External Hard Drive HELP!

[LeopardUserUK]

Please could someone tell me the answer to this question!

I am going to buy an external hdd with 1 firewire port and 1 usb port. I want to use it for imovie, but i only have 1 firewire port on my iBook, and that will be used by the camera. So my question is, can i import the footage, and then transfer it to the external hdd, via usb, whilst in imovie? Sorry if its a bit unclear, but i just want to have space for big movies and not clog up my Mac HD.

 

[skorpien]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but aren't FireWire devices capable of daisy-chaining? If your hard drive has an additional FireWire port on the back, you could plug your camera into the hard drive, and the hard drive into your Mac. I think that would be better than using USB to transfer your footage to the HDD.

 

[LeopardUserUK]

thanks! Could you possibly point me in the right direction on ordering one of these hard drives. Any particular models or sites?

Thanks

Nat

 

[skorpien]

Seeing as you're in the UK, I'm not sure which sites would work the best for you. All I can suggest is whichever site it may be, do a search for external hard drives that have FireWire 400 or 800 (depending on which your computer supports). The alternate names for them are IEEE 1394a and IEEE 1394b respectively. If the hard drive has two FireWire ports on the back, that means it can be daisy-chained to other FireWire devices.

You can also just buy the enclosure and hard drive and make the external yourself. This might be the cheaper option and will allow you to decide how large of a drive you want.

As for brands, I myself have had good luck with Vantec NexStar enclosures (mostly because they're a readily available brand here where I am), and Seagate or Western Digital hard drives. I always make my own externals, so I can't give advice on any fully made brands.

http://www.vantecusa.com/