A New Hard Drive?
 

Hi everyone,
Currently I'm using a VAIO desktop with 1 gig of ram, 3.4 Ghz P4, and a 200 GB hard drive. When I see specs of other peoples video editing comps, they always have at least 2 hard drives. I built my machine for video but opted not to get a second HD. Everything seems to be running fine on one...I use PP. Should I look into another one? If so I have some questions

1. What type should I get? (Internal, External...ATA etc?)

2. I assume I'd want an Internal, so if I did, would you recamend me installing it by myself or having someone else do it?

Any other random info on hard drives would be great! Thanks.

External drives are more expensive (it's a normal PATA hard drive + an enclosure), a little more prone to problems (dropped frames, drive overheating or some other bizarreness), and are slightly slower.

In the US, look out for hot deals on hard drives because that's the best deals on hard drives. Many of them involved rebates... check hot deals sites to find out about these deals.

If you can read and understand a VCR manual I would go for it. The manual basically tells you everything. OEM (versions of) drives don't come with manuals as far as I know. The instructions are the same for a single type of drive though (ATA / parallel ATA / PATA, and serial ATA).

The hardest part may be figuring out the case... some manufacturers like to make their cases obscure. Read the manual for the case/computer.

before buying a drive, open up the case and familiarize yourself with what kind of hard drive is in there now, what kind of bus it's on, and what other types of drives are sharing the same bus... i.e., dvd drive or cdrom drive, for instance.

read the manual and learn what your options are... for instance, is master/slave something you'll need to understand? is there room for the drive?

stay away from maxtor, get a seagate, the warranty is much better.

Just a quick not to why most people fun at least 2 hard drives.
It is best to keep your media on a seperate drive from your software so you'd have one as a system drive and one as a media drive.
If the system drive goes down / has conflicts / needs a fresh install of windows / whatever, you still have all of your media safe and sound on the other drive.

Plus, if your media drive fills up and you don't want to delete what is on there, it's a quick replacement rather than having to install everything onto another drive.

(Sorry if you know this already - just thought it couldn't hurt to explain) :)