More Storage Room Needed

[Annie Cheatham]

Hello everyone.

I'm running out of space on my harddrive! I was stupid when purchasing my computer and only got 120gig hard drive. I don't know much about the different options that are available and was wondering what other people have done in this situation. Also, if I buy another harddrive to assist my old one, will I need to put it in the original computer or do they also have stand alone spaces? Is there any speed loss when a new drive is attached.

Any info would be helpful. Thanks in advance.

Annie C

[Annie Cheatham]

by the way:

i'm running a dell 340 workstation with hyperthread tech if it makes a difference.

annie

[Rob Lohman]

There are multiple ways to go. You can buy a replacement drive
although I won't advice you this (since you have a good pretty
large drive). The other option is to by an extra drive to get more
storage. I have done the latter and you have two ways to go:

1. internal harddisk

2. external harddisk

With option 1 you need to check whether there is space in
your computer case, if you have room on your IDE cables etc.
If you don't have any knowledge of this I suggest you let a
company do this if this is your preferred way to go.

Option 2 gets you an harddisk that you attach to your computer
and that sits on your desk (for example). I did this option and
bought a Maxtor external firewire/USB2 drive. It is 160 GB large
but they can also be bought in 200 or 250 GB. This particular
drive can be connected through firewire (preferred, you can
hook your camera up on the harddisk or if you have a firewire
card with multiple ports to that) or USB2.

One other thing I am wondering is how come you already
running out of space. Assuming you have around 20 gb in use
for applications and Windows you have used 100 gb on video
(or other things). That equals to 7,5 hours of footage which is
quite alot!

[Cosmin Rotaru]

Usually there are 2 IDE chanels and you can fit 2 devices on each for a total of 4. I gues you only have the 120GB HDD, a CD/DVD player and a CD/DVD writer. So you should have one more available space in your PC. Rendering from one HDD (where you have the captured files) to another HDD (the new one, were the output file should go) it's faster than rendering on the same HDD. Also, capturing on a second drive instead of the HDD were the system is instaled should be safer in terms of frame drops.

[Robert Knecht Schmidt]

Firewire drives are small, portable, fast, and relatively inexpensive. Provided you have a working firewire port, buy several of these to supplement your computer's disk space.

[Rob Lohman]

Although I agree with Cosmin a single harddisk doesn't have
to give you dropped frames. That depends on the speed of
the drive amongst other things.

I would however not advice you to put a harddisk on an IDE
channel with another device. Standard IDE channels will be
able to run one speed only and will pick the lowest of the two.
Also if you have a fast drive it will hurt its performance if you
are also accessing a second harddisk or another IDE device
like a CD/DVD reader/writer.

I wasn't this technical in the first post because I'm not sure
if you can follow this at all. If you really want a harddisk internally
and it is pretty crowded on the IDE channels I suggest getting
a second IDE controller from Promise. This card gives you another
2 IDE channels and DOES allow the mixing of speeds.

[Cosmin Rotaru]

"a single harddisk doesn't have to give you dropped frames"
It doesn't. I tried that and I had no drop frames. I just say it would be SAFER if a second drive is used. That's what everybody sems to think...

"Standard IDE channels will be able to run one speed only and will pick the lowest of the two."
I gues the 120GB is preaty fast. Maybe UDMA133. A new one would be just as fast.

"Also if you have a fast drive it will hurt its performance if you
are also accessing a second harddisk or another IDE device
like a CD/DVD reader/writer."
One IDE chanel would hold up (at list in theory) more than the two HDD would require. If the cable is UDMA133 (it should be), two HDD, even 7200RPM UDMA133 drives will not require 133MB transfer rate throu the IDE cable.

"I suggest getting a second IDE controller "
I need that! I have 3 HDD's and a CDRW. No more space for a DVD or something... Plenty of space in the case, anyway!
Would that IDE control be expensive?

[Andrew Petrie]

<<<-- Originally posted by Cosmin Rotaru :
Would that IDE control be expensive? -->>>

All motherboards now run onboard controllers, as a result additional controllers now come at a premium. I've seen Promise UDMA controllers run for almost as much as a motherboard.

I'm fortunate enough to have 5 channels on my motherboard instead of the typical 4. And I'm maxed out too :)

[Cosmin Rotaru]

thanks.
I'll live with 4 chanels...

[Vince Skinner]

For cost, I'm just buying more DV tapes instead of a new hd. The cost per gig is a lot less than a hd. I can get a 200 gig hd for 150 after rebate. That's $0.75/gig! I buy tapes at 6 for 22$. Which is around 0.28/gig. Then when i'm ready to make the dvd, i just render them and burn. That's what I'll do until I can save more $ for a larger hd.

V

[Cosmin Rotaru]

Hei, I've seen a tool somwhere on the net that allows you to save DATA on the miniDV tape!

[Vince Skinner]

"Hei, I've seen a tool somwhere on the net that allows you to save DATA on the miniDV tape!"

Really?? That would be great! Can you let me know if you find out?? Thanx

V

[Chris Coen]

Firewire is a good option as stated above, but something not mentioned yet is SCSI. You can get a SCSI controller that can plug into a available PCI slot on your computer. From there you can daisy chain up to 16 additional SCSI harddrives internal or external. SCSI's are still pretty expensive, but reliability and performance as well as scaleability might be a consideration.

GLYPH makes several external SCSI cases for SCSI drives that are hot/swapable compatible allowing you to have say 4 external harddrives in the rackmount case, but have extra baskets ready to pop in when you start running out of space.

In regard to Firewire, there are some chipset's that are suggested for audio/video that you should consider if your thinking about going with the firewire option. I can post additional info on this if you wish.

~Cheers~

[Rob Lohman]

SCSI is in my opinion too expensive for the kind of work we are
in. You need the controller (and install it -- same with the Promise,
I agree) but the driver are more pricier. For the same price you
can get an ultra fast external firewire drive. For internal I personally
would stick to the cheaper IDE drives with something like a
Promise Ultra ATA133 controller. I have one in my system.

Cosmin. The Ultra133 TX2 Promise controller is here being sold
for 47 euro's (around the same in dollars) which is quite expensive.
This gives you two extra ULTRA 133 UDMA 6 channels which
does allow multiple speeds to be mixed (verified this). Make sure
you get ATA133 cables.

The more expensive controllers have RAID on board and they
are known as the FAST/SUPER-TRAK controllers. They cost
100 and 300 euro's here. They also have a SATA controller for
65 euro's.

All in all pretty cheap I say.

[Mark Richman]

any have experience setting up a computer or storage device that allows capture from several computers/devices at the same time?

I shoot a lot of multi camera weddings. When it comes time to edit I have to capture the tapes one by one. Do I need 3 computers to capture from 3 angles/cameras?

Any solutions or insight will be helpful.

Mark