OT: External drives for laptop editing

Cliff Etzel wrote on 11/2/2009, 8:59 PM
I have a Dell D620 with 4GB RAM running Win 7 Pro 64bit.

I have no firewire or e-sata ports so I have to use a 3 port Adaptec firewire card via PCMCIA.

I'm traveling more these days on the train to visit my fiance' and would like to get editing done while on the train and staying with her.

Wondering what options others would recommend for external hard drives. It seems OEM external drives leave me lacking in the 2.5" form factor as they are all 5400RPM drives. I'm considering a 7200RPM laptop drives (320-500GB) and getting a third party external enclosure as one option, or am I better off sticking with 3.5" form factor. Size and portability are very important but I really don't know if USB 2.0 is a fast enough connection for editing HDV on my laptop or not.

Any suggestions?

Cliff Etzel
Videographer : Producer : Web Designer
bluprojekt

Comments

RalphM wrote on 11/2/2009, 9:26 PM
HDV is a slightly lower bit rate than DV, so I don't think a 5400 rpm USB interface will be a problem.

What can be a problem with the 2.5 inch drives is that most draw power from the Laptop's USB port. If you go to a 7200 rpm drive the power draw will be higher and you may not have enough power capacity for it.

I have an HP laptop that is marginal on powering a 5400 rpm 2.5 inch drive. One way around this can be to buy a small powered hub. They are much smaller than a 3.5 inch esternal drive. If the train has power available this could work

The biggest issue I see is that you're going to see your fiancee and you plan on working while you're there. Could be a bad decision....

RalphM
Chienworks wrote on 11/2/2009, 9:31 PM
I'll also add that for any given spindle speed, a 2.5" drive is going to be noticeably faster than a 3.5" drive. A lot of the overhead is in head movement. On a 2.5" drive the heads move a lot less!

We've taken to using 2.5" drives for the OS/boot drive in a lot of our servers. We made the switch for space reasons and to leave the 3.5" bays open for huge data discs. However, we also noticed that boot times dropped quite noticeably and system access is much zippier.
farss wrote on 11/3/2009, 1:21 AM
Although expensive SSDs could be the best solution. No power being wasted keeping the platters spinning and no risk of a head crash when bumped or thrown at you by fiance.

Bob.
TheHappyFriar wrote on 11/3/2009, 5:21 AM
my dad has a Western Digital My Passport drive he uses for editing. He doesn't capture anything though so I don't know how it works with capturing, but it works great for storing his stuff on.

but you need to use the small USB cord that's included so it works (a longer cord looses to much power).