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External HD Help.

Rahsten

Rahsten

macrumors regular
Original poster
Mar 13, 2007
103
0
Japan
I went out to a few local electronics shops in my city to try and find an External HD that supports Firewire, do they even make them? Because all I could find was USB 2.0 and 1.1 HDs. I live in Japan by the way.

I'd like to buy a FW External HD for editing my HDV footage. Can I just buy a USB HD and then use some extra peripheral to connect an FW cable? I'm pretty confused with all of this and considering that I think they have a different name for Firewire in Japan it just adds to make things even more confusing.

Another concern I have, of course I attach my HandyCam to my MacBook via FW (there is only one FW port on my Macbook)...so, how exactly would I be able to attach both a FW External HD and my HandyCam to my MacBook at the same time? Are there FW splitters or something like that?

For anyone who decides to help me, may I ask you to please post images or at least links to images of the cables, ports or devices that you tell me about? Telling me just what things are called in English probably won't be too helpful for me. Sorry to be such a nuissance, any help is much apprciated.
 
That's what I thought...but apparently not so here in my city. I did find out that they don't use the term FireWire here, but just IEEE 1394. I didn't see any HDs with IEEE 1394 on the packaging.

As for connecting a FW HD and my camcorder to my MacBook, would I just need to get a FW Repeater Hub and plug that into the existing FW port on my MacBook? I just want to make sure about these things before I start buying them, it's a hassle to return things here with my limited Japanese ability.
 
-DH said:
As for connecting; if you're going to be using the drive for editing, stay away from FW hubs. Connect the drive dorectly to the Mac.
Click to expand...

I will be using the drive for editing. If I connect the drive directly to the Mac however I will not have a Firewire port to plug my camera into...so, am I to assume that I should first import the footage to my Mac HD and then transfer it all over to my External HD?
 
Rahsten said:
I will be using the drive for editing. If I connect the drive directly to the Mac however I will not have a Firewire port to plug my camera into...so, am I to assume that I should first import the footage to my Mac HD and then transfer it all over to my External HD?
Click to expand...
Any FW drive you buy will have 2 FW ports. You would connect the drive to your Mac and connect the camcorder to the drive. You can attach as many FW devices as to the Mac as you want, by connecting them to each other.
 
I found a drive by Buffalo here in Japan that appears to have 2 ieee 1394 ports. It seems there are many that only have one as well. The Buffalo drive has a 4 pin port and a 6 pin port...so, if I bought that drive would it do the job for me?

Here's the link.
 
Rahsten said:
I found a drive by Buffalo here in Japan that appears to have 2 ieee 1394 ports. It seems there are many that only have one as well. The Buffalo drive has a 4 pin port and a 6 pin port...so, if I bought that drive would it do the job for me?

Here's the link.
Click to expand...
Yes that one would work. These are the kinds of cables you would need with that drive - take your pick of either 1 or 2...

1: (camcorder) 4pin-------6pin (HD) 4pin-------6pin (Mac)

2: (camcorder) 4pin-------4pin (HD) 6pin-------6pin (Mac)
 
If he is only using the drive for more space to keep the HD video files, why couldn't he use a USB2.0 drive and then connect his camcorder via firewire directly into the mac?

am I missing something? Is there some special reason that he would need to use the firewire type drive over the USB2.0 type?

Moreso for my knowledge, but thanks,

Brian
 
bmcgonag said:
If he is only using the drive for more space to keep the HD video files, why couldn't he use a USB2.0 drive and then connect his camcorder via firewire directly into the mac?

am I missing something? Is there some special reason that he would need to use the firewire type drive over the USB2.0 type?

Moreso for my knowledge, but thanks,

Brian
Click to expand...

He said; "I will be using the drive for editing" ... meaning capturing to then editing from and rendering to. Which is why he'll need a sustained data stream (Firewire), not short bursts of data (USB).

-DH
 
bmcgonag said:
If he is only using the drive for more space to keep the HD video files, why couldn't he use a USB2.0 drive and then connect his camcorder via firewire directly into the mac?

am I missing something? Is there some special reason that he would need to use the firewire type drive over the USB2.0 type?

Moreso for my knowledge, but thanks,
Click to expand...

I'm using a USB drive now...and it is uber slow. It takes like 5 minutes to transfer one minute of footage from my cancorder. And as it does it the footage gets stuck on one frame on the iMovie window but plays smooth in the VF. Also I tried importing about 20min of HDV and at some point during the transfer, iMovie just quit. This happened 3 times, always at different times and no data was saved....i figured it had something to do with the huge lag time and the cache crapping out and not being able to compebnsate for the large amount of data...but really, i'm not sure.
 
I found some ieee 1394 External HDs on Amazon.jp so I bought one! It's 320GB so should be more than enough for my iMovie editing needs. Thanks to all who contributed in this thread!
 
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