external hard drive-no moving parts!

Spot|DSE wrote on 10/30/2007, 10:37 AM

Bill, what housing are you using for the SanDisk Extreme IV cards?

Bill Ravens wrote on 10/30/2007, 12:20 PM

My first card reader was a Lexar firewire flashcard reader. While it works OK, I don't much like the quality. I have, since, changed over to the Sandisk firewire flash card reader. Both CF readers are designed for the 266X gen IV flash cards.I haven't had a chance to test the Sandisk reader, yet, but the Lexar reader tested at 32MB/sec(max), 29.9 MB/sec(sustained) read speed, testing with HDTACH.

I have one firewire 400 port built in and one expresscard slot with a firewire800 ecard inserted. I run one CF card on each bus. I'm going to try a RAID 0 config with both CF cards on one 1394a bus, gonna see how much more I can gain/loose. One firewire bus doesn't like to share high bandwidth video streams, but, RAID 0 isn't parallel xmit anyway. Obviously, I have to disconnect one CF card to capture from my camera.

There are some 16Gb expresscards available that I'm just itching to try but I can't read them on my desktop. The laptop has an expresscard 54 slot on it.

So, far, capture directly to the Lexar CF card has worked flawlessly. I'm looking forward to testing both CF cards with a software RAID 0, soon. Wouldn't it be nice if someone made a firewire 800 CF card reader with more than one slot? Or even better, a SATA II CF card reader with 4 slots.

Not so sure I'm ready for the $5k price of the upcoming Convergent Design flash card reader. It looks pretty NICE!

P.S. I bet WD, Seagate and Hitachi are sweating bullets over this paradigm shift in storage solutions.

jwcarney wrote on 10/30/2007, 2:09 PM

Seagate is planning on coming out with 160gig Sata II compatible cards next year. No mention of price. Supposed to be a drop in replacement for a HD.

Terry Esslinger wrote on 10/30/2007, 2:18 PM

Anybody tried capturing to a flash drive? Just bought an 8G flashdrive to transport files. Never thought (until now) about capturing to it. Its USB2. What do you think. Should be able to get at least 30 minutes DV on it for $40.00

Bill Ravens wrote on 10/31/2007, 7:39 AM

Current USB, flash drive reader speeds seem to be limited to 4-5 MB/sec...not nearly fast enuff.

Thommes wrote on 10/31/2007, 1:02 PM

Hmm. I just wondered afte reading this post. ... What about my 4 Gb 150x SD card in that old, non branded, but very reliable USB 2.0 cardreader. ... It would be funny to just do a test... and so I did.

First try I capturet 12min from a HC1 m2t directly to the SD card. NOT ONE FRAME DROPPED. I was positively surprised. :O)

Did some editing on a 4 min clip of a sqirrel, and smartrendered from the SD card to C:

My systen is a toshiba portege 200m, 1,9something Ghz Centrino with 1Gb ram and a 7200 harddrive.

The next thing I will test is live capture using DV-Rack HD 2.0

Am I defying something here?

What about differences between CF and SD cards. Are there any theory of some being more stabe than others. What about SDHC?

Hm, have to stop testing, and get something done :o)

Thommes.

I

Bill Ravens wrote on 10/31/2007, 1:43 PM

I was just reading that the USB 2.0 transfer speed is around 19 MB/sec. Just about right for HDV capture rate.

Thommes wrote on 10/31/2007, 3:01 PM

Well, I just do not understand this. Bill mentioned HDTACK, and I tested my SD card (150X), and the average read was 6,7 MB/s. How come I just captured HDV from tape with no loss of frames? I think I have to test live capture also, since that is where this could be really useful, but it should be the same as capture from tape, shouldnt it?.

Th:o)mmes

Thommes wrote on 10/31/2007, 3:28 PM

Why am I using time, trying the impossible. Quriosity comes in this case close to foolishness. ...

While testing live capture to SD card, the DVrack told me straight off that my hard drive was too slow and stopped the show.

Vegas capturing live attempted, but endet up with tons of black frames and artefacts.

THANKS TO BILL FOR SHOWING US THE WAY, and forget about my silly little venture. I wiil consider getting a good card and a FW reader . :O)

Thommes.

Coursedesign wrote on 10/31/2007, 3:54 PM

I tested my SD card (150X), and the average read was 6,7 MB/s.

6.7 MB/s = 6.7x8=53.6 Mb/s, which is more than twice the data rate of HDV.

Thommes wrote on 10/31/2007, 4:32 PM

Thanks, I should have checked that.

Bill Ravens wrote on 10/31/2007, 8:26 PM

Coursedesign/Thommes...

Thought you'd find the following data of interest:
525 NTSC uncompressed;
8 bit @ 720 x 486 @ 29.97fps = 20 MB per/sec, or 70 GB per/hr.
10 bit @ 720 x 486 @ 29.97fps = 27 MB per/sec, or 94 GB per/hr.

625 PAL uncompressed;
8 bit @ 720 x 576 @ 25fps = 20 MB per/sec, or 70 GB per/hr.
10 bit @ 720 x 576 @ 25fps = 26 MB per/sec, or 93 GB per/hr.

720p HDTV uncompressed;
8 bit @ 1280 x 720 @ 59.94field = 105 MB per/sec, or 370 GB per/hr.
10 bit @ 1280 x 720 @ 59.94field = 140 MB per/sec, or 494 GB per/hr.

1080i and 1080p HDTV uncompressed;
8 bit @ 1920 x 1080 @ 24fps = 95 MB per/sec, or 334 GB per/hr.
10 bit @ 1920 x 1080 @ 24fps = 127 MB per/sec, or 445 GB per/hr.

8 bit @ 1920 x 1080 @ 25fps = 99 MB per/sec, or 348 GB per/hr.
10 bit @ 1920 x 1080 @ 25fps = 132 MB per/sec, or 463 GB per/hr.

8 bit @ 1920 x 1080 @ 29.97fps = 119 MB per/sec, or 417 GB per/hr.
10 bit @ 1920 x 1080 @ 29.97fps = 158 MB per/sec, or 556 GB per/hr.

1080i and 1080p HDTV RGB (4:4:4) uncompressed;
10 bit @ 1280 x 720p @ 60fps = 211 per/sec, or 742 GB per/hr.
10 bit @ 1920 x 1080 @ 24PsF = 190 per/sec, or 667 GB per/hr.
10 bit @ 1920 x 1080 @ 50i = 198 per/sec, or 695 GB per/hr.
10 bit @ 1920 x 1080 @ 60i = 237 per/sec, or 834 GB per/hr.

Given that 525 NTSC requires 20 MB/sec plus audio, or about 25MB/sec, A 150x SD Card is about 3Mb/sec x150x=450Mb/sec x 1Byte/8bits=56MB/sec

Grazie wrote on 11/1/2007, 1:03 AM

I've been watching this for about 3 years now. This is getting very exciting indeed. Very.

Bill, thanks for doing all the hard work. I'd like to take this further. Please email me.

Grazie

Spot|DSE wrote on 11/1/2007, 6:59 AM

Thanks for the info, Bill. I had somehow read into your post that you had a reader that could accept multiple CF at the same time. I've tried this with a couple of readers, but the insertion of a second card kills the other so far as Windows is concerned.

jrazz wrote on 12/28/2007, 9:09 AM

Here is a CF 16gb card for 73.99 with free shipping. I just bought one. (although, I am going to use it for my slr cam it made me think of this thread). I am unsure of how fast the read/write speed is, but it is cheap.
16 gig card

I also found a cheap cf card reader on Amazon that is firewire (around 60 bucks).
Card Reader

j razz

Bill Ravens wrote on 12/28/2007, 11:36 AM

Spot...

Update: yes, I am reading multiple CF cards(2 x 8Gb Lexar CF's), formatted in NTFS, via a SATA port multiplier and CF to SATA RAID adapter.. See here: www.addonics.com.

J razz: beware of the data rate you get from these cheap cards. It may not be sufficient.

jrazz wrote on 12/28/2007, 11:40 AM

Yeah. Thanks for the warning. I am not planning on using it for this setup, it just made me think of it when I ran across the card.

I am going to be going out of country and want to take something that I can store all of my pictures on (yes I know I could potentially lose them all if the card fails) and this was the cheapest price I have found for a 16gb card. Data rates are not of importance for what I want the card for but you know, I may wind up buying a firewire reader just to give it a try and see how it fairs.

j razz

RBartlett wrote on 12/28/2007, 2:02 PM

If you have a recent laptop then you may have an ExpressCard slot. As mentioned earlier, you don't need a very fast device (by today's available hardware in this format) to be able to capture in 25Mbps HDV. Indeed if you can get the plumbing and capture software together then 35Mbit/sec and 50Mbits/sec formats should be OK to ingest too. Many digital cameras enjoy or demand (in movie mode, especially if they only adopt the MJPEG format) higher than 25Mbps write speeds. It is the camcorder manufacturers who've been starving us of this technology in the most economic of formats..........

Have a google for '16GB expresscard', or 'expresscard SSD' these are cheap compared with the SxS (expresscard) and P2 (cardbus) counterparts.

If the unit is rated as being Vista 'ReadyBoost Ready' then even if you don't have write-statistics for the unit, it'll probably serve (given that these flash chips are on the expresscards to serve as an SSD good enough to be your primary boot drive - To clarify, Readyboost Ready is in fact a lot more relaxed than you'd need for HDV at barely 1/3 the necessary minimum speed. If you aren't sure, do check the returns/restocking policy for your merchant).

Please look for a lifetime warranty also. In theory they should all fail through hard use or after approx 5 yrs (on this specific limitation, as per a moving parts hard disk 'drive').

SATA solutions are more readily set up as an array (RAID) but might be less elegant when retrofitted to a laptop. ExpressCard will tend to appear as a removable device but it ought to be possible to convince Windows to override this if an array is necessary for some reason.

4,8,16 and 32GB expresscard SSD (from Lexar and Transcend) are at near mortal prices. As more laptops are introduced without moving parts magnetic storage HDDs we can only expect these prices to come down (economic climate permitting). In the UK a Lexar 4GB unit can/could be obtained from quite small Staples retail outlets, fwiw.

slightly OT - I've added a PCI-Express to ExpressCard adapter to my desktop PC to make the transfer from laptop/EX1 to desktop easier (I'm brought footage, I don't personally have the laptop or EX1!). StarTech.com make such an adapter.

Bill Ravens wrote on 12/28/2007, 2:31 PM

RBartlett...

Discussion, here, is about CF cards, not Expresscards.

RBartlett wrote on 12/28/2007, 2:53 PM

I regarded ExpressCard as an omission especially with it's capability to encapsulate all the storage and interfacing into a single unit. But it isn't an external format, just removable through external means. An error on my part. Apologies.