What external hard drive for Macbook Pro?

[Chris7]

Hello. I’m about to jump into HD for the first time and I’m wondering which external striped RAID hard drive set up’s people are using here. I am going to use HDV transcoded into AIC or standard ProRes. I’d like to workflow to be as fast as possible. A pro recommended to me to get a set up that uses an express card 34, as this apparently gets much faster data transfer than fire wire 800. But I don’t know when the law of diminishing returns kicks in here, and I’m open to suggestions. I can’t justify spending more than $1K on this, and under $500 would be better.

Thanks in advance,
Chris

 

[Chris7]

Do I need something as fast as this?

Review: Sonnet Fusion F2
"Read-write speeds were 114.7 MB/s while read speeds were 114.3 MB/s."
http://www.dv.com/reviews/reviews_item.php?articleId=196603852

Or is something like this good enough?

Review: G-RAID mini
"52.6 MB/s write speed and 71.6 MB/s read speed for FW800"
http://www.lafcpug.org/reviews/review_graid.html

(It really does not need to be portable, but quiet is always nice.)

Any suggestions helpful.

 

[ppc_michael]

I have a 7200rpm LaCie connected via Firewire 800 for my HDV work. I have never had a problem. That's on the low-end of what people recommend, but I really think people go overkill on their setups sometimes.

 

[KeithPratt]

I really think people go overkill on their setups sometimes.

Me too.

ProRes runs at up to 25MB/s, and G-Tech claim to quote performance figures based on 80% full drives, so it should be able to deal with 2 streams of ProRes at once. Unless you are going to make regular use of multiple streams there is little point paying for higher specs.

I'm not really sure who the Sonnet is aimed at. The only benefit for the portable professional as far as I can see is it's slim. The quoted data rates are in a sorta black hole where no codec lies; and did I mention it's bloody expensive? It also ties up your ExpressCard/34 slot, which you may want to use for Sony SxS cards or even an MXO2 at some point. If the G-Tech ends up hogging your Firewire ports, Sonnet do another product that uses an ExpressCard/34 slot to provide two additional Firewire 800 ports.

 

[Chris7]

Thanks. I'm sure you guys know what you're talking about, but I must ask, does anyone here feel there's added value to these fast hard drives? I talked to a guy getting really good tape import, work flow, and render times using an express card 34 set up on a MacPro, but I do not know to what extent the fast hard drive played a part of this. Any rec's for a stiped RAID drive that uses either fire wire 800 or the express card 34 that's below $500 and doesn't have a fan (quiet) appreciated.

 

[ZballZ]

HDV uses MPEG-2 compression to achieve a maximum video data rate of 25 Mbps (megabits per second), which is the same data rate as DV. This means you can fit the same amount of high-definition video on your scratch disks as you can when using DV. Said in another way - your harddisk dont care whether its DV or HDV you're working with...

Going True HD is a different matter.

...and IMHO ... HDV is a lousy format!! It compresses the HD-signal so much, that it actually looks worse than regular DV most of the time. I would stick with regular DV...