Portable hard drives to off load files:which is the best?
 

hello all...

I have a up coming shoot that I need to off load files to a external hard drive using the Clip Browser on my laptop...I want to get a 320 or 250 GB drive that is USB powered...which is the best..Seagate, Toshiba or Western Digital? I have a Maxtor(250GB), but it takes up 2 USB ports...not too crazy about that..so...feedback please....

thanks

i travel with my PMW-EX1 and a macbook pro a lot and i have tried many of the external drives out there.
2 wires where 1 is needed for power is annoying.

the one 500gb tiny drive i like best and has used for over a year is the acomdata executive 500gb 5400rpm drive with SATA and USB2 connections. no firewire 400 or 800 here.
very few if any externals with firewire 400/800 is this small.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16822216051


it is a very fast usb2 drive and for backing up, it's fine for me.

for firewire 800, i like the lacie tough drives in orange. they go up to 500gb as well.
they are almost 2.5 times bigger than the acomdata tiny drive. so, the lacie stays in the resort or hotel a lot.

here are 2 drives i recommend avoiding for reasons of just bad performance or issues going from windows to leopard or vice versa.

1. buffalo drive with built in cable
2. western digital passports - just can not go windows real well. need 3rd party software like macdrive, so more money

paul

G-Technology has a new drive out that is Firewire 800 or eSata and is bus powered.

It's actually 2 drives in one and you can use it in RAID 1 or RAID 0 so you can mirror your data on 2 physical drives.

They announced these drives at NAB last year, and were supposed to come out last June, but they just became available.

Here is the B&H Link
G-Technology | 1TB G-RAID mini2 Quad Interface | GRM2 25/1000 TI

Here is the G-Technology Link
G-Technology - G-RAID mini2 - Dual-Drive, Portable RAID 0/1 Storage Solutions for Content Creation

I also own 2 Lacie Rugged 500GB drives that are firewire 800 and are also bus powered.

I like the G-Technology drive as it's one unit and you can copy to two drives at once AND it's bus powered so you can offload in the bush.

I use exclusively OWC Mercury On-The-Go Firewire 800/400/USB enclosures with 320gb 7200rpm Hitachi 7K320 drives. They are extremely reliable, bus-powered, affordable, and easy to transport!

320GB OWC Mercury On-The-Go Portable FW80... (MS8U7320GB16) at OWC

Enjoy!

I've heard of a lot of people using the LaCie Rugged Drives. Videographers in Iraq using them under some tough conditions with great success.

But I'm lazy so I walked to my local Best Buy and bought a Western Digital MyPassport Studio 500GB FW800 drive for $250 (I think they are down to $199 now). It's been working great for archiving since I first started using it in January.

I had a bad batch of LaCie power supplies so I switched a while back to Western Digital. They have proven to be reliable. But I think LaCie is still good as well (they fixed their power supply issues....we never lost any data....but it was still SCARY!)

I had a friend that bought a OWT drive many years ago. No matter what Energy Saver Settings (Apple laptop) he used, he couldn't prevent the drive from going to sleep after an hour or so of use. It was a real pain. At that time I was using LaCie's and I never had any similar problems with them. I've stayed away from OWT as a result. But that was quite a while ago, that fact that people are recommending them leads me to believe that they are another reliable solution as well.

But I agree with Paul, if you're only using it for archiving, get a drive that is self-powered. Having to connect a power supply is a pain. If you're going to edit using this drive, then that's a whole 'nother issue! :)

I have been using exclusively LaCie Rugged drives, and delivering media on the drive to clients. They're very affordable, and so far completely reliable. I just bill for the drive like I used to bill for tape stock. Here is a link for the 320GB
Amazon.com: LaCie 301832 320GB Rugged All-Terrain Firewire800/Firewire400/USB 2.0 Portable Hard Drive: Electronics
but you can get a 250GB for under $100, or a USB only for less money too. They're bus powered, but on a PC you have to connect a second USB for power. (on a mac the firewire is bus powered) They come with all the cables, too (USB 2.0, firewire 400, firewire 800). For archiving only the 5400rpm drives are fine, but if you want to edit there is a 320GB 7200rpm available.

Hello all...

Let me explain....I am going to transfer all the files from the cards (SDHC) to a portable hard drive using the clip browser 2.5v...then hand over the hard drive to the client...so whats the best one for doing this?

thanks

Exactly what I described above. the drives are cheap enough that you can bill for them as media.... and with a triple interface there should be no compatibility issues. This is exactly how I deliver my files. I'm sure the other drives described by others are also good, (in fact the drive itself is probably the same in virtually all of them) so go with what you're comfortable with in price and connectivity-
I also offer to either back up all the files on a second drive (which I also deliver and bill for) or back up on one of my drives which I will hold for a specified period of time (say, 30 days) so the client can do their own back up. In either case, it's wise to have two separate copies. drives WILL fail eventually at some point.... it's just the nature of the beast.

i have 2 lacie rugged 500gb drives. really easy to transfer files from clip browser. i back up the same files to both drives so i have 2 backups prior to erasing my sxs card?(s) and using them again.

I shoot in remote areas all the time and take a Macbook Pro and Western Digital Passports - the small 320G and 500G portable HD's - all bus-powered. I have used two of these for the last year.
I just finished a two month on location shoot in India and China, where I had to purchase three more passport HD's while I was there - they are available in large cities.
I ended up with five passports for a total of almost 2Tb. They seem very reliable. They are cheap enough to give to your client.
Where I could not get the WD passports, I would buy a 2.5 inch HD (Samsung or Hitachi seem to be the popular ones in Asia) and pop them into a generic enclosure - this happened twice and again, they performed perfectly. I use these HD's for making a second back up copy.
You do not need to spend anymore than $75 for 320G of portable storage.
Here is the link -
Amazon.com: Western Digital My Passport Essential 320 GB USB 2.0 Portable Hard Drive WDME3200TN (Midnight Black): Electronics

Just a word of caution on the g-tech mini raids--Being raid drives, they make for fast transfer and they are bus-powered, but if you're using more than one simultaneously, at least one of them will have to be ac powered, and I've found that sometimes even the one needs the ac, otherwise it will "sputter" (sorta like a fish out of water) without the extra juice.

SEAGATE Free Agent Pro is what I like. I even bought one for a client of mine. I like the 2 TB so as to hold lots of large files.

caution on RAID portable drives!
 

MORE caution.

you have to be careful and know the consequence of using a RAID setup.
say you have one of those nice G-tech firewire dual drives set up as RAID-0.
sure, you have the added speed and the throughput of 2 drives, the increased performance is fantastic working with large files, expecially with PMW-EX XDCAM files using Final Cut Pro.
BUT, the possible downside is that BOTH your external drives inside the external box will go down on you if one of them goes bad.

yes, i know that current disk technology has extremely low 'mean time to failure' rates, but when you're on the road, is it worth being stranded without an external drive all together. you may be miles away from the nearest drives shop. not to mention losing everything in the RAID setup.

when you are travelling, just use whatever externals you have as 'JBOD'.

if you need a fast working external drive on the road, get the firewire 800 Lacie rugged or the same from seagate.

that's all

paul