol.

Ben
 
Here are the specs if anyones's interested (1520 inspiron):

2.4ghz Core 2 Duo T7700
15.4" 1680 x 1050
3gb 667mhz RAM (didn't get 4gb as 32bit windows OS's don't recognize it)
200gb 7200rpm SATA
Nvdia 8600m GT 256mb (dedicated)
Sound Blaster Audigy HD
9 cell battery
Vista Premium (which i'll change back to XP pro)
 
thanks for that info.

Been thinking of getting a toshiba U300/302 for a while now. theyre worth about $1990AUD. but if your happy with using a dell then i might have a further look into it. Best start reading some of those reviews!

cheers
 
Hey,

I checked out that Toshi, I only payed $2370 for the Dell total, when you consider the quicker processor, more ram, bigger & higher res screen & performance HDD alone you can see the value. I really like Toshiba and i sold them for many years, but the 1520 represents great value for using the HVX.

Good luck & thanks for your info.

Ben
 
That Dell doesn't support FW800 as I read it, you'd need the adapter cable and you'd be stuck running at sub-USB 2.0 speeds. I haven't seen a PC laptop support FW800 natively, either.

USB 2.0 caps at 440 Mbps, FireWire at 394/787 Mbps, NAS at 1000 Mbps, eSATA at 1500/3000 Mbps. With that rig I'd figure you'd want a NAS drive. That way it works with all OSes and hardware, plus it's the fastest transfer your laptop can handle without an eSATA adapter.
 
fw800 is firewire 800, it's the other firewire that's faster and has a different connector.

the good thing about firewire over USB, whether it's 400 or 800, is that it has its own chip for dealing with the data, so it doesn't matter what your computer is doing when you're transferring files. USB is CPU-dependant, so to get maximum transfer speed off of a USB transfer, you have to let your computer sit, or else it'll slow down.
 
I could get a PCI express FW800 card for around $100, don't know how well they work.
 
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if you're using firewire 800, why not go with the platform 800 was made for, I edit with a powerbook, I also drop my p2 cards right to it. its an old 1.25 ghz I use lacie trip interface drives.
 
I edit off a mac book pro and a mac pro. I'm looking for a really nice external HD to just edit off of and swap between computers. I would be doing FW800. My big concern is if there is a big difference between 5200 and 7200?

I'm looking at the G-raid mini http://www.g-technology.com/Products/G-RAID-mini.cfm

I can get a 320GB 5200 or a 200GB 7200RPM both for the same price.

Is it definitely worth going 7200RPM? Would this also be good for editing on my desktop? Is the only difference with the G-raid and G-raid mini the price and size because its not portable. No performance difference?
 
I assume you mean 7200 RPM or 5400 RPM? Faster spins mean faster reads, mostly in random access times. I would only buy a 5400 RPM drive for use in a laptop, because they take less power to run.
 
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