FireWire 800 Hub or Gigibit Ethernet HD?
 

I'm looking to get one of the new base 15" MBP's. My question is this, and I read a few posts on it, but simply, if I edit video with it, either with FCS or Adobe, I will probably need to use an external drive of some sort.

What do you think would be better to use, a firewire 800 hub, where I could attach the drive and camera, or Western Digital's My Book World (My Book World Edition 1 TB Hard Drives ( WDH1NC10000 )) with gigabit ethernet to plug directly into the MBP? Is it pretty easy to configure?

Has anyone used either or both of these methods? Your insight is much appreciated.

Most FCP users will rail against WD's MyBook external drives as being untrustworthy, for what it's worth. I lost mine, connected via FW400, after 4 months.

The WDs also have built-in spindown, so you can't force them to stay spinning unless you are constantly writing files to it. I also don't know how viable gigabit ethernet is as a video transfer method. The drive should also be 7200 rpm, WD has a habit of not telling you the speed of a drive when it's below 7200.

Gigabit ethernet is used in server operation for MPEG video delivery and in some multiple station edit facility configurations that I've seen described on paper. Never for a simple setup like you are describing. I would be very careful considering this sort of set-up as it might require network tweaking to prevent dropped frames.

Having set up only one FW hub ever, a FW400 hub and it seems to work fine for DV work, I wonder if a 800 will work in this set-up for anything beyond HDV or DV. Anybody with experience?

I completely agree with the WD being rubbish and spinning down, but would a program like disksomia work to keep the disk spinning?

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My advice, up to a MBP with the Express card 34 port, and use an e-sata card.

All the Best!

My understanding from my research is that the spin down is in the drive firmware - don't know if it can be bypassed by 3rd party software - it won't "listen" to the OS saying "don't spin down"...

Bit Rate
 

I've only worked with DV and HDV, but aren't both limited to 25 mbps streaming? So a firewire 400 (and 800) hub would be plenty to handle a camera and an external FW hard drive right?

Here comes another question I guess, with other solid state mediums like P2 or SxS or AVC on CF or SD, is it imperative to maintain the data rate for capturing? It's file based right?

Ed,

Unless you enjoy a painful existence stay away from any stand-alone HDD enclosure from WD:

Reviews and wokflows for professional video, photo, audio and computers | Go-Go-Godzilla.com

Click the warning link on the top of the homepage.

so what are the reliable FW (800) hubs out there ?

Giovanni
Look at Kramer VS-30FW.

Robert
I was somewhat horrified to find this thread as I own 9 or so WD external drives.
I only use them for backups and data transfer though, not editing on them. No failures yet.
Do your comments apply equally to the WD My Book Studio drives with firewire 400/800 interfaces for Mac?
It is just that a friend of mine just bought a Raid 1 version of the above for his i-Mac at my suggestion.
He is capturing to the drive through the Kramer hub.
He has done a couple of edits and said it performs better than the internal drive.
I have suggested he might be best to capture to the drive but transfer the files to his internal for the edit using the external as a backup.
Is this desirable or necessary.
It appears that your comments and those of others relate mainly to actually editing on these drives or is it the drives in any application.
Your thoughts please.
Malcolm

The MyBook WD Firewire External I owned lasted me less than 4 months and then POOF, wouldn't mount and couldn't pull the info off of it. THANKFULLY, it was mostly disk images and my Textures Library but my recommendation is get all data off yours ASAP. I had to pitch mine with data unrecovered.

Brand of Drive
 

ok. so go with internal drives in external cases, what are good internal drive brands? seagate?

And..............
 

Hitachi.

Never let me down and they get thrashed mercilessly.


CS

Check out OWC
 

OWC has high quality enclosures with or without drives. Been using them for years. They're a bit pricey compared to WD-type consumer boxes but you get what you pay for. They use Hitachi drives for most of their high end kits.

Check out the Mercury Elite-AL Pro with FW800 ports if you want something portable. They're bus powered and you can daisy chain a camera, though you might need an adapter presuming the camera has the mini FW400 port. I've been using one of these with my MBP 15" for editing video and it's been very solid.

Bus-Powered Portable OWC Mercury Elite-AL Pro mini FireWire 800/400, USB2, eSATA