7200rpm fw800 portable drive

[saxondale.]

The only one that i've come across are the Lacie Rugged's, which i've heard very mixed reviews about. What are the options at the moment? I'm looking for a 500gb external portable drive, has to have fw800 and spins at 7200rpm. Oh and bus powered.

Thanks

 

[Hellhammer]

http://eshop.macsales.com/item/Other World Computing/MS8U7500GB16/

 

[saxondale.]

Thanks but i should of stated that i was in the UK : /

 

[simsaladimbamba]

You could get an external FW800 enclosure, like the inXtron SK-2500 for example, and then get any 2.5" HDD you like. But know, that FW800 is slower than even a 5400RPM HDD can deliver, thus a 5400RPM HDD would do just fine.

I currently have a 1TB HDD inside that inXtron SK-2500 enclosure and get write speeds of up to 67MB/s, though the read speeds with that particular 1TB Toshiba HDD are a bit slow (37MB/s), but I have had 5400RPM HDDs with up to 80MB/s write and read speeds.

 

[saxondale.]

So it really make no difference if you get a 7200rpm drive using fw800? I'll be using this drive to edit video from and have been told to get a 7200rpm drive. If that's the case, i can just use my 640gb external wd drive and change the enclosure to a fw800.

 

[simsaladimbamba]

So it really make no difference if you get a 7200rpm drive using fw800? I'll be using this drive to edit video from and have been told to get a 7200rpm drive. If that's the case, i can just use my 640gb external wd drive and change the enclosure to a fw800.

I will not vouch for it, but my personal benchmarks indicated, that FW800 is slower than most 5400RPM HDDs, especially the bigger ones, as they are more dense, thus faster.

I have edited video with many FW800 devices, though it was mostly SD, and it did suffice.
Anyway, your footage will be using ProRes or AIC as codec, which doesn't have a that high data rate anyway, therefore you can even use several streams at once.

 

[GGJstudios]

Thanks but i should of stated that i was in the UK : /

OWC ships all over the world, including the UK.

 

[simsaladimbamba]

OWC ships all over the world, including the UK.

Yep, for 22 to 47 additional US dollars.

 

[Consultant]

Get 7200rpm drive of the largest size with firewire 800.

For fastest performance, you can get SATA card and use e-sata, but external sata drives requires power.

I use a version of this, which is a bus-powered RAID:
http://www.lacie.com/products/product.htm?pid=11271

I also got some OWC drive. Depends on what kind of video you do, single 7200rpm of the largest size might do fine.

I will not vouch for it, but my personal benchmarks indicated, that FW800 is slower than most 5400RPM HDDs, especially the bigger ones, as they are more dense, thus faster.

I have edited video with many FW800 devices, though it was mostly SD, and it did suffice.
Anyway, your footage will be using ProRes or AIC as codec, which doesn't have a that high data rate anyway, therefore you can even use several streams at once.

NO, completely WRONG. OP asked for portable laptop drives. 5400rpm laptop drives (aka portable drive) are not faster than firewire 800.

 

[simsaladimbamba]

NO, completely WRONG. OP asked for portable laptop drives. 5400rpm laptop drives (aka portable drive) are not faster than firewire 800.

My experience is otherwise, using several benchmark tools (AJA System Test and XBench and Activity Monitor) and therefore I concluded, that 5400RPM 2.5" HDDs, which can be as fast as 80MB/s, would suffice with FW800 (65 to 75 MB/s), but that may be due to their higher density when using a higher capacity HDD (500GB +).

Anyway, a 7200RPM HDD isn't that much more expensive today, thus one can surely get the higher spin.

 

[FourCandles]

The only one that i've come across are the Lacie Rugged's, which i've heard very mixed reviews about.
...

Could you point me to some of the + and - reviews please - I was considering a couple of those drives for off site backups. Thanks.

 

[Consultant]

My experience is otherwise, using several benchmark tools (AJA System Test and XBench and Activity Monitor) and therefore I concluded, that 5400RPM 2.5" HDDs, which can be as fast as 80MB/s, would suffice with FW800 (65 to 75 MB/s), but that may be due to their higher density when using a higher capacity HDD (500GB +).

Anyway, a 7200RPM HDD isn't that much more expensive today, thus one can surely get the higher spin.

You are probably looking at sustained read. That is not quite the right measurement for most users.

Random read, more true to real life usage, are no where near sustained read speed. Of course, it's more like a mix of sustained and random read / write though, so personally coping a few files don't really show the performance of the drive.

Even fast desktop do not reach firewire 800 speed on random read
http://barefeats.com/hard135.html

 

[simsaladimbamba]

You are probably looking at sustained read. That is not quite the right measurement for most users.

Random read, more true to real life usage, are no where near sustained read speed. Of course, it's more like a mix of sustained and random read / write though, so personally coping a few files don't really show the performance of the drive.

Even fast desktop do not reach firewire 800 speed on random read
http://barefeats.com/hard135.html

Okay, I agree with that. Though for video editing random and sustained read is needed, especially the more material one has to edit.

 

[toxic]

a 5400RPM 3.5" drive won't saturate FW800, so I don't think a 2.5" drive will...

just get your own enclosure and hard drive. it might cost a bit more, but when the hard drive fails you can just stick in a new one. I bet SSDs will be cheaper by then.