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Old January 15th, 2010, 08:49 AM   #1
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Best Non-RAID External Editing Hard Drive

I'm looking for recommendations for a fast and reliable external hard drive setup for editing using the mov files brought in via XDCAM Transfer. Not sure I want to go the eSata or SSD route, but thinking to get the highest quality Firewire 800 system. Seems like I should buy a high-end drive and install it in a high end enclosure myself to ensure getting the best quality drive. Any thoughts. What about the Western Digital Enterprise drives ? Thanks. Oh ya, I don't think I need a RAID at this point and want simplicity. I'm doing personal projects and they are not huge.
Eric Savetsky is offline   Reply With Quote
Old January 25th, 2010, 09:21 PM   #2
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Many choices...

Building your own is a good idea. I prefer Seagate hard drives and OWC quad interface enclosures. I've heard that enterprise series drives can be problematic for editing, but haven't experienced any problem with the four that I own.

Try to get the latest (Oxford) chipset in your enclosure and a large cache 32 or 64 MB and speed of 7200 or more RPM in your hard drive.

I've read that there are hard drive sweet spots with the number of internal platters and how much they hold. Like, 750 was a good size having three 250 GB platters. The new sweet spot might be 1.5 TB with three platters at 500 GB.
Paul E. Coleman is offline   Reply With Quote
Old January 30th, 2010, 12:33 AM   #3
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Eric Savetsky View Post
I'm looking for recommendations for a fast and reliable external hard drive setup for editing using the mov files brought in via XDCAM Transfer. Not sure I want to go the eSata or SSD route, but thinking to get the highest quality Firewire 800 system. Seems like I should buy a high-end drive and install it in a high end enclosure myself to ensure getting the best quality drive. Any thoughts. What about the Western Digital Enterprise drives ? Thanks. Oh ya, I don't think I need a RAID at this point and want simplicity. I'm doing personal projects and they are not huge.
First of all, are you using a Mac? Windows?

If your system is a Mac, then FireWire 800 would work very nicely on your system. If on the other hand you're running Windows, be advised that the Microsoft-provided FireWire driver does not properly support FireWire 800. Instead, it caps the maximum transfer rate to FireWire 400 speed. You would need a third-party FireWire driver which supports your FireWire 800 chipset in order to see maximum FireWire 800 performance in Windows.

Also, I just saw that you have already gotten yourself a suitable drive and enclosure combo. In this case, then you may disregard the above. However, the above still applies to anybody else who is considering a FireWire 800 card or has a system or motherboard with a built-in FireWire 800 port.
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