Thanks, Liam. I've been working with USB drives here at home, but seems I'm always reading how firewire drives are superior due to their reduced CPU demands. I'm hoping to create the most efficient, rock-solid mobile editing solution possible, therefore I'm leaning toward a firewire configuration.

Scott
HomeSweetRoad.com

Go for it. I also do a lot of on-the-road capture and editing... and the USB route works just great. Also.. takes away any possible issue with using the Firewire for the drive plus camera.

I've read that usb won't work for capturing, ie it will drop frames. USB2 was debated a bit and I'm not sure what the final decision was. Think someone claimed he used it all the time. But I believe it's not an option to use the 1 firewire port for 2 tasks at the same time (so no capturing from a camera to an extrenal firewire drive). Not sure what using a USB2 port would mean for realtime performance.
There is a new Medea external SATA drive coming out in a couple months that would connect to a serial port and be faster than even firewire 800, unless I've misunderstood something.
Also, keep in mind that many/ most laptops have mobile processors that are way slower than their desktop cousins and that is a HUGE issue for real time perfoormance. I believe dvline.com had an article about it. That's why some people spend lots of $ and get a Sager or dvline laptop with a real processor.

I also use a laptop with an external Maxtor 300gb drive - actually it has both firewire and USB but as in your scenario, I only have one firewire socket on the laptop so I use USB to connect the hard drive whilst capturing DV.

I have had no problems whatsoever doing this and certainly no dropped frames.

Cheers

gordyboy

By USB, do you mean USB or USB2? I'm pretty sure Spot advised against USB.

Of course USB2. Anyone contemplating using a USB1.0 drive would be nuts.

And... regardless of what you have read... USB drives work great for capture. Pretty much all my capturing is done to USB drives and I have never had drop frames.

And.. regarding...

There is a new Medea external SATA drive coming out in a couple months that would connect to a serial port and be faster than even firewire 800, unless I've misunderstood something.

That "serial port" is not just any old serial port - we are talking about a SATA serial port. There is a big difference... and very few (if any) laptops have such a capability.

Yes USB2 - I'm not that daft. I doubt any of the modern kit you are looking at is restricted to USB 1.0 in any event.

Cheers

gordyboy

I chain 4 drives and capture firewire, No problem.
Jimmy

Another option is to get a firewire / usb cardbus for your laptop. Mine's from Orange Micro, and adds 3 6pin female firewire ports to my laptop. I won't even use the 4 pin because of how weak they are.

USB 2 is an option but I'd recommend firewire.

Mike

Capture with a camcorder and a Firewire disk on the *same* Firewire board can work but not in all cases. I never acheived this reliably on my desktop with Pyro, nor on my laptop... So, get USB2 and Firewire enabled cases and you will never be in trouble.

USB2 is totally stable and reliable in my experience for capture and editing. Maybe you will get some slightly higher performance for heavy editing with Firerwire, so if you want the best of two world, use the USB2 for capture and Firewire for heavy editing if you ever see an advantage.

I'm with Cheno on this one. I DO use the 4 pin, but that's because my laptop only has one PCM port. So, I slave my cam from the drive. I do need 2 ports when working with DV Rack though, so I have an ADS Pyro card for my PCMCIA slot in that event.
Firewire is infinitely preferable to USB2.

Correct me if I'm wrong here, but all you need to do is capture at 25Mbit/sec. Shouldn't USB1.1 be capable of doing this? I though it was faster than that. Anyway, I use a USB2.0 Drive and I have had no problems at all. Dave

Why not capture to the laptop's HD, and transfer to external drive as needed? I realize it'll add some time when copying (moving) files from the laptop HD to an external, but you won't be adding resources while capturing (right?).

I use an external enclosure made by NexStar that has USB 2.0 and Firewire. It was about $50 from ZipZoomFly.com, and is extremely easy to put a drive into. The price of a bare HD + this enclosure is usually lower than buying a premade external drive.

http://ai.pricegrabber.com/product_images/4676000-4676999/4676700_640.jpg

Why not capture to the laptop's HD

Because it is prone to problems (dropped frames) when capturing to a system drive - especially if you laptop hard drive is 4200rpm (which many are).

Slacy:

I guess you can tell from all the answers here that there's more than one way to accomplish what you want. For what it's worth, I have used my cheapo Dell Inspiron 2650 (about 2 years old, Celeron 1.6) and a PCM firewire card to run both the camera and an external hard drive all the time--no issues at all. Firewire is designed with this in mind. I've read that USB2 works well, too, though not "quite" as perfectly in some cases for some reason that I can't recall.

The back of your external drive box (I use an ADS Pyro) has multiple firewire connectors that allow you to daisy-chain.

I'd like to go the six-pin firewire route, because I agree the four-pin connectors are unacceptably flimsy. But I want to use that slot for a compact-flash reader as I'll be editing a lot of digital photography on this same laptop. Do any laptops come with two card slots?

Scott
www.HomeSweetRoad.com