100GB Bus Powered External Drives
 

I purchased the following items from computer3g.com

Hi-tec HIPF-25F iPockey FireWire 2.5 Hard Drive External Enclosure
Toshiba MK1032GAX, HDD2D08 100GB 5400rpm 16M 2.5" Notebook Hard Drive

Unfortunately my laptop does not offer firewire bus power but my desktop does! It works really well.

Excellent, thank you Brian

whole day events
 

We use an FS1 for large events. Typically we provide on site webcasting and encoding support from our van. All inputs (from the broadcasters and our own cameras) go through both video and audio mixers and processors and come out onto a distribution amp and/or matrix. The FS1 hangs off that along with whatever other outputs we're producing. Our FS1 is in a roadcase with 2x 120GB disks and a DV bridge. Sometimes we pack along another case with n x 250GB disks - as required.

We always copy the days shoot onto another disk in case of disk failure. These are typically events that run non-stop and cannot be repeated. eg a days rowing champs. They may be in remote locations and disks do fail.

For footage during the day we'd pack a DV tape drive or another FS1 so that our main copy wasn't interrupted. - We also provide feeds from the van via satellite or Internet. We did 17 feeds for LOTR #3 - 5 hours long all 17 feeds.

The van generally has 4 encoders in it (but may have up to 10 or 12 -one job was 2 days 10 hours non-stop - across 5 streams. We slept in the van too). One encoder is live, one spare, one recording to disk (backup to FS1) and one doing server management and link testing.

Shame the FS1 is going. We'd have liked MXF and HDV support and the FS4 is no good without external disk interfaces. Gotta have big disks.

Rich

you could probably hack the fs4 with extension/adaptor cables plugged into a full-sized drive, so the question would really be, does the operating system of the fs4 support big drives?