Good External HD for Video Editing

Website · Post by **BigBeaner** » Wed Jan 17, 2007 8:05 am

I've always had a problem with external HDD, i went the whole enclosure and internal HD route, lost a few drives from that, now I recently bought a My Book Premuim for my PC and it just doesn't cut it, I'm getting weird glitches in my video and I just can't have it, I specifically bought this to handle volume of work for clients, let alone my recent 16mm shorts. My theory is that the drive is just too slow and causing this weird colored like swatches to come on random frames. I'm using it as USB because I had a lot of problems using it as firewire regardless of having all the right drivers. This is the drive here: http://www.westerndigital.com/en/produc ... anguage=en

So if anyone has any suggestions for my dilemma or perhaps can point me in the right direction in an external HD that'll work, then thanks. If not well, if you got a HD horror story why not let it loose here.

Splicing film was so much more relaxing and easier than dealing with computers. I just get the feeling you can't just be a filmmaker anymore, but a website designer, a computer expert let alone know how to do compression, etc let alone movie making.

Post by **VideoFred** » Wed Jan 17, 2007 9:20 am

I have an external Iomega USB2 , 7000 rpm.
Plug and play... no drivers needed (XP)
It needs an external power supply.
It works like a charm..
It even plays huge huffyuv AVI files at real speed without any problem.

Fred.

Post by **vidwerk** » Wed Jan 17, 2007 1:37 pm

You may wish to check out the LaCie Extreme D2 triple interface drives.
Pretty reliable and well built. Firewire drives can be problematic depending on the chipset in the enclosure. "Oxford 911" chipset are the best. Stay away from "prolific" brand chipset.

vidwerk.

Post by **mattias** » Wed Jan 17, 2007 1:53 pm

there should be no problem just playing back video from an external hd, usb or fw, brand or noname, big or small, unless you're editing uncompressed in which case you need a raid system. i think your problem lies elsewhere.

this said when you start pushing it with multiple streams and realtime effects you'll start seeing differences. in that case firewire is much better than usb, the oxford chipsets are indeed great, for me maxtor has been more reliable than lacie, and they're less noisy too.

/matt

Post by **Uppsala BildTeknik** » Wed Jan 17, 2007 1:59 pm

Firewire is the way to go, I use Lacie firewire 800 external disks for exporting stuff and later outputting to miniDV.
USB is shit. Crap, bad, useless, worthless, problematic, .... I canÃ‚Â´t come up with more words. If I could, I would. ;)

For editing I use internal RAID5, safe and fast enough.

Post by **VideoFred** » Wed Jan 17, 2007 2:14 pm

Uppsala BildTeknik wrote: USB is shit. Crap, bad, useless, worthless, problematic, .... I canÃ‚Â´t come up with more words. If I could, I would. ;)

Haha!

But I was suggesting USB because Beaner have had all these troubles with his fire wire HD.

On my HP pavillion the Iomega USB HD works fine... No problems whatsoever.... Could it be that the use of an external power supply is more stable?

Fred.

Website · Post by **BigBeaner** » Wed Jan 17, 2007 3:21 pm

Ah thanks guys so far, just to clear it up I actually had problems using this drive both firewire and usb, it worked fine up to know with USB but these glitches, I might post a frame later on today, it's the oddest thing.

i think your problem lies elsewhere.

I agree. Still trying to figure out what it is exactly. It's the weirdest thing, my slower laptop internal HD handles the video fine but soon as I transfer to the my book, it all goes to hell.

YouTube · Post by **Andreas Wideroe** » Wed Jan 17, 2007 4:00 pm

I use these drives (see link below) and I only use USB 2.0. Works great, no problems and I can capture directly from a firewire camera or vtr to this external usb 2.0 hdd on my WinXP systems.

http://www.psdata.no/ps.asp?it=128758&mlevel=060600

Post by **yolia** » Wed Jan 17, 2007 8:21 pm

I've also had problems with USB 2.0. I have a LaCie 250 Gig external harddrive with both USB and Firewire. The USB is crap. The firewire is flawless.

Post by **mattias** » Wed Jan 17, 2007 8:27 pm

i've never had any problem with usb, i use them for backup and such since they're often cheaper, but for video editing and post production they're not the best choice. they don't have a guaranteed throughput so dropouts under heavy load are much more likely, plus they put load on the processor so you get fewer realtime streams and effects.

/matt

Website · Post by **BigBeaner** » Sat Jan 20, 2007 7:37 am

Okay just for an update, thanks for all your contributions, I was going to go for a LaCie but the store I went to had a Maxtor III One Touch 320 gb firewire 400 and USB 2.0 so I got that. I think it was pretty much the fastest thing they had. Well, here's the interesting thing, this drive too was failing when I was using it as firewire but as soon as I switched to USB it's been working pretty fast, no "video noise", and only jitters if I move my mouse or something. SO, it's our belief right now that there's got to be something wrong with my pc's drivers for firewire, in addition to the other drives slow disk read/write speed. What a headache, we'll see what happens for now.

Post by **Uppsala BildTeknik** » Sat Jan 20, 2007 11:17 am

AAArrgghhhh!! Iknow the feeling...

:evil:

"There is something wrong with my computer, but nobody knows what it might be" must be one of the worst things that can happend...

Last time I kicked out and upgraded a completely new (well 6 months old) computer because it was behaving stupid. Nothing was wrong with it, all tests worked like a wonder (in not finding any problems) but when it came to editing... it had problems... 8O

Website · Post by **BigBeaner** » Sat Jan 20, 2007 6:46 pm

Ahh exactly! I would toss this if I could, unfortunately I'm going to need it for a little while longer.

Post by BK » Sat Jan 20, 2007 8:35 pm

The problem could be your firewire card, does yours have the TI (Texas Instruments) chip which is recommended by most NLE software companies.

Bill

Post by **mediabay** » Wed Jan 24, 2007 11:35 pm

I'd suggest an External SATA array instead of Firewire. I had just upgraded my FCP system with an exteral SATA drive set and 2 500gb drives and the next day one of my LaCie drives stopped working. Fortunately I had transffered the files to the SATA. Must have known its days were numbered.

Here is where I picked up my drive enclosure and card from: http://www.firmtek.com/seritek/seritek-2en2/
The enclosure and card were $300.
I found 500GB SATA drives on NewEgg for $150 each. This is a Terrabyte of online storage for $600. Plus I can add more storage for only the cost of the dirves and a $20 enclosure.