We're in the process of slowly switching over to XDCAM HD for everything. Currently I'm editing everything in SD, including the stuff we shoot with our 330. I'm looking to buy some external hard drives that will satisfy our future needs for editing XDCAM HD, or just HD in general. Here's two I've considered that seem to have a lot of bang for your buck...

http://www.buydig.com/shop/product.aspx?sku=WDG2TP10000

The RAID configuration is nice, but is firewire 800 fast enough?

http://www.pc4usa.com/DetailSales.asp?productID=1218&parCat=all&Scatn=29&Catn=6

The SATA connection gives me more speed, but will a regular 7200 RPM handle my needs?

Anyone found any reasonably cheap external drives they like for editing HD?

Thanks in advance!

Bob,

Refrain from USB2 or Fire wire connections. Only use eSATA for external disks.

I have edited 3 camera shoots with XDCAM footage at
HQ 1080 24p setting using a lacie 200 gig drive; with only a firewire
400 connection running Apple's FCP. The footage is basically better
quality HDV. Don't get me wrong, XDCAM footage blows away
basic HDV. A high speed RAID is great if you are sharing XDCAM
footage across a network with multiple users. A level 5 RAID is also
nice little security blanket with your edited footage for realtime protection.

Any firewire 800 drive will do the job nicely and some!

Bob,

Refrain from USB2 or Fire wire connections. Only use eSATA for external disks.


Even Firewire 800?

I've been using firewire drives for 8 years of editing. They work fine.

Modern ones only get sketchy when the data rate of your media approaches 30MB/sec. Native XDCAM HD is almost a sixth of that.

ALTHOUGH, if you have the means/inclination to go with eSATA, and having drive(s) that are not as compatible with other computers doesn't mean anything to you, then eSATA is the superior choice. Latency while scrubbing is lower, and multi-stream/camera edit operations are faster.

I have both. I only use the eSATA when I need to work with uncompressed HD (110MB/sec+).

On a Mac
USB 2.0 gives 15-20 MB/sec transfer speed
Firewire 400 gives 30-40 MB/sec
Firewire 800 gives 40-60 MB/sec
eSata gives 80-150 MB/sec

One stream XDCAM HD 35Mb/sec needs just 5 MB/sec.

A slow processor, lightweight videocard and lack of memory gives you more problems.

The only trouble comes when you want to copy many Gig's at once (as usual). Slow technology keeps you waiting for a while.

I think I'll go with the 1TB firewire 800 RAID 0 drive. I like how it also has firewire 400 and USB 2.0 options for more compatibility. And for $410 I don't think I could go wrong.

We've been cutting for almost a year now with XDCam HD 35mbps/ 24p using OWC Firewire 800 Raid 0 drives with zero problems. Aja System Tester Software says they are a hair faster than even our internal SATA drives (don't know if I buy that but I can't argue that they have been flawless so far...knock wood...)