Portable drive for the field?
 

I am taking my EX1 for a travel shoot next month in the Caribbean. I am trying to figure out the best work flow to offload cards through a Macbook Pro.

We will be out in parks and areas where I have no power so I need a drive that is powered from the MBP. I have been looking at the Wiebetech Toughtech Mini.

Are 5400rpm drives fast enough for storage only or is it that much better to stick with 7200 model drives?

I am also researching a small Raid system for edit studio use so any portable drives that can be used in the filed and removed from a portable enclosure and put in a Raid storage would be nice.

Any information on field storage devices is greatly appreciated

Sonnet Fusion F2
 

I just ordered on of these for the very same reasons. Takes power from the Firewire interface - is nice and fast in the field and is very portable.

http://www.sonnettech.com/product/fusionf2.html


Simon Cox

If you wanted to stay leaner, you could just dump to the DL DVD.

No matter what you do, you may want to think about an inverter for your car for the MBP, an external drive or the internal will chew up your battery quick.

Let me know if you need a 2nd cameraman to go on the shoot... It's cold up here in February. ;)

Simon thanks for the reply. The Sonnet F2 looks great but I need to keep my express slot open for SxS card transfer. That is why I was looking for a drive with FW800.

Andrew the inverter is a good tip. Stay warm, I am already the B-cam guy.

Found these in some quick internet searching:

OWC Mercury On-The-Go (http://eshop.macsales.com/shop/firewire/on-the-go)

You could also do something with Compact Flash or SD cards with a USB card reader. It'd be more expensive, but keeping it off spinning disks would offer more reliability. It's never good to see 80 or 160 GB worth of content take a dive when a hard drive fails.

I always copy original camera data onto a mirrored RAID. In case one drive fails, the other continues to operate normally.

Writing to DVD's is too slow and you're still risking data loss with only one copy, unless you make a duplicate which is twice as slow.

Here's what I was looking at: http://www.firewiredirect.com/product/501/

It'll allow you to use your Express 34 card slot. You'll need a Firewire 400 adapter to use it with this enclosure since it uses a Firewire 800 connector.

i am going for 2x250 GB 2,5" Lacie Drives (5400),
one for editing, one for backup. they are quiet cheap (about 175 Euros, each)

they connect via USB 2.0 or FW 400.

As the Data rate in FCP is 4,3 MB/s the speed should not be a problem.


further on I will have a 1 TB Disc (2x3,5", FW800) with me for another backup (in the hotel).

This configuration is for a shoot in Brazil next week (quiet warm there for the moment ;))

Charles I have two G-Drive mini 200GB and one G-Raid mini for on the road and they all work great. The Raid powers off the FW800 and the mini powers off the FW400. They are very small and come with great carry cases. Worth a look a few bucks more but the quality is excellent.

I do a similar thing ...
 

I use the portable hitachi 200 gig 7200 drive + 2/800,400, USB2 housing kit. Two of these or more would do what you need done!

I wouldn't trust any important data to lacie drives. They have a horrible failure rate. The G Tech mini or G Tech raid is the way to go, if you can find them right now. My dealer has not been able to get them in stock.

Daniel Weber

hitachi ...
 

The hitachi has been solid for the last 6 months!

I know. You are right Daniel. I think only Maxtor is supposed to be as bad.

Especially the Lacie Big Disk (500 MB) is crap. I had 3 of them and they all died.
The 2,5" (mobile) are supposed to be better. This is why I am doing a double backup. I guess the risk that all the 3 disks fail is minim.

As the timeframe is tight (I am taking the plane on Monday) I opt for this solution as I can find those disks here for a good deal (less than 175 E. each). Time will tell if those drives are better.

For archiving solutions I will opt for the best known drives (and have a 2nd backup at another place) but this is another story.

=====
"Especially the Lacie Big Disk (500 MB) is crap. I had 3 of them and they all died"
======


AGREE! Lacie is el crapola. I've had a few of them die on me.
I suspect it has more to do with the fact that they use WD hard drives

I have had very good luck with Seagate and Hitach - very stable and long lasting. I've haven't looked inside a G-TECH - but those have never given me any problems either.

Paul

After I picked up my EX1 I had 2 G Tech mini 250's on order, but they were backordered for a month.

I ended up getting 3 250's from Other World Computing for what I was going to pay for the G Tech drives.

I think that the key to this whole thing is redundant back ups done in the field.

Daniel Weber

LACIE is bad choice
 

Don't use LACIE drives for backup or anything... I wouldn't use MAXTOR either. Very unreliable brands