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Internal/External Video Drive

Q

qpawn

macrumors member
Original poster
Feb 2, 2003
86
1
California
Howdy howdy,

I'm helping somebody choose a hard drive for professional video editing. The format is DV. The computer is a Dual 2.5Ghz G5 purchased about a year ago. Does anybody have any thoughts or suggestions about these three solutions... (quality/firewire speed/buffer size/drive noise? etc)

Solution A:
-------------------
$42.99 - Macally PHR-100AC USB2.0 (type B) + IEEE1394 External Enclosure Firewire 400
$132.00 - Seagate Barracuda 7200.8 300GB Serial ATA 7200RPM Hard Drive w/8MB Buffer
-------------------
$174.99

Solution B:
-------------------
$74.99 - Macally PHR-100ACB Firewire800/USB2.0 External Enclosure
$132.00 - Seagate Barracuda 7200.8 300GB Serial ATA 7200RPM Hard Drive w/8MB Buffer
-------------------
$206.99

Solution C:
-------------------
$229.00 - Maxtor OneTouch II 300GB 7200 RPM 16MB Cache Firewire 800 External Drive
-------------------
$229.00

I'm open to any other internal/external drive suggestions. Thanks! :)
 
FW 800 will make a large enough difference that its worth the extra money. Here are two more suggestions, from LaCie. I think their drive are better looking than any others and performance should be close to the same on those drives with the Maxtor FW800 that it probably won't be much of a consideration.

LaCie 250GB, $196
http://www.zipzoomfly.com/jsp/ProductDetail.jsp?ProductCode=174801

LaCie 300GB, $219
http://www.zipzoomfly.com/jsp/ProductDetail.jsp?ProductCode=174802

Here's a chart I made with some xBench results comparing FW 400, 800, and USB interface speeds:

ExternalHDtests.jpg



EDIT: Also, keep in mind that for a little less $$$, you could go for a 400GB internal SATA drive with 16MB cache... If portability won't be an issue, that may be a better solution. It'll likely be quieter as well.

400GB WD SATA, $205
http://www.zipzoomfly.com/jsp/ProductDetail.jsp?ProductCode=101254-316604

400GB Maxtor SATA, $199
http://www.zipzoomfly.com/jsp/ProductDetail.jsp?ProductCode=100721
 
Heb1228 said:
Here are two more suggestions, from LaCie. I think their drive are better looking than any others and performance should be close to the same on those drives with the Maxtor FW800 that it probably won't be much of a consideration.

LaCie 250GB, $196
http://www.zipzoomfly.com/jsp/ProductDetail.jsp?ProductCode=174801

LaCie 300GB, $219
http://www.zipzoomfly.com/jsp/ProductDetail.jsp?ProductCode=174802
Click to expand...

I worked with a client that had several of the Lacie d2 drives in the past and I had one break down on me. :rolleyes:

BUT Lacie had decent tech support and replaced the drive pretty fast. The guy I'm scouting hard drives for even mentioned getting a setup "like those people". :p

So maybe I'll roll the dice on a Lacie!

That's a great chart for comparing firewire speeds. I'm getting a FW800 capable drive for sure. Thanks! :)
 
Heb1228 said:
EDIT: Also, keep in mind that for a little less $$$, you could go for a 400GB internal SATA drive with 16MB cache... If portability won't be an issue, that may be a better solution. It'll likely be quieter as well.

400GB WD SATA, $205
http://www.zipzoomfly.com/jsp/ProductDetail.jsp?ProductCode=101254-316604

400GB Maxtor SATA, $199
http://www.zipzoomfly.com/jsp/ProductDetail.jsp?ProductCode=100721
Click to expand...

The computer has a two internal drives already. And I'm guessing that the guy would pay a little more for portability... although his setup won't move much in his editing studio. But some people like options. ;)
 
Really no need for an SATA drive or FW800 for just DV editing. FW400+7200RPM IDE drive is more than fast enough.

For constant video work (12+ hours a day 5+ days a week) I'm seeing people shy away from Lacie drives due to the failure rate. The speculated reason is insufficient cooling letting the drives overheat. I have a Lacie drive, but I use it as a back-up drive, not a media drive.

Or it could just be that Lacie's are more popular which means more of them are out their so there are more of them to fail.


Lethal
 
LethalWolfe said:
Really no need for an SATA drive or FW800 for just DV editing. FW400+7200RPM IDE drive is more than fast enough.

Lethal
Click to expand...

Yep, tho' I was thinking FW800 & eSATA for above and beyond DV, but then the drive could have died by then I guess. Nice to have some options.
 
LethalWolfe said:
Really no need for an SATA drive or FW800 for just DV editing. FW400+7200RPM IDE drive is more than fast enough.
Click to expand...
I'm not sure if I agree with this... Even though a single DV feed doesn't saturate the interface, sometimes I'll have a couple media files being read off the drive. Also, scrubbing is noticeably more responsive FW800 vs. 400, IMO.

Also there's just the general principle that its best to have as few bottlenecks/highest transfer rates throughout the entire system.

As for the failure rate, I think they use Maxtor drives, but the heat issue could make your comments true. I don't know how to say without some stats to look at. I just know a lot of people around here swear by LaCie. I've had a 250 and a 300GB drive and not had problems with either one. For whatever thats worth.
 
Danksi said:
Yep, tho' I was thinking FW800 & eSATA for above and beyond DV, but then the drive could have died by then I guess. Nice to have some options.
Click to expand...

Future proofing is fine, but anything above and beyond DV or HDV is gonna require a nice chunk of changes in upgrades. I just see an SATA drive + FW800 as overkill for DV and not enough for uncompressed. So why spend the extra money on it?

Heb1228 said:
I'm not sure if I agree with this... Even though a single DV feed doesn't saturate the interface, sometimes I'll have a couple media files being read off the drive. Also, scrubbing is noticeably more responsive FW800 vs. 400, IMO.
Click to expand...
DV is about 36MB/s and FW400 is, well, 400MB/s so, even including overhead, it would take more than a couple of DV streams to choke that pipe. I've never used the SATA/FW800 combo before so I can't comment on it, but in terms of general DV media responsiveness a G5 hooked into an Xserve RAID didn't feel noticeably snappier than my 4yr old dual Gig Quicksilver running off of IDE/FW400 drives. I used to use a P3 900mhz PC w/two 30gig, 5400RPM IDE drives for storage and never dropped a frame because of my drives. Granted back then you had to give your drives more TLC, but recently I worked off a IDE/FW400 drive that was pretty much completely full (so full I had to delete the render files to create more space) and I never dropped a frame or had a storage related slow down I can remember.

Also there's just the general principle that its best to have as few bottlenecks/highest transfer rates throughout the entire system.
Click to expand...
There's also the general principle of cost/bennifet. ;) Slapping $10,000 worth of storage and I/O cards/BOBs would certainly improve the bottlenecks, but I don't think the money would be well spent. ;)

As for the failure rate, I think they use Maxtor drives, but the heat issue could make your comments true. I don't know how to say without some stats to look at. I just know a lot of people around here swear by LaCie. I've had a 250 and a 300GB drive and not had problems with either one. For whatever thats worth.
Click to expand...
I'm not sure if Lacie uses one brand exclusively or switches brands depending on market situations. I know Lacie is very popular which is why I'm not sure if their talked about failure is because their drives have an unusually high failure rate by percentage or it it's just because there are a lot of Lacie drives out there which means there are just more of them to fail. And maybe there was just a bad batch that went out. Anyone remember the IBM deskstar (aka Deathstar) days a few years ago?

Just my 2 cents.

Lethal
 
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