New Maxtor Firewire Drives

wcoxe1 wrote on 10/11/2002, 9:22 AM
Maxtor just announced three new combination USB2.0/1.1 and Firewire external drives. The largest is the 5000XT with 250GB, for $399.99. There are also two smaller, a 120GB and an 80GB.

For that price, the 250GB is VERY interesting. The others would have been interesting a year ago. However, with history what it is, I am waiting to see what happens when people buy them and try to use them for video. I don't want to be the first kid on the block with a new dud.

Comments

Caruso wrote on 10/11/2002, 11:08 PM
I'm external-drive-maxed right now (maxed $$, never maxed space), but, if your budget allows and you can use the space, I would not hesitate to try the new 250gb drive. You can always return it if it doesn't suit your needs.

I can say this: I own three "early" Maxtor 80 gb externals, and most recently purchased an ADS enclosure into which I installed an 80 gb "internal" HD. All work fine with Vegas (and any other program that requires plenty of storage space).

My Maxtor externals all run at 5400 rpm, the "internal-external" in the ADS runs at 7200 rpm.

I have detected absolutely no practical advantage of one spin rate over the other in my usage. Audio and video applications seem to be unaffected by the different spin rate (I use Steinberg's WaveLab v3 and v4 extensively in addition to heavy use of VV3 to process audio, vv3 exclusively to work with video).

On the bright side (if it makes you feel better), I paid $300 - $400 for each of my external drives - looks like you'll be able to plop down that figure one time and out-distance me. I'd go for it, if I were you. On the other hand, perhaps you can work a special volume price and purchase four at once. I bet if you have the space, you'll fill it up.

Seems I never have enough storage space.

Good luck, and happy shopping.

Caruso
vicmilt wrote on 10/12/2002, 12:17 AM
From now on, everything I do will end up on Firewire drives - BUT - here's an interesting twist.
I bought a 60gig 7200 IDE drive for under $80 and installed it into a Firewire enclosure. It has worked fine with Vegas. I keep the Veg files, graphics, and all media, as well as scripts and correspondance on the Firewire drive.

The video I'm working on is 12 minutes long, and it looks like the 60Gig will just be about filled, with graphics, dailies and experiments. Once this job is completed, I will remove the HD from the Firewire enclosure, and put it on a shelf - a complete living archive, for under $80! I used to spend more than that on DLT tape backups.
wcoxe1 wrote on 10/12/2002, 3:09 PM
The idea of a permanent storage medium is wonderful. However, you should be aware of a thing called stiction. "Sticky Friction."

After awhile, the lubricants in all hard disks dry out. The LESS used, the sooner they become sticky. You may find in a few years, about the normal life of a hard disk IN use, or less, that you will not be able to START your stored hard disk.

EVERY hard disk I have ever lost, since the first antique in 1982, has been lost to stiction. They just won't spin up. A good tech can save the data, usually, but the hard disk is useless after the recovery.
vicmilt wrote on 10/13/2002, 8:18 AM
Wow - great input. I had no idea... well, back to the drawing board - and I guess I won't sell that DLT drive just yet. :)
Thanks again for great input.
Caruso wrote on 10/13/2002, 12:46 PM
Maybe I'm just lucky, but, I've never experienced stiction, and I've rescued old PC's from self-store warehouses, closets, basements, discarded from office systems, even from curb-side. None of these things were great finds, old processors, OS's and such, but the HD has never refused to spin up for me.

I'd say the idea of saving a full render on a HD is as safe as any method available, and has the added advantage of being able to hold an entire production without splitting it.

I assume you need to do this because you will from time to time need to pop the drive back online to output to tape or something, yes?

We aren't talking about archiving for 30 years or so, right?

I mean, if you did that, you'd be lucky to have a system capable of running the disk.

Caruso
wcoxe1 wrote on 10/13/2002, 7:18 PM
Stiction is not such a common problem of hard drives in active use in a normal environment. My experience is at a university lab setting, which is far from normal.

Here we find that we lose one or two per lab over the month long Christmas break. Cold weather, ZERO heating (budget problems), no use, dead! That is 3 to 6 % failure EVERY Christmas. Other breaks here at the U don't see quite so many failures because they are warmer and don't sit so long.

I learned LONG ago not to turn my computer off during the Christmas break. I can't get away with leaving every one in every lab on. I'd get fired for sure. But, when they turn that heat off to save a buck, they just may kill a few hard drives if the have a few years on it. Any which one ISN'T a bit old here. Typically, they are 3 to 5 years old.

I understand that the stiction problem is less today than when I started at the labs 14 years ago because of better lubricants, but drives still die over Christmas more than any other time of year.
Caruso wrote on 10/19/2002, 4:53 AM
So, we're talking two different animals, here (no lab pun intended, LOL). On one hand, the user will take a new drive, store data on it, stick it on a shelf. On the other hand, we have drives that have been spinning away for up to five years in a lab, then get shut off, subjected to drastic temperature change, and, some of them won't spin up after a week or two.

The computers in my office have been running non-stop for eight years. One old digital has run for 11 years. We shut 'em off during holiday weekends (three or four days at a time, tops . . . don't know from week or two breaks, LOL). Yet to have a disk stick on me. Have had lots of cooling fans squeal in protest, though.

If you are working with relatively new drives that don't have a tremendous number of hours on them, and, if you need access to a project that won't conveniently fit on media of lesser capacity, I wouldn't hesitate to use a hard drive for storage.

Just my two cents.

Interesting topic/discussion, though.

Caruso