Just to let everyone know that on my Toshiba A5 laptop I have been using a 200Gb Maxtor 3.5in external drive thru USB or Firewire as capture/storage for camcorder outputs.

However, one drag of the Maxtor is that one needed also the powerpack unit and wall socket to make it work.

Just got a 2.5in external USB drive in a leather(fake!) pouch giving me 80Gb thru USB2. These drives are fantastic; smaller than 3.5 inch, quiet, cool, no extra power needed, able to fit in carrybags with the laptop. So now I have the unit with the laptop continuously and can continue Vegasing wherever I am.

The only drawback is diskspace, but I connect the Maxtor periodically and suck off the excess captures for later work in Vegas MS Platinum.

My next trick will be to attempt real-time capturing using the camcorder/ilink/laptop/usb drive.

Live capture works fine even on lazy older laptops - I tested a 1GHz/512 IBM Thinkpad with a 2.5 inch 100 GB Samsung USB hard @ 4200 rpm and it works like a charm.

Gentlemen,

Thanks for sharing!! That is a good bit of information to keep in mind!!

Curiously, when you are shooting direct to capture, where do you keep the laptop and usb drive? Do you have a platforme mount for the tripod or such??