Hard drive solutions.
 

I have been working on expanding my wedding video business, and looking at how many weddings I am going to be editing this spring and summer, I really need to upgrade my storage capacities soon.

I currently have two 160 gig hard drives, one filled with system and the other dedicated to video, but I need more; what would you recommend, what do you use yourself?

I am on a budget; I am looking to spend less than 200-300 dollars, in the most economical way possible; and hopefully in increments as my demands increase.

Would you recommend arrays of external hard drives? Would they be fast enough for editing and capturing? What would you recommend firewire or usb2.0?

I was also looking at swappable internal hard drives; 30 dollars for the bay, 15 dollars for each hard drive case sounds cheaper than externals, has anyone had any experiences with this, which brands have you found work?

I was looking at this http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=529422&CatId=0 It seems like a good deal, the question is does it do what I’m looking for. I have never tried this kind of bay before.

Also are there any other storage solutions I have overlooked?

Josh

normally it doesnt matter whether USB or firewire as long as it is USB2 High Speed but if you are working with DV cams you may want to pick firewire in case you get one of the direct to disc systems later where you can plug in an external firewire drive.

Even better look for one that does both

One option is to buy the enclosure and the drive separately

On places like newegg.com you can buy external firewire/usb enclosures and hard discs. They are easy to assemble

If you are looking to save money on hard drives, you can wait for a hot deal on a hard drive. Very often retailers like Best Buy and Fry's will run loss leaders on items with rebates. Make sure the item is in stock before you order (i.e. order online, or show up early). Make sure you send in the rebate, and photocopy everything before sending in the rebate.

The forums on hot deals sites may help (search them) i.e. fatwallet.com
I don't live in the US so I don't know too much about American hot deals sites. But hard drive deals from what I hear are very common.

Otherwise, go to newegg.com and quickly check prices there. pricewatch.com lists retailers who may not be as reliable and may have slightly lower prices.

Your motherboard and case may have more room for hard drives. Check that there's space in the case and that there are free connectors on your motherboard (SATA and ATA/PATA).
If there's no expansion left, then get an enclosure or complete drive off newegg or best buy special.

Compusa usually has great deals every week for 200gigs or more. Prices usually range between 100-200. Any swappable internal hard drive bay is good. I used to use them a lot when I was doing networking for corporate. I havent had any problems with them. I would however try to go with a SATA drive

on average it runs about 300Mbs,
regular Parallel runs at 100mbs. Although you dont need 300mbs for video, it will help if you are copying files between HDDs and blah blah blah. Normally there is no cost difference between serial or parallel.

This morning I bought This: http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?Sku=T13-1022 Because it was the most affordable firewire drive.

And This: http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=1227578 and a 200gigs for $100 sounds pretty good.

I was thinking of going with SATA, but I wasnt too confident with the compatibility issues.

I did however type 54229 instead of 54220 as my zip code, and it is too late to fix it :S So im crossing my fingers that it gets to me in time.

Gregory, 'just an FYI. Those speed ratings are for the drive electronics themselves. Most drives (though I'm sure I could be proven wrong on this) can't read more than 50MB (big B=bytes) per second, and like you said, either interface is plenty adequate for the 3.5MB/sec bare-minumum requirement of DV.

I've got three hard drives and a DVD burner in my case, all running parallel ATA. I think they benchmark at about 33-38MB/sec. Granted, I don't have SATA controllers on my motherboard anyway (probably will on the next one).

Josh, looks like that enclosure should hold up fairly well for you. I've got a FW/USB2.0 drive that I've edited off of in Premiere. Rendering is noticeably slower than my internal drives, but playback is fine. If possible, edit on your local drives and use the external for backup/archiving/extra storage.

I would have recommended Seagate over Western Digital, but I admit I have both. I got the WD's for the same reason as you -- they're cheap (but from what I've heard since from some tech buddies I'm holding my breath on those now).

Post back here and let us know how it performs when you get it set up.