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Do Good Hard Drives Exist?
Hi,
For the past few days I’ve been doing my research into FW 800 hard drives to use for video editing with FCP and motion graphics work with After Effects. The footage I will be using will range from SD, DVCPRO HD, XDCAM, and some ProRes 422.
I narrowed it down to the Lacie D2 Quadra, G-Drive, and the new Caldigit AV Drive. Unfortunately, the Lacie and G-Drive got 50/50 reviews. The bad reviews always seem to be from people who have had it for a couple months while the new reviews seem to be from people who have used it for a week or two. So that doesn’t really help.
That leaves the Caldigit AV Drive. I haven’t seen a single user review of this, perhaps because it is new. So I figured I might just give it a try. But just my luck, Caldigit doesn’t ship to Canada. Yay.
I’m not looking for a RAID or anything because it is out of my budget, just a good, stable, FW800 drive to work off of, as I am currently working off my internal startup drive for the past few days which is a no-no.
Any suggestions? Do ‘good’ drives even exist? Just get a G-Drive? Just get a Lacie? Just bite the bullet and get a RAID ($500 or under)?
Thanks in advance.
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4 Replies
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I have about 10 Lacie D2 Quadra’s that get passed around, taken home, and even shipped. I have yet to have one die on me (although I still expect it at any moment, it’s a hard drive right?)
my 2cents
-Andy George
Senior Editor
http://www.chiselindustries.com -
Thanks Andy,
After reading some articles and browsing through the Creative Cow forums, Caldigit seems to get a lot of praise. I might have to look further into that Caldigit AV Drive.
I was also recommended to look into getting an enclosure and filling it with my own hard drive. So far, I’ve come up with the OWC Mercury Elite-AL Pro enclosure and a 1TB WD Cavier Black.
Enclosure:
https://bit.ly/PEBHuHard Drive:
https://bit.ly/9uUYJDThoughts or suggestions?
Thanks!
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[Chris Tarroza] “After reading some articles and browsing through the Creative Cow forums, Caldigit seems to get a lot of praise. I might have to look further into that Caldigit AV Drive.”
I haven’t used the AV Drive in particular, but I’m a huge CalDigit fan. Great products and great service.
[Chris Tarroza] “I’m not looking for a RAID or anything because it is out of my budget, just a good, stable, FW800 drive to work off of, as I am currently working off my internal startup drive for the past few days which is a no-no”
To get back to the question “Do good hard drives exist?” — all hard drives fail. It’s not a matter of if, it’s a matter of when. With any luck, you will outgrow and replace your drives before this happens. Having only one copy of critical data is very risky.
Walter Soyka
Principal & Designer at Keen Live
Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
RenderBreak Blog – What I’m thinking when my workstation’s thinking
Creative Cow Forum Host: Live & Stage Events -
Well, from recent experience in Premiere Pro and Win7, USB2 is plenty fast for SD DV but is not nearly fast enough for HDV / Mpeg2. Just 2c of info.
Sean
Asus G73JH i7-720, 8GB RAM, Radeon HD5870 1GB, Win7 HP 64 bit, Adobe Production Premium CS5, Cinema4D Studio 11, and more…
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