Comments

BillyBoy wrote on 11/15/2002, 9:24 PM
Surprise... they are just regular drives in an enclosurer with a cheesy interface card and usually their own power supply. Almost always way overpriced.

If you have a free open slot in the front of your PC, may I suggest you consider instead using removable drives that slip into a encloser or drawer. Cost about $20. That way they operate off the computer's internal power and they are far more sturdy. I have five now giving me a total capacity of a little under 600GB. The one down side is you do need to power down and reboot to switch drives. The neat thing is you can use the drives you already have or just buy a bare drive at a far cheaper price that a so-called external and just slip it in. The encloser comes in two parts, the first gets mounted through the front of your PC, a one time thing and is as simple to install a CD drive, etc.. The drive itself fits into the inner drawer and easily slips in or out. If offers some security too since it requires a key to remove/add the drive and if you share your PC with the family especailly have kids and are fearful they may mess up your stuff, you could even set it up so everyone has their own bootable drive.
wcoxe1 wrote on 11/15/2002, 9:31 PM
Where did you find these enclosures, and who made them, please?
Tyler.Durden wrote on 11/15/2002, 9:46 PM
Hi statas,

I use an external firewire drive. It's an ADS Pyro enclosure that I put a Western Digital 120GB HD into. It has provided flawless performance.

I drag it around with my laptop in a roller case; plug it into the laptop, and plug my camcorder into the drive and capture and print to tape with no trouble and no dropped frames.

The ADS enclosure usually costs around 99USD and the WD120GB can cost about 200 or less.


HTH, MPH
BillyBoy wrote on 11/15/2002, 10:25 PM
I was thinking more for a desktop, like the following:

http://www.techarts.com/products/drivedrawers/part_in-20-ipf.asp?part=in-20-it;drawerbag

Most of the larger online computer stores or larger retail stores have them. They go by a lot of different names, drawers, racks, drive drawers, mobil racks, etc.. The above site shows a picture of a typical one. Most have a tiny built-in fan and a LED.

If you get one be sure to match to drive's ability,, 33/66 100/133 whatever.

statas wrote on 11/15/2002, 10:36 PM
billyboy, i'm on a laptop for the time being, so that config wouldn't work for me.

martyh, i can't use firewire because i only have one fw port on my laptop and i need that to connect to my dv cam. what do you mean "connect your cam to the drive"? i thought i read on this board that some people had problems with firewire drives? are the other formats sufficiently fast?
Tyler.Durden wrote on 11/16/2002, 7:28 AM
Hi statas,

The ADS drive has two 1394 connectors, one to connect to the computer the other to connect to other 1394 devices. You can "daisy-chain" devices together like this:

Computer>FW-drive>FW-drive>Camcorder.

Some users have had trouble, and some solutions have been successful. One might be to use a PCMCIA-1394 card to add another port.

I haven't had any trouble daisy-chaining my devices (one drive, one camera), so I still just use the built-in 1394 port (Sony Vaio laptop).


The speed of the drives and the FW port should be sufficient for DV and Vegas.


HTH, MPH

Tips:
http://www.martyhedler.com/homepage/Vegas_Tutorials.html