Media Drives at DVinfo.net

Eric A. Anderson · December 11th, 2001, 02:08 PM

I'm the editor/videographer at a station where I have several projects going on at the same time. Everything from promotional tags to hour long documentries. But I only have two G4s with FinalCut Pro to do everything on.

I was thinking that one solution to having room for everything was getting some external drives that I can store the media from the various documentries on. That way I can keep them seperate and move them from computer to computer. It won't be done until almost a year from now, but the producer wants to get things started and do some "teaser" pieces for it.

What is a good external drive that I can read and write to for editing? What are the price ranges? I hear that firewire drives are too slow... what are the other options?

Thanks!

Chris Hurd · December 11th, 2001, 03:15 PM

Hi, judging from your post, I guess you probably haven't yet read my review of the Videonics FireStore -- see http://www.dvinfo.net/firestore.htm -- and as you'll see in the article, FireWire drives are *plenty* fast enough for DV. Details at link, hope this helps,

Wayde Gardner · December 11th, 2001, 04:04 PM

This RAID system may be overkill but cruise around the site. SmartDisk makes an excellent product. The best feature about firewire driver are the ability to be hot-swapable (no reboot) and good through put although USB 2.0 is said to compete with MB/sec rate

http://www.smartdisk.com/products_RAID.asp

Bill Ravens · December 11th, 2001, 06:27 PM

check out Medea-SCSI RAID. expensive, but a station can afford it and the thruput can be as high as 80mb/sec. Geez, you can go completely uncompressed with that.

Drewid20 · December 12th, 2001, 05:54 PM

<<<-- Originally posted by EAnderson : I'm the editor/videographer at a station where I have several projects going on at the same time. Everything from promotional tags to hour long documentries. But I only have two G4s with FinalCut Pro to do everything on.

I was thinking that one solution to having room for everything was getting some external drives that I can store the media from the various documentries on. That way I can keep them seperate and move them from computer to computer. It won't be done until almost a year from now, but the producer wants to get things started and do some "teaser" pieces for it.

What is a good external drive that I can read and write to for editing? What are the price ranges? I hear that firewire drives are too slow... what are the other options?

Thanks! -->>>

My external firewire drive on my Xpress DV system runs plenty fast enough.

December 11th, 2001, 02:08 PM	#1
Eric A. Anderson Tourist Join Date: Dec 2001 Posts: 4	Media Drives I'm the editor/videographer at a station where I have several projects going on at the same time. Everything from promotional tags to hour long documentries. But I only have two G4s with FinalCut Pro to do everything on. I was thinking that one solution to having room for everything was getting some external drives that I can store the media from the various documentries on. That way I can keep them seperate and move them from computer to computer. It won't be done until almost a year from now, but the producer wants to get things started and do some "teaser" pieces for it. What is a good external drive that I can read and write to for editing? What are the price ranges? I hear that firewire drives are too slow... what are the other options? Thanks!

December 11th, 2001, 03:15 PM	#2
Chris Hurd Obstreperous Rex Join Date: Jan 2001 Location: San Marcos, TX Posts: 27,369 Images: 513	Hi, judging from your post, I guess you probably haven't yet read my review of the Videonics FireStore -- see http://www.dvinfo.net/firestore.htm -- and as you'll see in the article, FireWire drives are plenty fast enough for DV. Details at link, hope this helps, __________________ CH Search DV Info Net \| 20 years of DVi \| ...Tuesday is Soylent Green Day!

December 12th, 2001, 05:54 PM	#5
Drewid20 New Boot Join Date: Dec 2001 Location: Cincinnati, OH Posts: 16	Re: Media Drives <<<-- Originally posted by EAnderson : I'm the editor/videographer at a station where I have several projects going on at the same time. Everything from promotional tags to hour long documentries. But I only have two G4s with FinalCut Pro to do everything on. I was thinking that one solution to having room for everything was getting some external drives that I can store the media from the various documentries on. That way I can keep them seperate and move them from computer to computer. It won't be done until almost a year from now, but the producer wants to get things started and do some "teaser" pieces for it. What is a good external drive that I can read and write to for editing? What are the price ranges? I hear that firewire drives are too slow... what are the other options? Thanks! -->>> My external firewire drive on my Xpress DV system runs plenty fast enough.

December 11th, 2001, 04:04 PM	#3
Wayde Gardner Regular Crew Join Date: Oct 2001 Location: Frisco, Tx Posts: 85	This RAID system may be overkill but cruise around the site. SmartDisk makes an excellent product. The best feature about firewire driver are the ability to be hot-swapable (no reboot) and good through put although USB 2.0 is said to compete with MB/sec rate http://www.smartdisk.com/products_RAID.asp

December 11th, 2001, 06:27 PM	#4
Bill Ravens Join Date: Nov 2001 Location: santa fe, nm Posts: 3,264 Images: 10	check out Medea-SCSI RAID. expensive, but a station can afford it and the thruput can be as high as 80mb/sec. Geez, you can go completely uncompressed with that.