External Hard Drives for editing.

1. foxfire012
   Member

   
   I am looking into getting an external hard drive for my labtop to do video editing with and I wanted some advice on the subject. Are external hard drives only good to store video data or are they also fast enough to use as a hard drive for editing? Also what brands would anyone recomend and what tech specs should I be looking at?

   Posted 8 years ago #

2. jgraef
   Member

   
   I have Western Digital Firewire/USB2.0 and a Maxtor 5000DV Firewire/USB2.0 drives. Both are 160GB and 7200 RPM and I run them off of USB2.0 - they both work great for video editing. I have also captured directly to them through USB with absolutely no problems.
   
   For a laptop you will need USB2.0/firewire and if your motherboard doesn't have it standard, there are PCMCIA cards available that have both firewire and usb2.0 ports on them for <$30.00

   Posted 8 years ago #

3. foxfire012
   Member

   
   I looked into both WD and Maxtor and they both look like great choices. However, I am wondering how efficent are external hard drives for handling medium to large sized projects (30min-1 hour 15 min)? Are they going to be too slow with transfer rates and am I going to run into problems like dropped frames etc?

   Posted 8 years ago #

4. jgraef
   Member

   
   No, if you have a 7200rpm drive and usb2.0 you won't experience any more dropped frames than you would if you used an internal. USB2.0 is 480Mbps and IEE1394 is 400Mbps Xfer rates - mini DV video is roughly 25Mbps

   Posted 8 years ago #

5. dirt
   Member

   
   
   I have done extensive testing and research on this and found that firewire is MUCH MORE reliable than USB for capturing!!
   
   I have a WD 120G external HD firewire @ 7200rpm and I capture full DV resolution and have never had any problems with this setup!!

   Posted 8 years ago #

6. Kingkool682
   Member

   
   I've got a Maxtor 5000DV 200gb external harddrive. It has worked marvelously! You have nothing to worry about as long as you go with a 7200rpm drive. 5400rpm might also work too if it isn't under a lot of stress!

   Posted 8 years ago #

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