whats a good external hard drive for a macbook pro??? being used for video
 

i just got my macbook pro. but 100gb is nothing but i wanted the 7200 rpms so i need an external. whats a good one to get... i need at least 200gb and i would prefer firewire since im doing video...i just want something good that will last and will work well with my new machine.thanks

I would say that any of the big name externals would be fine (WD, Seagate, Maxtor). If you are editing SD video, you only need USB2. It will run perfectly fine with multiple streams and the render times are the same as an internal. (for me).

I'd go with a quality external enclosure...there are some great ones out there for not much and then you can use internal drives which are much cheaper....you can swing two or three drives for the price of one decent sized external all in one...there are even great FW800 enclosures with two drives for less than 50 bucks...then you can get some great Fry's or Outpost.com deals on internal drives and away you go...I got a spiffy FW drive that matches the mac pro case...

Paul

Don't buy a MYBOOK.
 

I had a horendous experince with the Western Digital MYBOOK, and since Western Digital is ignoring my support request, I have no problem giving them bad press through my experience.

Be very leary of those so called 'smart drives' which use software to operate and back up themselves. They can really give you a doosey. I took back the MYBOOK and got a lacie drive.

Hi Paul: can you provide a link or description of the FW800 enclosures that are less than 50 bucks? I'm looking for an enclosure for a SATA drive with a firewire connection ...

I just got my Mac Book Pro with the 7200 as well. After loading FCP I only have 41 Gig left! I had a Lacie Bigger Disk Extreme (1.6TB) for my PC and it has an 800 FW that works with the MBP. I thought I'd have to reconfigure the drive but it recognizes all of my captured video.

Just to throw you a heads up Jeff, your mac can see the drive but depending on how it is formatted it may not be able to write to it. If your drive is formated in NTFS then your mac can only read from it, if it's FAT32 then your mac can read and write but there is a 2 gig file limit so if you plan to use it exclusively on your mac then you may want to reformat. (Make sure you format with journaling off).

New drive
 

I just connected the drive for a minute to see if the files were visable. They were but I didn't try to write to the disk. It is formatted in NTSC. I'm just getting up to speed with all of the crossover issues from pc to mac. That's good to know. I will probably need to buy another drive and just work with both.

Jeff

any chance of more details on this please? anyone else done this?

does this sound like it will be good and work with my machine???

MAXTOR 250GB 7200RPM 16MB CACHE


The Mini Portable Disk USB 2.0 & Firewire Dual Interface External Hard Drive Enclosure With a compact design that can be stood up vertically. It has an cooling fan built-in with ultra dissipation function and supports high capacity hard drive.

Features:

Perfect for home and office
Portable size & LED light
Excellent heat dissipation
Stand vertically
40x faster than USB1.1
Support 1xUSB2.0 Port, USB1.1 compatible, Transfer rate up to 480 Mbps
Support 2x Firewire Port, Transfer rate up to 400Mbps
Cooling fan built-in with ultra heat dissipation
LED indicator show Power / HDD Activities
Hot-Swappable: Plug & Play without rebooting
Quick & Easy installation
Build your own external hard drive in simple step!
Specifications:

Supports Windows 98SE/ME/2000/XP
Compatible for most 3.5" IDE hard drive
Up to 480Mbit/sec on data transfer
Enhanced IDE/ATA/ATAPI protocol
USB1.1 backward compatible
Support ATA PIO modes0-4, Ultra DMA 2&4
Support hot swappable (plug & play)
Supports Mac OS 8.6, OS X
Supports a capacity of 500GB hard disk
Easy installation
Power input AC:100-240V
Self power consumption +5V and +12V 2.0A
USB 2.0 & Firewire 1394 dual interface
System Requirements:

Windows® 98SE/ME/2000/XP
Macintosh OS X
Available USB Port
Dimensions

7.5" x 5" x 1.5" (L x W x H)

I've got a Maxtor on my PC, and several Lacie's on my Mac.

Personally, I think the Lacie's are a HUGE amount better quality than their Mator equivalents. They're quieter, stronger, nicer looking, seem to have better drivers/software, and well, generally speaking, simply better. I'd go a Lacie over a Maxtor.

If it has any software on it, either don't use it, or get something that doesn't. The lacie I bought was just a drive and enclosure, no software.

Yes, you're right Steven, most (if not all?) external USB/Firewire hard drives do NOT require any additional drivers on newer operating systems (Windows XP, MacOS X, etc.). But in general terms, the software (ie. drivers, tools, etc.) that comes with Lacie's (or is downloadable on their site), is of better quality than that of Maxtor's. For example, the backup tool and drive management software that comes with Maxtor drives has lots of problems when running on XP SP2. I'm not suggesting that all their stuff is bad, but from my experience, it's not very stable. Lacie's documentation, etc. is also really great. But anyway...

Hey guys,
Sorry it took me so long to get back to you...I've been out shooting. I don't have a direct link for anything as the stuff I bought was in Thailand. A simple ebay search turns up tons of offerings...but a lot in the higher end market...you have to look to smaller retailers for the more basic firewire enclosures...not the four hard drive simple raid setups...but those can be fun and still fairly inexpensive...

I would just do a search either at your favorite online dealer/ebay/or at your favorite store and get something that floats your boat. I got one that you can add a little fan too that looks like a powermac...it's regular firewire and works great. No drivers, no issues...just make sure you get the same drive ie. IDE or SATA or whatever...

Paul

you can even get a 2.5 inch drive if you want a smaller hard drive...but it's not that much smaller compared to the extra bucks for the hard drives with less space and speed...

I would suggest LaCie. We have 3 500gig LaCie Big Disks and they work great for anything we shoot, which is DV, HDV, Beta SP.

G-Raids on the other hand...wel we have 3 of them also and they consistently fail. What's the likelyhood of 3 being bad? I can see that maybe we got one bad drive. But 3 of them? Unfortunately we bought the 3 at the same time. If we had bought one and it failed we would have not bought the others.