External hard drives?

[Patrick]

This week, I'm planning to buy an external hard drive for the first time. Preferably one that can hold 500GB. I have no choice as my main C drive is almost completely full with video footage (AVI clips) and I want to transfer those over to the new drive and store it seperately. What sort of specifications should I look for in a hard drive? What sort of connection is best for preserving quality during transfer of files - firewire, usb etc or other? Also, would SATA or non-SATA be better? Are there any other details I should look for?

[Andreas Wideroe]

Drives with both USB2 and Firewire will give you most flexibility. I only use USB, but many people prefer Firewire. New drives also come with e-SATA (external SATA), but you need a computer with these outputs and those are not so common yet.

Get a 7200rpm drive (S-ATA) with 500GB or perhaps even 750GB (doesn't cost much more).

We use Western Digital HDD a lot here, but there are many brands that will do the job just fine. Avoid "unknown" brands.

Make sure you don't store things you can't afford to loose on these drives. They will eventually break. Backup is always a good thing.

Have fun!
Andreas

[Angus]

I don't think connection type has much to do with "preserving quality during transfer of files"....but some are faster than others, especially when sustained high speed transfer is required.

I've actually gone the cheapest route possible. there's a device called "Easy IDE" which simply allows you to connect up any IDE device via USB....I had a spare HD lying around and I use it with Easy IDE as an external HD....there's an "Easy SATA" too. Since IDE and SATA drives are now so damned cheap it is childs play to add external storage that way.

[downix]

I don't think connection type has much to do with "preserving quality during transfer of files"....but some are faster than others, especially when sustained high speed transfer is required.

Actually it can have a lot to do with quality preservation. Some formats have better fault-correction than others, a main reason why Firewire is so popular. In addition, others have poor latency for access, which can cause a choke, a horrid thing to happen when dealing with critically timed footage.

I've actually gone the cheapest route possible. there's a device called "Easy IDE" which simply allows you to connect up any IDE device via USB....I had a spare HD lying around and I use it with Easy IDE as an external HD....there's an "Easy SATA" too. Since IDE and SATA drives are now so damned cheap it is childs play to add external storage that way.

I use Firewire due to the above reasons (it's fault-correction and it's thuroughput with minimal latency issues) but did much the same, bought a SCSI HD and put it in a firewire shell.

[Scotness]

Patrick if you are going to capture footage directly onto it (as opposed to transfer stuff off your C drive) then speed will be important - but USB2 or firewire will be up to it - as long as the drive inside is fast - which being a new drive it almost certainly will be.

One tip I found is that if you are getting it as a back up source and you are going with a USB connection - make sure you have USB2 on your PC not USB1 - USB1 will be ridiculously slow for large file transfers - something like 1 hour per gig - whereas USB2 I think is about 40 times that fast. I'm not sure of the exact figures but USB1 is just too slow for the practical back up of large files like AVI's.

I had 2 computers with USB1 on them - so I got 2 PCI USB2 cards and never looked back - about $30 each.

Also in our junkmail the other day I saw that Officeworks is selling 1TB external drives for about $299 or something - that's awesome value if they're doing it in your neck of the woods

Scot

[Angus]

Firewire is faster for sustained long periods of data transfer, but having said that I currently capture from my camcorder via firewire, but the HD I capture to is the external one on the USB adaptor...and I never drop frames.

[Patrick]

Scot: "Also in our junkmail the other day I saw that Officeworks is selling 1TB external drives for about $299 or something - that's awesome value if they're doing it in your neck of the woods"

1TB? I'm guessing that's one Tetrabyte? Woah!!!!

"One tip I found is that if you are getting it as a back up source and you are going with a USB connection - make sure you have USB2 on your PC not USB1"

Would firewire be a similar speed to USB2?

Andreas: "Make sure you don't store things you can't afford to loose on these drives. They will eventually break. Backup is always a good thing."

Oh darn. The reason why I wanted to transfer these AVI files to a hard drive was to back them up in case the burned DVDs 'fail' oneday. I have a number of CDs containing scanned still film images of mine and almost a quarter of those CDs can't be read by the computer anymore. So I'm wondering if a similar thing might happen to DVDs....

[downix]

"One tip I found is that if you are getting it as a back up source and you are going with a USB connection - make sure you have USB2 on your PC not USB1"

Would firewire be a similar speed to USB2?

On paper they're the same, but Firewire is a direct connection while USB is packet-based, which means the overhead can suck USB down a notch or two. But, they both do a good job.

[christoph]

there seems to be a lot of confusion about this..

the short answer is:
pretty much any hard drive that you can connect to your computer will be just fine..

the long answer is:
- inside there are always the same harddrives anyway, the main difference is the case.. what you want is good cooling, and a good controller chipset, unfortunately it takes a lot of research to get a perfect one (so unless you enjoy reading reviews, read the short answer above ;)
- there is no "quality difference" between different protocols (unless you have a bad controller, which can happen with all of them, but is very very unlikely)
- if you need performance, firewire will be much better (specially on old CPUs), but for normal playback or even editing DV USB will do. esata is best, but very few computers have them by default, so you need an extra pci card and you cant take it to friends places easily (unless they are USB ESATA combo). but again, for normal operation even USB is overkill.
- nearly all 3.5" disks are 7200rpm these days
- those drives will *not* break any faster then the internal ones, unless the case in utter crap (overheating). if anything, the controller will fail (happened to 3 of my 15+ cases over the past 10 years) but you can just take out the harddisk and put it into another case. the hard disk itself will very likely outlive your DVDs, specially if you copy the data over to a new drive every 5 years. for *really* important backups, copy them to two drives and cycle them so that one is always on a remote location (friends house, safe, whatever).

hope that didnt cause more confusion ;)
++ c.

ps: this is my favorite case atm:
http://tinyurl.com/2rp5d7

[gianni1]

Fastest: I've got a 500gb firewire 800 drive, works with usb 2 and firewire 400... It only connects to firewire 800 on my Apple Mac notebook which has two firewire connectors a 400 and a 800 as well as USB 2.

Practical, Economical, and Ugly: I've also use USB to IDE adaptors (and USB to SATA) that come with power supplies for 3 1/2" disk drives. That's to re use upgraded 40, 80, and 250Gb hard disks with old backups and movie files...

Small and Portable: External FW - USB 2 adaptors for 40GB 2" Hard Disks that fit in my laptop bag....

Cheap and Tiny: 4GB and 2GB flash USB memory sticks on lanyards

Gianni 8)

[christoph]

Fastest: I've got a 500gb firewire 800 drive

no, as said, fastest is esata for transfers...
scsi can be slightly faster for access time, but that's only really important for database servers, and the price per GB and interface hassle just make them a non-starter for home use.
not that t makes much of a difference unless you use it as scratch/swap disk
++ c.

[kentek]

If you are going to buy an external get a SATA. And, while you are at it you may as well get the biggest one available: 750GB or 1 TB.
Or buy the HD and buy a External Firewire case and install it yourself.

The reason for Firewire over USB is that if you are doing a big transfer in real time you don't want it to have to wait on an higher process.

You can get Firewire cards for around $20

I buy all my gear from NewEgg.com.

[super8man]

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6822101077

$100 for 500GB is about the norm...you can get cheaper too...just an example.

$140 for 750GB, internal drive, just add your own enclosure (firewire OR USB)

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6822152100

and

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6822136151

1TB for about $240...internal of course...

[Patrick]

Thankyou all. This is a wealth of information. Apart from Western Digital, are there any other brands to look out for? What about Lacie?

[onsuper8]

I have a Lacie 200GB which is due to be upgraded and I've been looking at their 1TB version. My existing Lacie has worked well for the last 3 years or so and my only criticism of it is that its a bit noisy - but I guess that that will have changed over the intervening time.