External Harddrive,,esata or firewire or usb at DVinfo.net

Paul Kellett · January 17th, 2008, 02:48 PM

I'm thinking of getting an external harddrive,does anyone have any opinions or experience of either firewire or esata connections ? I presume usb isn't really good enough for editing.
I'm thinking of getting the Seagate Freeagent Pro 750.
Thanks,Paul.

Andy Wilkinson · January 17th, 2008, 03:12 PM

I use numerous large USB external drives (mostly Seagate, and some Samsung sourced drives) and find it works pretty well and is very flexible...things start to slow up a little when projects get very long (1 hr plus) and complicated though (many tracks and lots of FX's etc.)

I use Vegas 7e and do all my editing in 1080 HD (from HC1 and V1). I think the limitation is my PC processor as much as anything else (in a Dell Dimension 4600 with 3.0GHz Pentium 4 HT and 2.5GB of RAM) as it's only slightly better if I put the files on one of my two internal hard drives and work off that (each only 80GB...need to swap my Drive D for a 500GB sometime!)

For what I do it all works really very well though. However, I think the general opinion is go for ESATA if you have that option as that should be much, much faster than USB or Firewire - but I'm sure others with experience of this will let you know soon enough.

Chris Soucy · January 17th, 2008, 03:54 PM

I concur with Andy - go esata if it's an option.

CS

Bill Ravens · January 17th, 2008, 04:38 PM

all three will work, but...
1-usb is the slowest. it will work, work reliably, and have the least growth potential
2-firewire 400/800 comes next in the speed category. but, my experience with firewire is that it's flaky and unreliable
3-SATA 2 at 3Gb/sec is the fastest, most reliable, and there are many SATA port multipliers coming on the market that allow RAID configurations. after you have two or more SATA HD's, you can start RAIDing them, which helps a lot for file transfer speed when files get up in the Gb size.

Mark Donnell · January 17th, 2008, 06:35 PM

Paul - I use external hard drives extensively with P2 files from an HVX-200, with Edius Broadcast as a NLE. All of mine are currently USB 2.0 connected, and I have had no problems. I did some tests a year or so ago, and in my set-up, USB 2.0 was slightly faster than firewire 400. I agree with the others, though, in that if you can go the ESata route, this would be the fastest. By the way, the USB ports are relatively immune to static problems, but firewire is extremely sensitive to static and you can easily damage firewire circuits if you are not careful.

Paul Kellett · January 17th, 2008, 07:14 PM

Today i bought an internal esata connector for my pc,double socket,£5.esata it is then.
Thanks guys.
Paul.

Jim Bucciferro · January 21st, 2008, 08:28 AM

For editing you can't do better than eSATA since there is no bottleneck and you are connected directly to the eSATA controller.
I was lucky enough to have a MB that came with an external connector to an eSATA port.
I never tried FW and I use USB for storage or file conversions.

Jim

January 17th, 2008, 02:48 PM	#1
Paul Kellett Trustee Join Date: Nov 2007 Location: Bristol UK Posts: 1,273	External Harddrive,,esata or firewire or usb I'm thinking of getting an external harddrive,does anyone have any opinions or experience of either firewire or esata connections ? I presume usb isn't really good enough for editing. I'm thinking of getting the Seagate Freeagent Pro 750. Thanks,Paul. __________________ Round 2 GH5,FZ2000

January 17th, 2008, 03:12 PM	#2
Andy Wilkinson Inner Circle Join Date: Sep 2007 Location: Cambridge UK Posts: 2,853	USB, Firewire or ESATA external drives I use numerous large USB external drives (mostly Seagate, and some Samsung sourced drives) and find it works pretty well and is very flexible...things start to slow up a little when projects get very long (1 hr plus) and complicated though (many tracks and lots of FX's etc.) I use Vegas 7e and do all my editing in 1080 HD (from HC1 and V1). I think the limitation is my PC processor as much as anything else (in a Dell Dimension 4600 with 3.0GHz Pentium 4 HT and 2.5GB of RAM) as it's only slightly better if I put the files on one of my two internal hard drives and work off that (each only 80GB...need to swap my Drive D for a 500GB sometime!) For what I do it all works really very well though. However, I think the general opinion is go for ESATA if you have that option as that should be much, much faster than USB or Firewire - but I'm sure others with experience of this will let you know soon enough. __________________ Andy K Wilkinson - https://www.shootingimage.co.uk Cambridge (UK) Corporate Video Production Last edited by Andy Wilkinson; January 18th, 2008 at 04:00 AM. Reason: Processor details corrected!

January 17th, 2008, 03:54 PM	#3
Chris Soucy Inner Circle Join Date: Feb 2007 Location: Fairfield, Dunedin, New Zealand Posts: 3,691 Images: 18	Hi Paul...... I concur with Andy - go esata if it's an option. CS

January 17th, 2008, 07:14 PM	#6
Paul Kellett Trustee Join Date: Nov 2007 Location: Bristol UK Posts: 1,273	Today i bought an internal esata connector for my pc,double socket,£5.esata it is then. Thanks guys. Paul. __________________ Round 2 GH5,FZ2000

January 21st, 2008, 08:28 AM	#7
Jim Bucciferro Regular Crew Join Date: Oct 2006 Location: Shelton, CT USA Posts: 125	Another vote for eSATA For editing you can't do better than eSATA since there is no bottleneck and you are connected directly to the eSATA controller. I was lucky enough to have a MB that came with an external connector to an eSATA port. I never tried FW and I use USB for storage or file conversions. Jim

January 17th, 2008, 04:38 PM	#4
Bill Ravens Join Date: Nov 2001 Location: santa fe, nm Posts: 3,264 Images: 10	all three will work, but... 1-usb is the slowest. it will work, work reliably, and have the least growth potential 2-firewire 400/800 comes next in the speed category. but, my experience with firewire is that it's flaky and unreliable 3-SATA 2 at 3Gb/sec is the fastest, most reliable, and there are many SATA port multipliers coming on the market that allow RAID configurations. after you have two or more SATA HD's, you can start RAIDing them, which helps a lot for file transfer speed when files get up in the Gb size.

January 17th, 2008, 06:35 PM	#5
Mark Donnell Major Player Join Date: Nov 2005 Location: Silver City, NM Posts: 385	Paul - I use external hard drives extensively with P2 files from an HVX-200, with Edius Broadcast as a NLE. All of mine are currently USB 2.0 connected, and I have had no problems. I did some tests a year or so ago, and in my set-up, USB 2.0 was slightly faster than firewire 400. I agree with the others, though, in that if you can go the ESata route, this would be the fastest. By the way, the USB ports are relatively immune to static problems, but firewire is extremely sensitive to static and you can easily damage firewire circuits if you are not careful.