Which External Hard Drive?

diego1235467

diego1235467

Well-known member
Can you guys post links to some good hard drives for editing GH1 HD footage? You guys have told me what to look for, but I'm having a hell of a time. I would really appreciate this, as I just got my first paycheck ever, and I'm excited to start upgrading all my video stuff.

I'm willing to spend $80-100 on this, but the cheaper the better, as long as it's good quality and fits my needs. If you want to recommend one that's more than $100, go ahead and I'll consider it.
 
2 things, first a single drive provides no protection of data, second how much space do you need?

Buying a cheap small drive 500GB or so may work now for price and convenience with little growing room, then you have to buy more later and it costs more overall. My suggestion, look at OWC, they sell a lot of very high quality products. Find a 2 drive enclosure and run as a mirrored raid. Anything less and no guarantees in my mind. I think $300 is what you need to spend to accomplish that.

Cheap usually means off brand with poor reliability. Not the best choice. But if you must, here's plenty to choose: http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/category/category_tlc.asp?CatId=136
 
You probably won't listen (no one ever does until it happens to them), but make sure that any files you care about are stored on at least two separate hard drives at all times.

Over the years I have had about a dozen hard drives fail on me. It's not if it will happen, it's when, and whether you'll still have your data.

Currently, I have a 1TB hard drive to use while editing videos (a G-Drive connected via FireWire 800). Then I have two matching 2TB SATA hard drives to use for backups. I plug them into one USB/SATA hard drive dock, but never at the same time. I also keep those two drives in different locations and rotate them. The general idea is that even if the house was hit by lightning and all the electronics were fried, at least there would be one or two hard drives that still had my data on them.
 
Can you please suggest specific external hard drives? I'm not looking for tips on how to use it, at least not yet. I just want to know which ones would work for me.

I just want to edit HD footage on my macbook pro, but my hard drive is already full, making for awful playback.
 
My membership warehouse sells several Western Digital and Seagate models. Pick any TWO and offload the stuff you aren't working on. Note carefully photonashville's advice about diversity in backup.

Hard drives are commodity items. It is like asking for specific recommendations for tomatoes.
 
Not to nag, but OS drives really need consistent free space for scratch and resources. Keep OS drives at 50-70% capacity. I know it's the point of getting an external, but it's just a reminder to think of it long before you reach that point.

If you want suggestions of specific drives, I would say raise your budget three fold:
This is a very good option if you will always be plugging in the external to AC: http://eshop.macsales.com/shop/Mercury-EliteAL-Pro-RAID
I own one of them, bought it empty and added my own drives that I had plenty of already. Equal alternative: http://eshop.macsales.com/shop/firewire/usb/raid_1/Gmax

These are excellent single drive boxes, but I stress buying two for data protection:
http://eshop.macsales.com/shop/firewire/1394/USB/EliteAL/eSATA_FW800_FW400_USB

If you want a bus powered unit, these would be great, but are notebook drives inside so you lose the volume to price ratio there:
http://eshop.macsales.com/owcpages/guardianmax_mini.html

You have to choose, do you want FW800 or FW400, since some are double, triple or quad interface. But the consistency is that $200-300 is the starting point for data safety and some capacity.

diego1235467 said:
Can you please suggest specific external hard drives? I'm not looking for tips on how to use it, at least not yet. I just want to know which ones would work for me.

I just want to edit HD footage on my macbook pro, but my hard drive is already full, making for awful playback.
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