External Hard Disk Drives for Video Editing.

efiebke wrote on 1/12/2003, 3:33 PM

I'm wanting to upgrade my computer. . .more RAM, bigger hard-drive, etc.

I noticed that both Western Digital and Maxtor offer external hard drives (USB 2 and/or IEEE 1394) that run at 7,200 rpm.

Here are my questions:

1) Are external hard disk drives dependable in transferring the large video (and audio) data files during the editing and rendering process?

2) If so, what brand would you recommend?

Here's my current set-up:

Dell Precision Workstation 420
Pentium III 733
512 MB DDRAM
2 hard disk drives both 7200rpm (1st is 10 GB, 2nd is 20 GB soon to be upgraded to 120 GB for video!)
Matrox G400
Windows XP Pro
USB card (SIIG)
IEEE 1394 card (SIIG)
Vegas Video 3 - as the video editing program
DVD burner: Sony's DRX-500UL
Various digital-audio hardware and software stuff. . .

Thanks for your time!

Ted Fiebke

Comments

snicholshms wrote on 1/12/2003, 5:35 PM

Hi Ted:

Western Digital Firewire Drives work great with Vegas. But you may eventually need several and the cost can be a drag. Make sure you format any hard drive for video with NTFS. There is no file size limit like there is with FAT32.

Look into removable hard drive trays. Check out: http://www.caseoutlet.com/Mobile_Rack/Single-default.htm#IDE
click on the $18 or $16 trays.
Then look at: http://www.vipower.com/
look at the lower right hand side and click on "Swap Manager Software Free Try!" Hot Swapable IDE Hard Drives! MUCH cheaper per GB than Firewire.

I learned about these in this Forum so I'm passing this info on.

Steve