Which external hard drive to get?

CallDon wrote on 8/18/2009, 11:49 AM
Since my laptop HDD is filling rapidly, I have realized that I need an external HDD for saving the original video and for editing and saving projects. But since I am dumping from SD cards, this will be the back-up/archive drive until I archive all the original footage to still another HDD.

So I need to buy an external drive really soon. Buying more and more SD cards is getting expensive.

Any suggestions for which external drive to get to dump the video and edit with Vegas? Any particular brands or models?

Thanks so much.
Don

Comments

musicvid10 wrote on 8/18/2009, 6:35 PM
Choose firewire over USB.

I know from experience that the cheap WD MyBook drives are too slow for NLE. They crash under heavy simultaneous read/write instructions.

I replaced it with a Seagate 500GB firewire drive and no problems except the light doesn't turn off when I shut the computer down.
Birk Binnard wrote on 8/24/2009, 9:04 AM
I bought the 1TB WD MyDrive specifically because it has an SATA interface port on the back. I got and external SATA drive cable (about $8) and hooked it up to my PC (ASUS P6T motherboard) and the MyBook works fine as both a backups device and for editing with Vegas MS.

If I recall properly, the SATA interface is about 10x the speed of USB2. I'm not sure where FireWire fits in since I don't know about Apple products.
Byron K wrote on 8/24/2009, 10:29 AM
If you want to edit directly from the external then, like musicvid said, firewire or eSATA. But, will cost more.

I have an older P4HT PC and total drive space is limited to only 80 Gig and the editing partition is only 30 Gig, so I use USB drives for archiving and work on one or two projects at a time.

The project media is stored in a single folder on an external USB drive and copied to the editing partition on the main computer when I'm ready to edit that project, then transferred off to the USB when editing is complete and repeat the process for the next project. Yes, copying 3-7Gig project takes a while so I'm sure to have a tutorial video and a late ready to watch to help pass the time! (;

This method works quite well in keeping the media and project files organized. I'm going to continue to use this method for archiving when I build my new i7 machine.