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Hard Drive Question

K

kwong2006

macrumors regular
Original poster
May 16, 2006
209
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I was wondering if we can use eSATA to connect Macs to a hard drive, with the intent to use the hard drive as as scratch disc to edit videos.

I am a complete idiot when it comes to unfamiliar technology, so please help. Thanks.
 
kwong2006 said:
I was wondering if we can use eSATA to connect Macs to a hard drive, with the intent to use the hard drive as as scratch disc to edit videos.

I am a complete idiot when it comes to unfamiliar technology, so please help. Thanks.
Click to expand...

eSATA should be fine. In fact a lot of people use eSATA RAID arrays as their primary means of video storage.
 
I guess this is where I would wonder about the cost effectiveness. Is the fast speed of eSATA really worth the money that I would have to spend ($400-$600, from buying a drive and a eSATA adaptor card), or would FW800 suffice?
 
kwong2006 said:
I guess this is where I would wonder about the cost effectiveness. Is the fast speed of eSATA really worth the money that I would have to spend ($400-$600, from buying a drive and a eSATA adaptor card), or would FW800 suffice?
Click to expand...

Depends what your needs are. If you are just going to be doing DV / HDV then Firewire would be fine. If you are working with 10bit uncompressed footage then your best option would probably be an Xserve RAID using a fibre connection. Although I am assuming you are not working with this as you would probably already know what your needs are.

I would say Firewire 800 would be fine for most needs. What type of video is it that you are working with?
 
What are you editing. FW800 has PLENTY of throughput for DV and HDV. anything with a higher bitrate is where you'll see the advantage of eSATA.

Beat me to it :rolleyes:
 
marioman38 said:
What are you editing. FW800 has PLENTY of throughput for DV and HDV. anything with a higher bitrate is where you'll see the advantage of eSATA.

Beat me to it :rolleyes:
Click to expand...

I am working with standard definition DV footage at the present time, with an intention of moving completely over to HDV by either the end of the year or the beginning of the next.

My line of work is semi-professional video news production.
 
One more question

When dealing with HDV, would 750GB be enough, or would I need 1TB?
 
It depends on how much footage you have and what program you are using. HDV itself is about 13gigs per hour, but iMovie and FCE don't work w/native HDV they transcode it into AIC (Apple Intermediate Codec) on capture and AIC is something like 4-5 times bigger than HDV.


Lethal
 
LethalWolfe said:
It depends on how much footage you have and what program you are using. HDV itself is about 13gigs per hour, but iMovie and FCE don't work w/native HDV they transcode it into AIC (Apple Intermediate Codec) on capture and AIC is something like 4-5 times bigger than HDV.


Lethal
Click to expand...

What about FCP? Does it deal with it natively, or does it transcode as well?

I am planning to back up the B-Roll in ProRes 422 after I am done editing.
 
OK Thanks.

One more question (I am a pest, I know)

On HDD brands, which brand is the most reliable? LaCie? G Technology? OWC?
 
Might be better off with a drive case with the FW chipset that is best for the application and a drive with a decent 3-5 year warranty, cache size, etc.

Usually isn't a big difference in price, though quality can be drastically different.
 
kwong2006 said:
OK Thanks.

One more question (I am a pest, I know)

On HDD brands, which brand is the most reliable? LaCie? G Technology? OWC?
Click to expand...

All of them are pretty much the same. They take the drives from other companies and put them inside their own cases. I am taken back by both LaCie and G-Technology, but if I were in a budget crunch I would go with OWC...

In particular... I have heard reliability issues with Western Digital Drives. They were in the Porche drives made by LaCie and i have only heard horror stories about them. G-Technology uses ONLY Hitachi drives, while LaCie has started using more Seagate drives and Western Digital one.

Don't worry too much about the drive manufacturer though, HDDs are cheap and easy to come buy. If you can, get two drives or a RAID enclosure and make an instant backup.
 
anotherhard drive question

hi, uhm, not to tip toe off topic but i have a question about my hard drive as well, and I'm hoping someone could answer this. Is there a way to control the rpm speed of my hard drive? I replaced it also so if none stock has an affect let me know lol, thanks :eek::eek:
 
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