I'm thinking about adding an external HD to my laptop for capture /storage etc.  Probably around 1TB as these are now getting cheaper.

Just wondering what are your experiences with such drives?  Is it worth the extra cash?

Read recently that Recordable DVDs may have a fairly short lifespan so would an external HD be the best way for long term archiving of captures, edits etc?

Your thoughts on this would be appreciated.

Dave the Dogman.

I for one don't bother with DVDs for backups and the like - I have a selection of internal and external drives.

I still tend to capture to internal drives, but unless you get USB conflicts, there is no reason you need to.

With a laptop you are limited to externals, and they work very well. Make sure your laptop has 2.0 USB (almost certainly) and the transfer speed are in the same region as internal old school PATA drives.

Externals come in two forms - 3.5" with external power supplies, 2.5 that can run of USB power - a lot less bulky, probably a little slower and your laptop may not be able to power them from all it's USB sockets.

Having said that, the long term furture of optical storage might be THIS

Thanks for the info, Jeff.

Yes, this laptop does use USB 2 so should be o-k there.  I was wondering about not only capturing but rendering on an external drive as I have heard of conflicts with internal drives due to windows / antivirus access etc. causing issues with Pinnacle.  Not that I have experienced it personally.

Interesting article re. holographic drives.  I guess the issue would still ultimately come down to how secure the media actually is after a few years in the closet.

Come to that I'm. that I'm not even sure how long a HD can be expected to preserve info.

Just as a matter of interest I still have original VHS tapes made of my kids in 1981.  Now copied to DVD via Pinnacle, but I wonder if the tapes might yet outlast the DVDs.

Re. Blue ray.  I'm tending to wait on that.  Solid state storage is getting so cheap I'm wondering if this might be the wave of the future.  Blue ray might go the way of Beta?

 Dave

Using a USB drive for capturing and/or rendering will not work so hot, there just not fast enough. But using them for archiving works very well. I use to archive to DVD-RAM disk, but after they started to pile up, I copied all of them to my 1.5TB USB drives. These drives are now selling for around $110.

Commercial Holographic drives now store around 10TB onto one disk cartage, but the drives run around $50,000. The last technical article I read on these units the manufacture claims they should be able to scale these units to hold up to 20,000TB within the next 10 years. The one jjn references sounds like a good one for the consumer market someday.

What ghuck stated is correct, but I wouldn't completely rule out an external drive as a possible solution to your problem. I regularly use an external drive for my auxiliary files and have never experienced a problem. I would suggest that you don't put both your captured files and your auxiliary files on an external drive.

Don

Not necessarily;

I have successfully captured to my external drive without problems. I usually capture to an internal drive and then copy to the external drive, but either way has worked for me. I suppose you can just give it a try and find out. Watch for dropped frames and audio out of sync type problems. If you have none, then you should be ok.

Don

I'm going to have to pitch in here with a different opinion. (hopefully without involking Bittmann's ire again)

I don't have a USB capture device, but I've captured perfectly well with a PCI capture device to a USB external drive, and unless there is a USB conflict issue I can't see why the same would not apply to USB capture devices.

Look at the data rates - USB 2.0 more than covers the data rates required to capture analogue SD. In fact, UDMA 66 even does it - as long as you aren't running background task.

When I was trying to capture analogue via a DC10+ and UDMA 33, on a 266MMX processor, even moving the mouse could cause a frame drop. That really isn't the case now, and advising people that they won't be able to capture SD or run Studio if

• Their HDD is 10% framented
• They are are connected to the internet
• Any background tasks are running
• and worst of all, they shouldn't be running the latest patches of XP, Vista or Studio

is just nonsense, and a waste of their time. Let's look for the real causes, rather than imposing the same "menu" approach to troubleshooting as first line support.

I'd have put that in upper case but I'd be playing into TVJohn's hands... 

Perhaps we need to revise our advice in the light of new technology. OK, putting your render files onto an external is going to slow down some Make File/Disc operations, but only by relatively small margins.

I have an external drive with both USB an 1394 capabilities. The USB connection was just a tiny bit faster than the 1394 on my system. I opted to use the USB because I use the 1394 for the capture from the camera.

I will second what bit put so well.

Don

Thanks Ya'll

Looks like a workable solution.  I just need to experiment a bit.  Capturing to the internal 160gig drive is working well.  Just trying to avoid cluttering it up.  Also looking at good long term storage.  For at least as long as these old bones keep moving anyway.

Saw a good price on a Western Digital 1 TB drive at Sams club today.  Might just buy it.

Dave

 Try this site and register to the site, they have some mind blowing sales for just about anything have seen 1TB external  for around $90. now and then.

http://www.gearxs.com/gearxs/product_info.php?cPath=333&products_id=10245

Hi All

Just wanted to put in my 2 cents an external HDD

I capture DV via firewire to an external disc (it has its own power) and then edit and burn -- all still on the external. No problems here.

My 2 pence worth...

I frequently capture DV via Firewire onto a variety of USB2 external drives with no problems.

However (as Jeff as hinted at when he mentioned 'USB conflicts') I cannot capture from a Pinnacle 700-USB onto any USB2 external drive without tons of dropped frames; I have to go first to an internal drive and copy to the external one afterwards. The issue here is not the speed of transfer or the volume of data being shifted from the 700-USB to the hard drive, but simply that the 700-USB driver hogs the USB controller and nothing else (including Studio trying to write the captured data!) can get a look-in...

I also edit using the external drive - especially on a laptop PC where the internal dsk is never big enough

Regards,
Richard

Tiny, cheap, USB-powered 500 GB hard drives, even ones that spin at only 5,400 rpm, work OK.  The competing DC-adaptor-powered 1.0 TB and 1.5 TB ones work even faster, although a Western Digital one I have has a bothersome tendency to go dormant if a background rendering job gets slow.  Between the slower USB-powered versions and the faster 7200 rpm non-portable ESATA ones, I don't notice a material difference.  Working in AVCHD or any HD files, the slow juncture tends to be the CPU and the graphics card, not the HDD.

Those 500 GB holographic optical discs of the future will sure be keen.  At $1,000 apiece, think of the joy each time there is a burn error or when the $50,000 player can't recognize the files or menus.  Think of the bliss when a disc with ones entire collection fails because of breakdown in the dyes.  They'll enjoy premium status in my collection of "coasters." 

The trouble with any advancements in optical display is the inherent slow speed and vulnerability of the burn process, the high cost and fragility of the media, and the low costs and parsimony of more simple video sharing modes.  Plenty of people seem not to know or care about the difference in real definition. 

Think of all the HD-DVD players that, whatever their original buyers claim, will soon have a status as quaint as an 8-track disc player or the vinyl turntable whose broken stylus costs too much to replace to bother and whose crackly pre-70s music ceases to charm the ears after it hits that broken groove.

Hard drives probably do not last very long, but they sure are getting cheap, and the speed of backup or replication is unmatcheable by tape or optical disc.  If it costs me only $120 and 1 hour every 5 years to back-up 1.5 TB of data or files that otherwise, using 50 GB BD-DLs cost me well over $1,000 and days to burn, the choice is easy.

JKoch:

Tiny, cheap, USB-powered 500 GB hard drives, even ones that spin at only 5,400 rpm, work OK.  The competing DC-adaptor-powered 1.0 TB and 1.5 TB ones work even faster, although a Western Digital one I have has a bothersome tendency to go dormant if a background rendering job gets slow.  Between the slower USB-powered versions and the faster 7200 rpm non-portable ESATA ones, I don't notice a material difference.  Working in AVCHD or any HD files, the slow juncture tends to be the CPU and the graphics card, not the HDD.

Marc P.:

JKoch:

Tiny, cheap, USB-powered 500 GB hard drives, even ones that spin at only 5,400 rpm, work OK.  The competing DC-adaptor-powered 1.0 TB and 1.5 TB ones work even faster, although a Western Digital one I have has a bothersome tendency to go dormant if a background rendering job gets slow.  Between the slower USB-powered versions and the faster 7200 rpm non-portable ESATA ones, I don't notice a material difference.  Working in AVCHD or any HD files, the slow juncture tends to be the CPU and the graphics card, not the HDD.

I'm glad you mentioned this, I was about to pick one of the 1TB up. I'm going for convenience over the cumbersome ones. Thanks for posting this.

 Hi Marc,

Western Digital are generally the real dogs amongst the external HDD's.  Maxtor have proved to be much more reliable.  I have several external HDD's on my network  and the ones which have usually failed or underperformed are all Western Digital.

If you're going to use a cheap USB powered HDD, make sure your power supply will handle it.

GHuck:  Thanks for the critical information regarding the slow-speed of USB.  I installed Dazzle and Studio a few weeks ago and soon realized I needed a great deal more memory and storage for my 20 hours of VHS to DVD conversion. So I added 1 Ter to my C drive and a 1 Ter My Book as my external drive.  No problems capturing with the C, but BIIIIG problems with the external drive.  It froze every time.  The Tech guys with Pinnacle come up with this solution they had heard on one of these Forum threads; to partition the E drive into 3 sections.  That didn't work.  Now, after reading your comments, I realized the slow speed of the USB was my problem.  I'm going to return My Book and exhange it for another 1 ter Sata internal drive. I have three ports open inside for that.  I know this will solve my problem and give me the space I need.

Thanks Again! 

RDavis

Also in Portland Or

pinshel:

Marc P.:

JKoch:

Tiny, cheap, USB-powered 500 GB hard drives, even ones that spin at only 5,400 rpm, work OK.  The competing DC-adaptor-powered 1.0 TB and 1.5 TB ones work even faster, although a Western Digital one I have has a bothersome tendency to go dormant if a background rendering job gets slow.  Between the slower USB-powered versions and the faster 7200 rpm non-portable ESATA ones, I don't notice a material difference.  Working in AVCHD or any HD files, the slow juncture tends to be the CPU and the graphics card, not the HDD.

I'm glad you mentioned this, I was about to pick one of the 1TB up. I'm going for convenience over the cumbersome ones. Thanks for posting this.

 Hi Marc,

Western Digital are generally the real dogs amongst the external HDD's.  Maxtor have proved to be much more reliable.  I have several external HDD's on my network  and the ones which have usually failed or underperformed are all Western Digital.

If you're going to use a cheap USB powered HDD, make sure your power supply will handle it.