Firewire drives... good/bad for DV? at DVinfo.net

February 7th, 2003, 11:26 AM

Has anyone had any experience with Maxtor 120GIG firewire external drives with 911 princeton chipset casings for an Express DV setup?

or any fierewre drives used for digital video.

How do they respond? Do they work well if a hub is used to connect multiple drives?

Brian Pink · February 7th, 2003, 01:06 PM

i use a WD 200 firewire drive as my main dv drive at the moment. its great. very fast, stable, etc.

- brian

Jeff Donald · February 7th, 2003, 01:28 PM

Do you mean 911 Oxford chips?

Keith Loh · February 7th, 2003, 02:10 PM

I have two 120 gig drives daisy chained to my workstation. One is an IBM Deskstar and the other a Maxtor.

I do not capture through the Firewire but I do use them as work drives during rendering.

And of course I use them for storage.

Don Berube · February 7th, 2003, 02:38 PM

Make sure they are 7200rpm drives, I have always found that you get minimum problems with this fater rpm speed.

Not sure how maxtor would hold up to daily editing and capturing, I have never used Maxtor, not sure why though... so I oculdn't really comment on them.

We do use two of the Lacie D2 200GB drives, and also two of the Lacie D2 120GB drives. The 200GB models have the 8mb buffer which really does add performance value over the older 2mb designs. We have no problem with these drives at all, very quiet and heavy-duty performing drives.

http://www.lacie.com/products/product.htm?id=10022

- don

Bill Pryor · February 7th, 2003, 09:11 PM

We have 5 of them and they work fine. One is the Maxtor 120 gig; the others are Lacie. At first we had 4 daisychained (using Avid XDV on dual gig G4's) on one system, and there were some difficulties. It seems that, even though there are two firewire ports, the G4 doesn't like it if you have a DVCAM deck such as the DSR1800 plugged into one and the drives into another. Simple solution was a pci card. It has 3 ports, so 3 of the drives are direct and the fourth is daisychained. That system is now working fine. The second system has 3 internal 120 gig media drives and so far one Maxtor 120 gig that goes back and forth between the two systems, so the system with the external firewire drives sometimes has 5 attached. No problems at all, once we figured out that thing about the deck. I dunno why the heck they put 2 ports there if you can't use them both, but that's the way it is. The reason our second system has all the internal drives is because we hadn't yet figured out the problem of the first system when we bought the second, so the Avid dealer put in the internal drives. But now both systems work perfectly.

The damn things feel so small and lightweight and flimsy compared to the old Avid SCSSI drives we used with Media Composers for so many years, and they're so cheap, that I still expect them to self destruct or something, but they seem to work flawlessly.

On the system with the internal drives, 4 total if you count the system drive...I sort of expected heat problems and planned to stick a fan beside the computer. But I was pleasantly surprised to find that there's no excess heat at all. The new G4's have pretty good fans, I guess. Maybe that's why they're noisy. The computers and drives live in cabinets behind glass doors, but the backside of the cabinets is open so heat can escape.

Anyway, I think firewire drives are wonderous things. I can put several hours of footage on a single drive, do the offline edit...take the drive to the second suite for graphics and music, then bring it back for other effects, export, etc., and life is good with no need to spend gazillions of bucks for Unity.

Alex Ratson · February 7th, 2003, 11:23 PM

I use a Maxtor 7200 RPM Fire wire drive with 2 editing systems (soon to only be one), one is a Adobe Premier 6.0 windows 2000 system, and the other is a Final Cut Pro setup. The Drive works equally well on either platform. I just re-format the drive wen I need to switch between Mac, and PC. I think it was the Avid web site that recommended the Maxtor 7200-RPM drives for Express DV 3.5 so they must work well for the Avid DV’s.

Alex

February 8th, 2003, 09:42 AM

Bill that's pretty much the same system I'm configuring. I have 3 300gig drives internally
(WD) and a DV dec (DSR11) connected to one firewire port. That's too bad about the other port not working. I'll give it a try and see, but i'll make sure to have a card ready just in case. I'm curious, what type of problems occurred without the pci card? The place i'm buying the drives from told me that the casings only have one firewire port, is that ok for dasiy-chaining? How does you's work?

One more thing, does it make a difference it the drives are bus powered or external powered?

Thanks again.

February 7th, 2003, 11:26 AM	#1
Rich Conley Posts: n/a	Firewire drives... good/bad for DV? Has anyone had any experience with Maxtor 120GIG firewire external drives with 911 princeton chipset casings for an Express DV setup? or any fierewre drives used for digital video. How do they respond? Do they work well if a hub is used to connect multiple drives?

February 7th, 2003, 01:06 PM	#2
Brian Pink Regular Crew Join Date: Jan 2003 Location: Los Angeles, CA Posts: 94	i use a WD 200 firewire drive as my main dv drive at the moment. its great. very fast, stable, etc. - brian __________________ This is the way the world ends.

February 7th, 2003, 01:28 PM	#3
Jeff Donald Warden Join Date: Mar 2002 Location: Clearwater, FL Posts: 8,287	Do you mean 911 Oxford chips? __________________ Jeff Donald Carpe Diem Search DVinfo.net for quick answers \| Where to Buy? From the best in the business: DVinfo.net sponsors

February 7th, 2003, 02:10 PM	#4
Keith Loh Air China Pilot Join Date: May 2002 Location: Vancouver, B.C. Posts: 2,389	I have two 120 gig drives daisy chained to my workstation. One is an IBM Deskstar and the other a Maxtor. I do not capture through the Firewire but I do use them as work drives during rendering. And of course I use them for storage. __________________ -- Visit http://www.KeithLoh.com \| stuff about living in Vancouver \| My Flickr photo gallery

February 7th, 2003, 02:38 PM	#5
Don Berube Moderator Join Date: Mar 2002 Location: Boston, MA (travel frequently) Posts: 837	Make sure they are 7200rpm drives, I have always found that you get minimum problems with this fater rpm speed. Not sure how maxtor would hold up to daily editing and capturing, I have never used Maxtor, not sure why though... so I oculdn't really comment on them. We do use two of the Lacie D2 200GB drives, and also two of the Lacie D2 120GB drives. The 200GB models have the 8mb buffer which really does add performance value over the older 2mb designs. We have no problem with these drives at all, very quiet and heavy-duty performing drives. http://www.lacie.com/products/product.htm?id=10022 - don __________________ DONALD BERUBE - noisybrain. Productions, LLC Director Of Photography/ Producer/ Consultant http://noisybrain.com/donbio.html CREATE and NETWORK with http://www.bosfcpug.org and also http://fcpugnetwork.org

February 7th, 2003, 09:11 PM	#6
Bill Pryor Contributor Join Date: Jan 2003 Location: Kansas City, MO Posts: 4,449	We have 5 of them and they work fine. One is the Maxtor 120 gig; the others are Lacie. At first we had 4 daisychained (using Avid XDV on dual gig G4's) on one system, and there were some difficulties. It seems that, even though there are two firewire ports, the G4 doesn't like it if you have a DVCAM deck such as the DSR1800 plugged into one and the drives into another. Simple solution was a pci card. It has 3 ports, so 3 of the drives are direct and the fourth is daisychained. That system is now working fine. The second system has 3 internal 120 gig media drives and so far one Maxtor 120 gig that goes back and forth between the two systems, so the system with the external firewire drives sometimes has 5 attached. No problems at all, once we figured out that thing about the deck. I dunno why the heck they put 2 ports there if you can't use them both, but that's the way it is. The reason our second system has all the internal drives is because we hadn't yet figured out the problem of the first system when we bought the second, so the Avid dealer put in the internal drives. But now both systems work perfectly. The damn things feel so small and lightweight and flimsy compared to the old Avid SCSSI drives we used with Media Composers for so many years, and they're so cheap, that I still expect them to self destruct or something, but they seem to work flawlessly. On the system with the internal drives, 4 total if you count the system drive...I sort of expected heat problems and planned to stick a fan beside the computer. But I was pleasantly surprised to find that there's no excess heat at all. The new G4's have pretty good fans, I guess. Maybe that's why they're noisy. The computers and drives live in cabinets behind glass doors, but the backside of the cabinets is open so heat can escape. Anyway, I think firewire drives are wonderous things. I can put several hours of footage on a single drive, do the offline edit...take the drive to the second suite for graphics and music, then bring it back for other effects, export, etc., and life is good with no need to spend gazillions of bucks for Unity.

February 7th, 2003, 11:23 PM	#7
Alex Ratson Regular Crew Join Date: Jul 2002 Location: Squamish, British Columbia, Canada Posts: 149	I use a Maxtor 7200 RPM Fire wire drive with 2 editing systems (soon to only be one), one is a Adobe Premier 6.0 windows 2000 system, and the other is a Final Cut Pro setup. The Drive works equally well on either platform. I just re-format the drive wen I need to switch between Mac, and PC. I think it was the Avid web site that recommended the Maxtor 7200-RPM drives for Express DV 3.5 so they must work well for the Avid DV’s. Alex

February 8th, 2003, 09:42 AM	#8
Rich Conley Posts: n/a	Thanks everyone... Bill that's pretty much the same system I'm configuring. I have 3 300gig drives internally (WD) and a DV dec (DSR11) connected to one firewire port. That's too bad about the other port not working. I'll give it a try and see, but i'll make sure to have a card ready just in case. I'm curious, what type of problems occurred without the pci card? The place i'm buying the drives from told me that the casings only have one firewire port, is that ok for dasiy-chaining? How does you's work? One more thing, does it make a difference it the drives are bus powered or external powered? Thanks again.