We've been using a Maxtor External 250Gb firewire now for some six months - it was originally bought as a backup/file transfer aid but it it has become the main workhorse for current projects. No problems moving from home to office to other office to third party pc etc etc.

Functioning without it would be really difficult now. More units on the way!!

I second (or third) the motion in favor of firewire drives. I own five of them - two ADS enclosures and three Maxtor self-contained units. I use all of them hard, move my entire system (processor unit, printer, drives (all but my screens) twice a week from one studio to the other (about 70 miles) and, although I've read somewhere (I think in the foldout "manual" that Maxtor provides) that there drives should not be considered portable, I've experienced no failures in moving them regularly.

One of the ADS enclousures failed on me (power to the drive failed), but ADS replaced it free of charge or hassle (it was nearly a year old at the time).

I open both the ADS and the Maxtor units to swap drives as suits me (Maxtors are not intended to be opened, but swaping drives in and out of them is almost as simple as with the ADS enclosures).

I've simply had no major problems with any of these devices and recommend them without qualification.

As for speed, it seems none of my enclosures (or my system, for that matter) is bothered by my use of 7200 or 5400 rpm drives. One of the ADS units has a USB connection and, I've noticed that in my system, that connection isn't fast enough for printing video or burning audio - I get severe dropouts. Whether that's the enclosure interface or my 1.1 USB port is anyone's guess. The USB is fine for non-real time data transfer.

I'm have no experience with the other drive types you are considering.

Hope this helps. Good luck and have fun.

Caruso

1. external firewire drive have a short(er) life expectancy. True or False?
2. external firewire drive is too slow for video editing and capture but fine for storage.

As said before 1 and 2 are false I have a Firewire enclosure with the Oxfore 911 Eide controller and an IBM 80 gig 7200 rpm drive. I have edited AVI's on this drive in the past but now I just use it for archive storage. The Oxford 911 is one of the best out there and the enclosures from "Firewire Direct" (www.firewiredirect.com) are well ventalated too.

My current capture drive is a Maxtor Diamondmax Plus 160 Gig EIDE drive.
One thing to pay attention to is that XP will only recognize the first 120 Gigs and no more unless you have SP1. I also had to down the "large drive enabler" from the Maxtop web site to get the full use of the 160 Gig's.

I haevn't read this whole thread, but will cast my vote for Firewire.
SCSI is still the best IMO, SATA isn't there yet, IMO, and Firewire can have it's own caveats. For instance, when playing files from the Trimmer or Explorer windows, there is no buffering, so FW drives can drop a few frames. I'm aware of this so it doesn't bug me, but it does bug others.
I seriously doubt you'll find many problems with FW drives IF you get something good. Myself, I buy WD or IBM deskstar drives and drop them in the ADS datatanks, and have only had a few problems with 60+ datatanks. All our VASST instructors use them, ADS provides them at a terrific cost to us. One of the instances where there was a problem was me in SFO teaching a class, and I spilled Dr. Pepper on the drive. My assistant drove to a local CompUSA during the class, bought a new kit, we threw the drive in the kit and were good to go. Took about 10 mins to swap drives out. Anything that doesn't have an Oxford 922 or newer is a waste of money. If the kit has USB2 as well, all the better!

I just got my second ADS datatank, as you call them, are they stackable as claimed by ADS? Do you do anything else for ventilation? The room I am in will get kinda hot come summer.

I stack em', not a problem. The new ones don't have the stacking locks in the corners like the ugly ole' blue one's did, but they stack on top just fine. They have a fan, that's been plenty for me.

Donp326:

I've heard this before (about XP recognizing only the first 120GB) but my XPpro system (sans SP1) does just fine with an external 200GB drive mounted in an ADS Pyro box. I have not installed SP1 because I hear it slows the system down a bit.

I got a firewire enclosure a couple months ago, and love it! Of course it isn't as fast as when the HD was in my system as an ATA 133 drive (firewire has a slower throughput) but i can capture to, render, burn from, etc. with no problem.

Also, after a severe power surge where I live, I feel safer because I can disconnect my editing drive PHYSICALY from my computer with no worries to it when I think that a surge could happen (since my data is more valuable then my hardware!).

I have both USB2 and firewire on my external cases and I mostly use USB2 because I have some dropouts when I use it with firewire.
It's very stable using USB2.

Thanks for the feedback.

Looks like firewire is the way to go!

Tek

thanks for all the responses. looks like firewire is the way to go.

Tek

I also have a USB 2.0/Firewire enclosure and have had no problems with it except...

I typically let me machine run at night or when I leave the house to do long renders (last one was 12 hours long!). I have a utility that detects when the CPU drops below a certain mark (i.e. rendering is finished) and then shuts down the computer. With the firewire hooked up I don't really like to take it off line without first disconnecting it via the "safty remove hardware" taskbar icon. Plus even though my PC is off (shutdown powers of the hardware) the firewire drive is still on (sometimes I'm gone the whole weekend).

I've been looking at these removeable hardware enclosures...

http://www.compgeeks.com/details.asp?invtid=GN210-BLK

They are only about $8 and will do ATA 133 and you can get just the tray for about $6. I mostly swap drives between editing stations so this might do the trick. Downside is that they are only hot swappable in Win98 (go figure :).

Anyone have any experience with these babies?

-Jason

I have something very similar except that they are called "InClose" and are beige in color. This is a popular way to connect your hard drives with the PC. The only downside is that you need to shut down your PC before inserting or removing.

There are a dozen brands that are all different in only minor ways. I suspect they all come out of the same factory in China.