1394a isn't quite as fast but it's fast enough. However, internal drives are much, much more reliable.

TVCmike is right. removable drive cartidges are really a great way to go. That way you can easily swap drives and you get a very reliable PATA or SATA connection.

I'd think about SATA at this point. There are some potential advantages like hot swappability. On the down side, I haven't seen a 1394 case that would take an SATA drive. But that'll change soon. It'd be very handy to be able to swap disk cartridges from a chassis bay to a bay installed in a 1394 enclosure.

Rob Mack

My second HD would be for storing video capture and Vegas output media. It sounds like a fixed HD would be best. At this point I don't see the need to share the data via the HD itself.
Thanks much
warren

Previous posters have not shared relative cost of their suggestions. I don't know anything about front loading IDE tray setups (sounds interesting), so, I wonder what it would cost. I also wonder how mobile that system would be (mobility is important to me).

If you are mainly concerned over which setup will provide storage and reliability for video capture, I can offer my endorsement of both internal (fixed) and firewire drives.

I use both. Some of my drives are 5400 RPM and some are 7200 RPM. Vegas does not seem to have a preference for internal over external or 7200 over 5400 RPM and works fine with any of these drives, no matter where they are setup (inside the box or an external enclosure).

I have simply had no problems with video in or out, and my drives (and enclosures) have all performed reliably.

I recommend you do what your budget allows and what is otherwise most convenient for the way you work with your setup.

Good luck.

Caruso

I know it sounds like BS but the new Maxtor One Touch external USB 2 drives are adequate as well. If nothing else they are geat for back up storage and in Alberta at least, slightly more than half the cost of an equivalent size Lacie 1394 drive. I use both at home and at work. One P4 2.8 Ghz station was pulling info from USB, SCSI and 1394 for a single project with nary a glitch.

Peter

any external drive connected thru firewire will be fast enuff for DV. However, the 1394a standard limits thruput to the equivalent of UDMA66, or about 24mbps. This is considerably slower than UDMA100, which modern HD's are capable of when installed internally.....about 33 mbps. The newer 1394b standard is capable of more thruput and will allow all those UDMA100/133 hard drives to use their full potential...provided, that is, that the external enclosure is also a 1394b enclosure.

I have been using external Firewire drives very successfully for the last two years, via external converters. There is no doubt they are up to anything I've been able to throw at them from Vegas, including 20 track mixdowns, at full professional level.

I'm currently using converters from Wiebetech.com. I've purchased 3 to which I attach (simple plug in situation - no case or screws) IDE drives that I'm buying from Best Buy, etc., when they come on sale (ie 160G for$70 or $80 bucks each).

I use a separate hard drive for each job that I get (more if necessary, daisy chaining the drives to a hub) - and I put EVERYTHING on those drives... VEG files, all media, original captures, music files, ACID files, still photos, photoshop retouches, graphics , PLUS scripts, budgets, shooting schedules, etc. At the end of the job, I unplug the drive(s) - put them in a little box clearly labeled with the job name (plus attendant paperwork, ie, releases, hard copy, etc. and it's it's own archive.

Thanks all. This is very useful info.
warren

I don't know anything about front loading IDE tray setups (sounds interesting), so, I wonder what it would cost.

The trays are around $15-$20. Much cheaper, faster and more reliable than external Firewire or USB enclosures, and more reliable since they're basically connect the internal data and power connectors from the case to one of your external drive bays and act as a plug for the external tray. You can also just keep the hard drives in their trays and leave your projects on them.

Until external SATA hits the market, this is a great alternative if you don't need universal portability.

One thing that a few of us have done is to buy a cartridge-type mechanism and mount it inside an external firewire box. In this way you can easily swap out drives without turning off the PC--just disconnect the firewire from the PC, power down the firewire box, and exchange the drive cartridge.

As for costs, the cartridge system is made of two parts--the case for the bare hard drive, and a female receptacle into which it locks when in use. The whole thing is about $25, and additional cases for hard drives are only about $12 more. The ADS Pyro box I bought last year cost about $100 then.

That's a very risky proposition, as hard drives that are fallowed for long periods of time may (usually will) develop a sticky spindle. If you're lucky, you can unstick it by gently tapping or shaking the drive on power-up, but if you're unlucky -- you'll understand why this is not the best "archiving" solution.

Tape is expensive, but it works, it lasts a long time, and it's designed as an archiving medium.

Bob.

I use external FW box with IDE trays, plus my PCs have cages in them so I can mix n' match however I need. I have <$10 plastic trays, but to do over I'd spand twice that and get metal ones. I suspect the metal ones would do much better at heat dissipation and have better overall build quality. I will do this conversion one day, but I don't hammer the drives, so I don't feel antsy about it. I do wish internal IDE drives were hot swappable; this is a nice feature of a FW mount.

As for bandwidth, only now are the newest 7200RPM IDE drives touching the ATA66 ceiling for sustained throughput, and that only on the outermost zones of the platters:
http://www.storagereview.com/articles/200310/20031007HDS722525VLSA80_2.html

So while wanting ATA100 makes sense for system drives or anything that uses drive cached data, for big files and sustained throughput like video data, FW is just fine.

Riredale, can you elaborate a little more on your solution? If you could link to the products you are talking about that would be great. I have of folks doing that, but I didn't know if they were doing that with ADS datatanks.

I use an ADS dual link firewire/USB2 case and another ADS case that's USB2 only. My current project is going to be over a terrabyte of video, so I find my self having to switch hard drives fairly often.

Busterkeaton:

Take a brief look here:

http://mediasoftware.sonypictures.com/forums/ShowMessage.asp?ForumID=4&MessageID=183010

The disk enclosure system is just called "InClose" and I bought it at Fry's Electronics, a major parts retailer in the western US. In magazines I see lots of other brands that are very similar. Cooling should not be an issue, since both the InClose system and the ADS Pyro boxes have little muffin fans. As mentioned in that earlier thread, however, the fit was very close, and I had to to a bit of creative engineering to make it fit, but the upside is that you get the best of both worlds--cheap disk management without rebooting. It'll all be moot a few years from now as disks go to the newer SATA standard, which I understand is hot-swappable.

It's amazing to me that we now treat the concept of 1TB storage so casually. Just a few years ago a 30MB tiff file would have impressed the heck out of me. My last Vegas project involved 800GB of on-line storage. My generic Enlight PC case (homebuilt PC) didn't have a disk rack big enough, so I literally had 4 disks standing on-edge, sitting in the bottom of the case. Not exactly the most professional setup, but it worked beautifully. And all on a 300W power supply.

I note with some amusement that some of the latest $50 PC cases at Fry's now have rack space for a half-dozen drives. A video editor's dream...

No, these are a video editors dream, since I got mine I can't believe I used to cram all that stuff in those cheap little $50 ATX cases!
http://www.thermaltake.com/xaserCase/xaser3/v1000d.htm

Riredale,

Thanks for the info. I guess I was correct in assuming it was not just a simple plug and play.

With this solution, do you use the large black plastic outer shell of the ADS case? I am still having trouble picturing this. With drive caddies I think of the drive sliding into a slot, that is in and out along a horizontal space. With the firewire enclosure I think of a drive going into the bottom of a box, more of down and then in, so more vertical.

The ADS Pyro box I have has a removable "face" on it. If you are just using it to hold an internal hard drive, the face stays on (it has a "disk active" light on it. If you are instead planning to mount, say, a DVD burner in it, then the face comes off and the burner fits neatly inside.

In my situation, I purchased the kind of caddy that normally mounts in one of the slots in the front of a PC. As mentioned earlier, I found that the female receptacle fits in that ADS slot also, provided some minor modification is made to the very back of the ADS enclosure (the caddy assembly is rather long).

The finished result looks and performs well. I can slide in a hard drive (contained within its own plastic enclosure), plug the firewire cable into the PC, and presto--instant capacity.

The ADS Pyro box I have has a removable "face" on it. If you are just using it to hold an internal hard drive, the face stays on (it has a "disk active" light on it). If you are instead planning to mount, say, a DVD burner in it, then the face comes off and the burner fits neatly inside.

In my situation, I purchased the kind of caddy that normally mounts in one of the slots in the front of a PC. As mentioned earlier, I found that the female receptacle fits in that ADS slot also, provided some minor modification is made to the very back of the ADS enclosure (the caddy assembly is rather long).

The finished result looks and performs well. I can slide in a hard drive (contained within its own plastic enclosure), plug the firewire cable into the PC, and presto--instant capacity.