Laptop Recording HW suggestions for VV3

Rahman wrote on 12/21/2002, 11:46 PM
Hello Vegas fam:

I have been using the Echo Layla Laptop w/PCMCIA card and the setup
is pretty solid. However, I would like to know now about adding an
external 7200 RPM HDD and recording direct to this from the laptop.

1) has anyone tried this?

Or

2) does anyone have an alternate laptop recording setup using an external firewire drive?

Or

3) do I want to go straight to the internal HDD and only use the firewire drive
for backups after the internal starts to get full?


thanks a bunch

Comments

ibliss wrote on 12/23/2002, 7:15 AM
I've yet to use an external firewire harddrive, but there seem to be a few guys posting problems in the Video Topics section.

Click this link for an example posted recently

I gather from this that the problems are related to using the drive within Vegas itself - so if you aren't having problems recording to the internal drive, use the firewire drive only for backup.

Another thought would be (if you have one) to back up your files onto a desktop PC via ethernet cable - cheaper, but not portable!

Mike K
drbam wrote on 12/23/2002, 9:35 AM
Unfortunately I haven't heard of anyone having success with a firewire drive as a primary or aux data drive (however some folks have reported being able to use one as a loop file drive for Acid). This *appears* to be a SoFo limitation which I REALLY would like to see addressed. The use of firewire drives with DAW setups seems to be quite common nowadays and we should be able to utilize this. Personally I use firewire drives for archiving large projects.

drbam
Spot|DSE wrote on 12/30/2002, 9:46 AM
Now you 've heard of someone successfully using Firewire as a dedicated data drive. Most of the problems are related to data tanks not using the Oxford 911 chipset. It's NOT just a SOFO limitation by any stretch of the imagination. Adobe, Pinnacle, Cool Edit all suffer from this depending on the controller chipset, BIOS, and other issues. With a Sony Vaio laptop (3) a PC Nirvana laptop, and 8 other systems in our shop, we don't ever have problems with Firewire drives. We exclusively use ADS datatanks(new black ones, not the older purple translucent) and have WD 120's in most of them. We have 28-30 of em. You can have up to 6 going at once.
We recorded the Mormon Tabernacle choir for the Olympics using the Vaio, firewire drive, Mona from Echo Audio. You can read more about it if you want, http://www.creativecow.net/articles/spottedeagle_douglas/edit_suite/index.html
ramallo wrote on 12/30/2002, 10:31 AM
Hello

>2) does anyone have an alternate laptop recording setup using an external firewire >drive?

I tried with a external firewire drive and no way (Oxford 911)

>3) do I want to go straight to the internal HDD and only use the firewire drive
>for backups after the internal starts to get full?

I use a additional HD on the media bay of my Dell Inspirion 8200, and I can work with 53 24/48 tracks, the disk are a Hitachi of 4800 rpm, 2,5"

I use a Dell Inspirion 8200 with two internal hard drives and a RME Hamerfall DSP cardbus + Digiface + ADI8DS

Cheers

drbam wrote on 12/30/2002, 11:24 AM
<<It's NOT just a SOFO limitation by any stretch of the imagination. Adobe, Pinnacle, Cool Edit all suffer from this depending on the controller chipset, BIOS, and other issues. With a Sony Vaio laptop (3) a PC Nirvana laptop, and 8 other systems in our shop, we don't ever have problems with Firewire drives. We exclusively use ADS datatanks(new black ones, not the older purple translucent) and have WD 120's in most of them. We have 28-30 of em. You can have up to 6 going at once.>>

Spot, thanks for this!! Very helpful and obviously clears up some confusion about this! ;-)

drbam