My Passport Studio with HDV/ProRes
 

Hi,

I'm looking a mobile hard drive solutions to work with final cut pro. I mainly use HDV and ProRes. Budget is a real issue here! I have had a look at the WD My Passport Studio 500GB, it has FW800 and is bus powered so it looks good. The only drawback is the drive speed of 5400rpm.

Would I experience any play back problems using this drive, i don't tend to add too many effects, but when I do i dont mind wait for the render to finish.

Any help?

Thanks

Andy H

Get a 7200 rpm hard drive. It's considered the minimum requirement for capturing and editing DV & HDV. Using a 5400 rpm is just asking for problems.

If you can afford it, a good solid swappable hard drive enclosure is a great investment.

Thanks, thought that would be the answer but needed a second opinion.

Andy

We just the My Passport Studio 500GB drives for archiving, but they are too slow for editing. Maybe they would barely work for DV (I've never edited HDV), but certainly not XDCAM HD, etc...

I'd recommend a drive from:

LaCie
G Technology
Sonnet Technologies (they have a good new option - Fusion F3 - great price per GB)

If you stick with the name brands you'll be better off. We used to buy RAID's from Medea, but they went out of business. So then we switched to Ciprico, but they have now went out of business. Don't make the same mistakes we did. :)

G Tech cant go wrong

I use a Passport for editing DV. No problems whatsoever. I also capture from FCP to the external drive and it doesn't drop frames. All over usb 2.0.

I just purchased the passport studio drive for on the go editing.

However, I DO agree that a 7200rpm drive is a great upgrade for speed of editing.

lacie rugged 7200!

Any of the OWC drives--especially the mercury elites, are worth considering.

Probably too late, but I got the MyPassport 500 Studio.
I´ve used it a lot recently for editing Sony XDCam EX HD footage and Prores on my MacBok Pro 2.5 "Classic" and it performs really well.
I got it because of cost and it was the only portable FW800 available when I needed it.
I do think the G-Techs are probably the best bet though