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External HD that can power both HD and Camera?
I have a Macbook Pro 15″ 2.16GHz Core 2 Duo running 10.4 OSX. Not sure what model it is but it’s two years old.
Recently I got a Western Digital External HD Studio Edition 500GB. I wanted to capture video directly to the external considering I never have enough space on my internal HD. This hasn’t really been working out however. I use the FW 800 for the External and the FW 400 for my video camera. Usually when I try to capture one of them will fail.
Is there an external HD that will be able to run both Firewires at the same time? And how do I figure out how much power each can take and how much power I’m giving them?
Thanks.
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4 Replies
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Sounds like you may be overloading the firewire bus. You may want to consider getting a firewire card for the express slot on your computer.
I always keep my hard drive & camera on a separate firewire bus to prevent dropped frames and things caused by the bus getting overloaded.
There are no “technical solutions” to your “artistic problems”.
Don’t let technology get in the way of your creativity! -
If you’re using both an FW400 and FW800 device on the same Firewire bus, data will only run at the speed of the slowest device on it, so your 800 drive is not transferring data at 800 speed when the 400 drive is also attached to the computer or daisy-chained to it.
As suggested, a cardbus adaptor to provide an independent FW bus for one of the externals would improve the situation. And, you shouldn’t capture media to your internal drive, regardless of space considerations.
On your external drives you should simply use their provided external power supplies; don’t use FW bus to power them. -
What do you mean by “And, you shouldn’t capture media to your internal drive”. You mean external?
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[Grant Wilber] “What do you mean by “And, you shouldn’t capture media to your internal drive”. You mean external?”
No, I did not mean external. You said a reason you were using an external was that you had space limitations on your MacBook Pro’s internal drive.
A laptop’s internal drive is generally rated at much lower RPM (typically 5400 or lower) than a larger drive (7200 and greater). Plus, having media on the same drive as your OS and your applications means there is likelihood of dropped frames and other problems, as the drive has to frequently take care of business related to those items while also having to try playing out or writing a steady stream of video and audio.
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