OT: Portable drive as Backup

xberk wrote on 5/16/2012, 7:06 PM
Working on a long form project. I'm thinking of getting a 2TB Portable drive for backup and use at the client's site on their PC to review footage, rough cuts etc.

Any recommendations for the 2TB Portable drive? I've used Buffalo, Western Digital, Seagate, Acomdata in the past. Haven't bought one in a while .. what's good these days.

Paul B .. PCI Express Video Card: EVGA VCX 10G-P5-3885-KL GeForce RTX 3080 XC3 ULTRA ,,  Intel Core i9-11900K Desktop Processor ,,  MSI Z590-A PRO Desktop Motherboard LGA-1200 ,, 64GB (2X32GB) XPG GAMMIX D45 DDR4 3200MHz 288-Pin SDRAM PC4-25600 Memory .. Seasonic Power Supply SSR-1000FX Focus Plus 1000W ,, Arctic Liquid Freezer II – 360MM .. Fractal Design case ,, Samsung Solid State Drive MZ-V8P1T0B/AM 980 PRO 1TB PCI Express 4 NVMe M.2 ,, Wundiws 10 .. Vegas Pro 19 Edit

Comments

JackW wrote on 5/16/2012, 7:55 PM
I've used LaCie external drives for several years. No problems to report.

Jack
Laurence wrote on 5/16/2012, 8:05 PM
I've been using USB 3 drives for editing ever since I got my current PC. Works great.
xberk wrote on 5/16/2012, 8:49 PM
Yeah. USB 3.0 is appealing.

Anyone use this drive: 2TB Seagate Portable $109 at Newegg

The only draw back seems to be no power on/off ..you have to unplug to shut it down.

Paul B .. PCI Express Video Card: EVGA VCX 10G-P5-3885-KL GeForce RTX 3080 XC3 ULTRA ,,  Intel Core i9-11900K Desktop Processor ,,  MSI Z590-A PRO Desktop Motherboard LGA-1200 ,, 64GB (2X32GB) XPG GAMMIX D45 DDR4 3200MHz 288-Pin SDRAM PC4-25600 Memory .. Seasonic Power Supply SSR-1000FX Focus Plus 1000W ,, Arctic Liquid Freezer II – 360MM .. Fractal Design case ,, Samsung Solid State Drive MZ-V8P1T0B/AM 980 PRO 1TB PCI Express 4 NVMe M.2 ,, Wundiws 10 .. Vegas Pro 19 Edit

Laurence wrote on 5/16/2012, 9:04 PM
Just turn your computer off and I'm pretty sure the drive will power down as well.
xberk wrote on 5/16/2012, 9:26 PM
Laurence .. that would be normal that the drive powers down when the PC is off .. but here's a comment on the drive at Newegg "...Cons: Needs a power button. When I shut down the PC the HD stays on and running. Have to crawl under the desk to pull the plug to shut down HD. If I knew that before I would not have bought it. " .. Weird ..

Of course, I don't power down my editing PC at night, just put it to sleep most of the time. .. But for the price, I think I can live with it .. I'll put the portable drive on my worksurface -- easy enough to pull the plug at the drive and not the electric socket.

Paul B .. PCI Express Video Card: EVGA VCX 10G-P5-3885-KL GeForce RTX 3080 XC3 ULTRA ,,  Intel Core i9-11900K Desktop Processor ,,  MSI Z590-A PRO Desktop Motherboard LGA-1200 ,, 64GB (2X32GB) XPG GAMMIX D45 DDR4 3200MHz 288-Pin SDRAM PC4-25600 Memory .. Seasonic Power Supply SSR-1000FX Focus Plus 1000W ,, Arctic Liquid Freezer II – 360MM .. Fractal Design case ,, Samsung Solid State Drive MZ-V8P1T0B/AM 980 PRO 1TB PCI Express 4 NVMe M.2 ,, Wundiws 10 .. Vegas Pro 19 Edit

Steve Mann wrote on 5/16/2012, 9:28 PM
I haven't used that particular drive, but I use external USB drives to deliver raw footage to clients who are paying for shoot-only.

Note that some PC's keep standby power on the USB ports even when the PC is off. so the drive just keeps spinning.

Also note that many of the external USB drives are 5400 RPM drives typical of laptops.

Do not use a "Green" drive - they throttle down or shut off altogether during periods of non-use.
videoITguy wrote on 5/16/2012, 10:21 PM
The best bang for the buck - build your own USB3.0 drives by:
buying a sata harddrive (non-green type) and placing in a USB3.0 drive dock. Most of the better docks come with a built-in power switch. Although the design should be able to be hot-plugged there are some gotchas with motherboard designs.

You should always power-up the external drive dock with it's own power first, then boot the PC...reverse that order for shutdown.
xberk wrote on 5/17/2012, 4:21 PM
Speaking of bare drives .. what looks good today in 2TB ..
Any one using the 2TB Black Caviar WD .. One guy on Newegg says the drive is LOUD ..
WD2002FAEX ?

Paul B .. PCI Express Video Card: EVGA VCX 10G-P5-3885-KL GeForce RTX 3080 XC3 ULTRA ,,  Intel Core i9-11900K Desktop Processor ,,  MSI Z590-A PRO Desktop Motherboard LGA-1200 ,, 64GB (2X32GB) XPG GAMMIX D45 DDR4 3200MHz 288-Pin SDRAM PC4-25600 Memory .. Seasonic Power Supply SSR-1000FX Focus Plus 1000W ,, Arctic Liquid Freezer II – 360MM .. Fractal Design case ,, Samsung Solid State Drive MZ-V8P1T0B/AM 980 PRO 1TB PCI Express 4 NVMe M.2 ,, Wundiws 10 .. Vegas Pro 19 Edit

Laurence wrote on 5/17/2012, 5:33 PM
I checked and my external USB 3 drive is a Seagate. I like it. No on / off switch, and it doesn't turn on and off exactly with the computer, but if it isn't used for a while it spins down. Since I have projects on several USB3 drives, this actually works out well for me. When I call up a project on that drive, I can hear it coming up to speed even if the PC has been on for a while. I just plugged it in and stopped worrying about it. No problems with this approach so far.
robwood wrote on 5/17/2012, 5:54 PM
I've been using USB 3 drives for editing ever since I got my current PC. Works great. - Laurence

+1

haven't been using our USB3 drives every day, but whenever i have the last 6 months or so, the difference between internal/external data hasn't been much... i was expecting a more bottle-necked performance than i got (most of the footage I'm working with are image-sequences, so the amount of data can get pretty heavy).

not perfect but better than i expected. :)
VidMus wrote on 5/17/2012, 5:55 PM
Laurence said, "...but if it isn't used for a while it spins down."

That sounds to me like one of those green drives. I had one of those and after x amount of spin downs and ups it failed.

Also, when rendering with Vegas and not doing anything else it would spin down and cause crashes and/or problems. It could cause the drive to be seen as offline even if that is not supposed to be the case.

Another thought is Vegas might want a file from it and error out while waiting for the drive to spin up.

I would highly recommend NOT using a green drive with Vegas or any NLE.

Note: If Windows settings are set to spin down drives after a set period of time that can also create problems. And Windows does not recognize the fact that Vegas is rendering and will spin down the drives anyway on my system so I set those settings to 'never'.
xberk wrote on 5/18/2012, 12:27 AM
I ordered the Seagate STAY2000102 .. from Amazon. It's USB 3.0,
should do the job No worries about no/off switch. $109 for 2TB is great these days.
I had not planned to use this for editing but backup .. Sounds like it would work for editing also .. cool .. .

I'm thinking of a WD Black Caviar drive for editing on this project. Any one using one? 2TB. Client's paying for the drive .. why not get something good -- and fast !

Paul B .. PCI Express Video Card: EVGA VCX 10G-P5-3885-KL GeForce RTX 3080 XC3 ULTRA ,,  Intel Core i9-11900K Desktop Processor ,,  MSI Z590-A PRO Desktop Motherboard LGA-1200 ,, 64GB (2X32GB) XPG GAMMIX D45 DDR4 3200MHz 288-Pin SDRAM PC4-25600 Memory .. Seasonic Power Supply SSR-1000FX Focus Plus 1000W ,, Arctic Liquid Freezer II – 360MM .. Fractal Design case ,, Samsung Solid State Drive MZ-V8P1T0B/AM 980 PRO 1TB PCI Express 4 NVMe M.2 ,, Wundiws 10 .. Vegas Pro 19 Edit