EXTERNAL SATA drives?

[Jerry Hofmann]

Looks to me like it should work for 8 bit uncompressed…

Jerry

[Bret Williams]

If I’m doing my math correctly I’d get 1 minute or more per gig of 8bit uncompressed. I’m not really planning on using it for any serious 8bit work, but it would be nice if additional storage was good for something other than DVCam.

Anybody know anything about AccomData? Horror stories?

[David Roth weiss]

Bret,

I just bought the 300gb Maxtor with 16mg cache for just $179 at CompUSA. You’d better off getting that one and putting it in a good external box that getting the el-cheapo AccomData. The drives will last a whole lot longer in a good external enclosure, and they’re not terribly expensive.

DRW

[Bret Williams]

Many will argue that Maxtor is “el cheapo.” But I think all brands have duds. I’ve had hitachi, western digital die. I’ve got a maxtor now (internal ata) that I’m not so sure is doing so well.

Is the Maxtor via a rebate? I’ve had CompUSA not send rebates before, and I generally don’t do rebates unless it’s a marginal cost difference. For example I’d buy a $170 dollar drive without rebate before I bougt a similar drive that was $150 after a $50 rebate.

Is the Maxtor you’re referring to internal or exteral? The Acom case seems to bsasically be the same fanless LaCie idea. And is SATA which is twice as fast as the internal ata.

[Harry Pallenberg]

macgurus.com has some great SATA boxes, cards and drives….

althought it seems like monarch computer has the best price on drives…. I just got a 400 Gig seagate for $255

Thanks,
Harry.

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[Bret Williams]

That’s a great price. And David’s maxtor has twice the cache at 16mb. The Acom still seems like a decent deal since it comes with a controller card that has external ports, and an external case. I’m not sure what a good case costs, but the cards are $50 for a 2 port internal (can’t find externals), and I’m sure cases are probably about the same.

Too many decisions.

[David Roth weiss]

I got the 16mg SATA without a rebate, and would definitely go SATA external on all drives instead of firewire.

[Mitchji]

[Bret Williams] “nd I came across an external SATA claiming to be 3 times faster than firewire. 250gigs+pci sata card is only $199. Cheaper than external firewire drives and just about as cheap as internal ATA drives. Would these be fast enough for a stream of SD uncompressed 8 bit? Is there any reason no to buy this for DVCam work? Even if it’s not all it’s cracked up to be, it’s still cheaper than firewire.”

Hi,

The SATA interface might be three times as fast as FW but the limiting factor is the drive mechanism. FW cases use PATA drives which are use the same underlying drive mechanism as SATA drives. A good SATA drive should be about the same speed as a FW drive but I think SATA is much more reliable, a lot of people have problems with FW.

I would recommend SATA over FW for either DVCAM or uncompressed (use an array). I am not sure its a good idea to get the cheapest SATA card/enclosure and drive you can find. There is a lot of information and reviews at barefeats about SATA. Here are some links:
https://www.barefeats.com/hard46.html
https://www.barefeats.com/hard49.html
https://www.barefeats.com/quick.html
https://www.barefeats.com/hard45.html

Best Wishes,

Mitch

[Jerry Witt]

Six months ago I bought a FirmTek card and two bay enclosure for around $300. (Check out: https://store.yahoo.com/firmtek/sata1ven21.html). I also bought two 250 gig Seagate SATA drives (don’t recall from where). In about half an hour I had the card in the G5, the drives installed in the enclosure and striped together. Since then I’ve been digitizing without barely a care. I was so used to worrying about disk space with my firewire drives. It’s such a luxury to have half a terabyte available. I have been editing quite a bit of 10 bit uncompressed SD stuff on the system and haven’t had a hiccup.

When I finally DO get close to filling these drives up, I’ll just buy a couple more reasonably priced Seagate drives and 2 drive trays for the FirmTek enclosure. For not much more than $300, I’ll have another half a terabyte. SATA rocks!