External drives *without* problems???

kentwolf wrote on 4/4/2009, 1:09 PM
I have 10 drives in my tower, considering adding an external firewire/USB2 1.5 TB drive.

Does anyone use these external drives without any problems?

I know good news doesn’t always make the support forums. Just wondering if anyone has any *good* experiences with these external drives.

I am looking to send non-working media to them as a sort of short-term archive.

Thanks.

Comments

gpsmikey wrote on 4/4/2009, 3:05 PM
Can't give you any specifics, but one issue I am aware of (at least in the past) was that in the effort to make those external drives "sexy" and "quiet", they tend to sacrifice ventilation. While they work fine for transfers of batches of files, large transfers where there is a lot of disk activity has tended to over heat some of them. Look for ones that have good ventilation and that should help (I have extra cooling in my mid tower case just for the drives -- they tend to run very close to room temperature). I do have a "My Book" (Western Digital) 1TB drive that Costco had that seems to be OK. Runs a little warm, but I have transferred 50-60 gigs at a time onto that drive.

mikey
farss wrote on 4/4/2009, 3:58 PM
Agree with evreything that Mikey has said.
An eSATA drive is going to give you the fastest transfer but that's not mandatory for offline backups.

I've found some of the 'sexy' drives spin down of their own accord and while in some scenarios that might be a good thing Windows Explorer will pause waiting for them to spin back up

Bob.
richard-courtney wrote on 4/4/2009, 4:16 PM
We use drive caddy enclosures. Not hot swappable without paying more, they
seem to be fine for us.

If you are taking drives to a replication house, talk to them first.

Our caddies have a fan in each to keep them cool. I'd say a must.
musicvid10 wrote on 4/4/2009, 4:47 PM
Firewire yes, USB no.
That's my "happy" experience with media storage.
baysidebas wrote on 4/4/2009, 5:46 PM
For Vegas, what i found works best is to use 2 SATA drives in a Raid0 configuration (interleaved) for best performance in the actual editing [never a problem with previews]. For offline storage I use an eSATA dock, which gives me the same performance as an internal drive installation would. The dock has the additional advantage of having a USB connector, so I'm able to use it for otheer purposes when I need to; just last week I used it with my laptop to clone the HD to a larger, faster, drive. When mounted in the dock, most of the HD is exposed to ambient air, so there are no thermal concerns. Plus it provides near instant interchangeability of drives, no hot swapping with the SATA drives, but that's not a problem. I was a strong proponent of the fan cooled caddies on all my pcs before I discovered the docks, but haven't regretted making the switch.
kentwolf wrote on 4/4/2009, 6:59 PM
Thanks for all the info. It is helpful.
RalphM wrote on 4/4/2009, 7:48 PM
I've got at last count, 11 external drives. A few are firewire/USB but most are USB only. I don't see any difference in performance or longevity. I do have two that I assembled that run hot. I usually direct a smally utility fan on them for extended read/write operations.

Ralph
musicvid10 wrote on 4/4/2009, 8:34 PM
"A few are firewire/USB but most are USB only. I don't see any difference in performance or longevity."

I see a difference in reliability. It is rather pronounced, whether reading or writing, as reflected in the number of failures, freezes, an reboots necessary to carry on.

WD even goes so far as to suggest that no other drives should be connected to USB while using one of theirs.
fldave wrote on 4/4/2009, 8:37 PM
3 firewire externals running most of the time, live timelines in Vegas. No problems. Set Vegas settings to not take files offline when focus is away from the Vegas app. That way, no delay in swapping back to Vegas. Get a second firewire card for your PC, along with your motherboard firewire. Keep your capture drive and camera firewire ports separate.

USB externals - temporary connections for backups only. Too many errors where I have lost the entire drives. Not worth my time to experiment, when firewire works so well.
RalphM wrote on 4/4/2009, 8:39 PM
"I see a difference in reliability. It is rather pronounced, whether reading or writing, as reflected in the number of failures, freezes, an reboots necessary to carry on."

Guess I've been fortunate - just have not seen these types of problems...
ushere wrote on 4/4/2009, 9:35 PM
ditto ralphm - use usb 2 ex hd's all the time without problem. (i don't capture to them though).

all my projects are usually stored / archived on ex hd's - used to be firewire (after reading the 'dire' consequences of using anything else), but since must clients bring along a cheapo usb (wd my book, iso gear, elements, maxtor, etc.,), i've found them as good as anything.

true, i would prefer sata, but try explaining tthat to a client who's just going to pop in to the local kmart to buy an ex drive.....

leslie
John_Cline wrote on 4/4/2009, 10:53 PM
I use several Thermaltake BlacX hard drive docka, they has both USB2 and SATA. I just buy bare SATA drives, drop them in the dock and back up my projects. I've got about 35 drives at this point. No sense spending the extra money for an external enclosure for each drive. Bare 1.5TB SATA drives are around $120.

Thermaltake BlacX ST0005U External Hard Drive SATA Enclosure Docking Station
craftech wrote on 4/5/2009, 2:17 AM
Ditto on the BlacX. My son uses it all the time and loves it.

On my XP computer I use this inexpensive Open Frame SATA Mobile Rack mounted in one of the bays of my tower.

You pull the latch to open the door, push in an internal hard drive, turn the key and you are off and running. You can stick any SATA hard drive in there you like.

When you are done you turn it off with the key, pull the latch, and it ejects the hard drive.

I would recommend either that or the BlacX if you don't have any more room inside your tower for the mobile rack.

John