Hey guys,
Could you all recommend a good external firewire drive for editing. I looked at the Lacie drives, but noticed that they only have 2mb cache. Are these good drives? Thanks,
Josh M.

Josh,

I use MAXTOR drives. I have external 120G and a 200G (7200RPM) firewire daisychained (They are also USB 2.0 compatible). They work great and I have had zero problems with them.

Cheers!

Derrick

Josh,

I have the external ADS Dual Link drive kit which allows you to easily swap hard drives into it (one at a time). I use 4 WD 120GB drives with 8mb cache and 4 40gb wd drives that I swap in and out of the ADS to give me more than a half terrabyte of storage that is easily accessible. Plus it makes backing up projects easy.


The Dual Link drive kit allows firewire or USB2.0 connections to the computer. You could even put a CDRW or DVDRW into it if you wanted to. This hardware plugged into my firewire connection and worked first time on my W2K machine.

1x60gb; 1x80gb & 2x120gb - All running at 7200. All daisey-ed up. All going through 1 x PCMCOA Maxtor dual firewire port. Gets me through the nite! - Often!!!

Grazie

I had (perhaps incorrectly) assumed that using external firewire drives while also capturing through firewire from the camera might cause dropped frame issues.

Are you all telling me that an external firewire drive is as good as an internal one when capturing and editing video footage?

Seems logical given transfer speeds and it would be easier to deal with but I'd like to hear first hand...

Cheers;
Eric

I've had no problems, however, I just read a post on Avid Xpress DV 3.5, the user had a problem. The user was plugging the camera into the firewire port on the drive itself.

I personally plug the camera into the card on the computer system and the firewire drive in it's own sperate port (However, the drives are daisy chained together). Capturing has been no problem.

Cheers!

I am using a Maxtor 80-GB FW drive and I connect my GL2 or ZR30 to the drive itself, and have never dropped a frame. I only have one Firewire port on my Dell notebook and so far have no reason to get another (through PCMCIA).

Jim

I've been using nothing but Seagate Barracudas in the last year or 2. Every Maxtor drive I've ever had started making noise, and then zonked out sooner than later.

I've had zero issues with the Seagate's, and I've been using them in file and application server that are on the go 24X7 also with no issues.

I have and use a lacie firewire hard drive and it works great. I am unsure on the total spec sheet for the drive I have but it has worked great so far and never had any problems with it and playback.

Rob:D

If your willing to buy the 250Gb Lacie model it has 8Mb of cache. I have this one and so far it seems to be working pretty good. I have had it unmounting on me for no reason a few times though in OSX. It hasn't happened enough times for me to track down where the problem lays yet. Has anyone else had this happen?