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Hard drives for DVCPRO50 and DVCPRO HD
Up until now, we’ve been using LaCie d2 drives. No more – we’ve had a number of too many drive failures over the year. I’m sure the drives are OK, but the cases makes the drives to warm and eventually they’ll die.
We’ve been using Western Digital MyBook disks as well. Works OK.
Now I’n in for buying a few more project drives – but what to choose?
We bought a G-disk a few years ago. It’s been on the self for the last year, but did fire up just OK yesterday. I like that. Perhaps G-tech mini-RAID could be on thing?
One demand is that the disk should be easy to move between different locations.
What are your experiences of different brands and models (with FireWire)?
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3 Replies
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Niklas,
Nearly all of the pre-manufactured firewire drives are overpriced and inferior — most use the cheapest drives available — and most have horrible one-year warranties. Get out of the habit of spending your money on those ASAP.
The alternative is to buy a good bare SATA hard drive (Hitachi for example with a three year warranty) and install it in a good enclosure such as the one at the link below. It takes two minutes to screw in the drive and it’s not rocket science. Even better are solutions that have removable drive sleds, letting you swap out drives whenever you feel the need.
https://eshop.macsales.com/item/Other%20World%20Computing/MEQM0GBKS/
BTW, before everyone jumps on this and starts to harp on the fact that the enclosure at the link above has no cooling fan, it doesn’t, they would be correct. And, while I won’t dispute the fact that cooling fans are cool, and cooling fans do have a good reason for being, modern SATA drives run much cooler than earlier drives, and manufacturers have discovered that they can dissipate enough through the metal skin of most enclosures to make it virtually a non-issue these days, and so you will find that many portable drives by the best manufacturers exclude fans altogether. On the other hand, if this concerns you, there are numerous enclosure with fans. You might simply scan the OWC website to see their offerings.
David Roth Weiss
Director/Editor/Colorist
David Weiss Productions, Inc.
Los AngelesPOST-PRODUCTION WITHOUT THE USUAL INSANITY ™
A forum host of Creative COW’s Apple Final Cut Pro, Business & Marketing, Indie Film & Documentary, and Film History & Appreciations forums.
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David,
Thanks for the tip. The OWC housing looks great. They seem to ship international, too.
Now – was there an OWC case with buspower and drive sleds.
I guess you just can’t have it all…
But will a 5400rpm disk maintain enough speed for DVCPRO HD ? or must I always use 7200 rpm disks?
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Wow, I didn’t even notice it was bus-powered via firewire. That is cool.
Meanwhile, always use 7200 RPM drives, they are just $79 for a 1Tb drive, at least they are here in the states.
David Roth Weiss
Director/Editor/Colorist
David Weiss Productions, Inc.
Los AngelesPOST-PRODUCTION WITHOUT THE USUAL INSANITY ™
A forum host of Creative COW’s Apple Final Cut Pro, Business & Marketing, Indie Film & Documentary, and Film History & Appreciations forums.
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