need external drive for laptop editing. USB powered?

8 replies [Last post]
fuddam
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Joined: Nov 19 2005

not needed such a drive before. Have a good few other external USB drives but all mains powered.

Are the USB-powered variety powerful enough to support editing? eg saw a WD 160GB on Insight for 34 quid.

have been looking at the avastor SDX variety too, but they be pricey though media specific. The HDX are too much $$$ for me.

http://www.protape.co.uk/products/hard-drives/avastor-sdx-.html

going to be using an EX1 next week, and laptop has express card slot built in. need to dump to external drive directly.

Dave R Smith
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Joined: May 10 2005

Hi Fuddam,
Nearly replied to different question - USB connected - but it's the USB power source you are asking about, of which I have no experince.
Just today I had a new WD my_book from a client - 250 gig - to put video files on.

Main powered, usb or firewire and cables provided.
It comes FAT32 - as I found when I tried to copy 4 gig file and it said 'not enough space', so took about 2.5 hours to reformat as ntfs.

Sometime back I bought an external hard drive (mains powered), usb and firewire to work with laptop. I hoped to copy straight from camera via laptop to ext hd but couldn't get it to do this, only capture to laptop, then copy/move to ext hd .
I did a quick edit test which worked fine, but haven't used it for video work since, so can't comment further.

HTH

Alan Craven
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Joined: Jan 26 2001

I have done this with my Vaio, editing HDV files on a Lacie 160 GB external HDD, using firewire for data transfer, with Premiere Pro.

My laptop has a 4 pin firewire port only, so I have one of the miniature external drives that you use with firewire for data, but not power. The power is supplied by a USB socket, via a special lead which has a power plug on the HDD end, where there is an appropriate socket.
The HDD has a conventional USB 2 socket, a 6 pin forewire socket, plus this power socket.

Alan Roberts
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Joined: May 3 1999

Capture to an external HDD will work by firewire from a firewire camera only if you have two firewire ports on the camera, i.e. daisy-chaining doesn't seem to work (or at least it doesn't for me on laptops). In practice, I use external drives via USB, and they seem to work well enough for video editing (LaCie 250G is the workhorse, but I've got a others in ADS housings etc).

Get my test cards document, and cards for 625, 525, 720 and 1080. Thanks to Gavin Gration for hosting them.
Camera settings documents are held by Daniel Browning and at the EBU
My book, 'Circles of Confusion' is available here.
Also EBU Tech.3335 tells how to test cameras, and R.118 tells how to use the results.

fuddam
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Joined: Nov 19 2005

I'd be putting the SxS cards into the laptop for offloading. Not thinking about direct feed from camera via firewire, as wouldn't cope with the higher bitrate of the HQ setting, AFAIK. 35mbs.

am comparing the USB mains vs USB-powered vs FW HDDs.

Alan Roberts
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Joined: May 3 1999

As far as I'm aware, the mains powered ones should be faster, because high speed needs more power in the motor and to deal with the signal data rate. I have a small 40G USB-powered HDD but use it only as a memory stick, it;s nothing like fast enough for video even though it has USB2 and firewire ports.

Get my test cards document, and cards for 625, 525, 720 and 1080. Thanks to Gavin Gration for hosting them.
Camera settings documents are held by Daniel Browning and at the EBU
My book, 'Circles of Confusion' is available here.
Also EBU Tech.3335 tells how to test cameras, and R.118 tells how to use the results.

fuddam
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Joined: Nov 19 2005

danke all

:)

paultv
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Joined: May 16 2002

Just to say I'm using Sony Vaio for offloading SXS cards and I copy out to Seagate FreeAgent USB drives, 250GB, you can find them for as little as £50.

They have 2 USB connectors for power needs I guess, I've found them great for archive
and whilst not the fastest beast on the block they are very portable and un-fussy.

I bought ten.

Paul

by the way, Edius on the laptop plays the EX1 files fine, from the external drive - certainly cool for checking footage whilst "on the job"

fuddam
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Joined: Nov 19 2005

danke for that :)