FirewireDirect.com might have what you're looking for.

James

Actually the Maxtor Personal Storage drives stack very neatly. These are not the newer "One Touch" models that can only sit vertically in a little cradle.

Although these drives are very nice, they do NOT have a power switch. Not a problem if you are simply going to plug them in and leave them.

Though we use the newer 200gig One Touch series drives now, we have a few 80 gig Personal Storage drives. We leave a USB2 cable and power supply by every machine where the drives will likely go. (home, work, laptop)

I don't think these drives can be used in a RAID setup.

Mike

The bottom line is if you don't have to use firewire or USB, don't.

Several questons, do you need to access ALL the data at once?

How MUCH storage are we talking about?

How much you willing to spend?

Do you need/want hot swapable drives?

If for example you want multiple hundreds of GB online, don't just want to put a few big drives in a tower case, then their are solutions, but they aren't cheap.

What I've done and plan to continue until a better/more affordable solution comes along is just keep getting 200-300 GB drives as I need them, slide them in a drawer and I have a virtually limitedless storage capacity switching them in and out as needed.

Seagate has a stackable 160GB drive, about $300, combo 1394 and USB 2.0.

I'd like to have about a terabyte of storage. The most important issues for me are:

1. Aesthetic: I'm tired of mismatched external drives that don't stack very well.

2. Portability: I often need to go mobile with one of the drives as I edit video in two different places.

Ideallly, I'd like to find storage that can be stacked or otherwise housed elegantly but that can also be easily removed and redeployed on a moment's notice.

I guess what would be really interesting is to hear how the folks in this forum handle their storage needs. Seems there are many ways to go, and many products to choose from.

So ... anyone? What's your setup/configuation?

>>...What's your setup/configuation?...

8 internal drives (big tower)
Multiple 200 GB removeable drives in a mounted bay.

At out computer store, the bay assemblies only cost about $15.

(Not even counting Onstream 30 GB tapes)

...works great.

The Rocket Pod looks great. I have not purchased any of them yet, but a friend who has one gives it a good recommendation.

http://www.acomdata.com/scripts/rocketpod-home.asp

(Sorry, I attempted to make that a link, but just couldn't make it happen)

What brand are those $15 bays?

JBJones

I've you're not talking a laptop the removable drive option works well. I am constanly moving a drive or two back and forth from my upstairs office to my downstairs office. While it takes a couple minutes to do a shutdown and a reboot, storage wise I have about 800 GB now.

I did the laptop thing over a decade ago when they costed a small fortune and weighted 30 pounds to lug around. Too many negatives with laptops UNLESS you're on the road and have to rely on one.

Look at the ADS DV Raid. We have 3 of these, store up to a terrabyte each. Inexpensive, sexy, and removable drive trays. www.adstech.com

ADS DV Raid ... inexpensive?

The enclosure alone costs more than the comptuer I'm using (not counting the monitor).

JBJones

I checked out this RocketPod product, and it does look great. Exactly what I'm looking for: single power source and USB connection, portable, modular.

Question is whether ACOM is a reliable maker of hard drives. Any ACOM devotees out there?

Where did your find buy his RocketPod? I could barely find any info about it on the Web.

>>What brand are those $15 bays?

http://www.genica.com/

Cheap, Made In China bays that works juuuust fine. :)

For about $15 you get both the removeable portion/drive holder as well as a brand new key-lock bay. I have a lot of extra bays...

You can't beat it.

Is USB considered generally as good/fast as FIREWIRE?

Short answer: firewire is generally considered better for streaming video.

Longer answer: do a search on this forum. This has been a popular topic.

Jbjones: The brand that I'm using is called "In Close." All these things probably come from some factory deep inside China. They work fine, but of course you need to shut down in order to change out a drive.

If you look at the top of the Acomdata web page there is a "Where to buy" button. My friend bought his at our local Best Buy.

I seriously doubt that Acomdata manufacture their own hard drives. They are most likely using another manufacturers hard drive (Maxtor, Western Digital, Seagate, etc.) and installing those into the case which they manufacture.

Kentwolf: what kind of housing do you use to hold the bays?

>>Kentwolf: what kind of housing do you use to hold the bays?

A regular front-access drive bay; into which you would normally install a tape drive, CD, etc.

So, in other words, you install those drives into a tower? Like a dedicated tower that you network to your editing PC?

Excuse all the questions, but I'm trying to fully visualize how you're set up.

A lot of terms are similar. A bay, drawer, removable drive can all mean the same thing. The most common is a two piece unit. The outer part you screw into any open slot (like a CD/DVD drive which fits through any open slot through the front of your PC. A simple 5 minute one time job. Two connections. One plugs into any space cable coming from your power supply the second plugs into either your primary or secondary IDE controller on the MB.

The inner part holds the drive or other device. Again two connections in the drawer part, a power and data cable that mate to a connector. which mates with another connector on the outer part of the cage when you slip it in. Most have a key, and a little fan build it. The idea is they run off the PC's internal power supply and the inner drawer is every bit as portable and in my opnion much more sturdy and reliable than the similar firewire USB drive encloser, most of which required an external power supply.