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New hard drive: eSATA @ 5400 rpm?
I need a new hard drive, but I’m on a budget of about $150 tops. I found a Fantom Green Drive with an eSATA connection, and while the max sustained data transfer is a pretty speedy 68 MB/S (according to the link below), the disc spins at only 5400, not the ideal 7200. At those transfer speeds is 5400 enough? I’ll be cutting HD video.
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8 Replies
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I have a Fantom Drive G-Force Mega Disk eSata drive. GFB2000EU32 is the part number. I did a search and there appears to be some avaiable, but the prices vary. I saw one from a place in Georgia for $125. Enter the part # in your search. The drive has worked pretty good so far.
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A 2 TB hard drive will cost about $150, at least in stores (ridiculously expensive to me). But the data recovery guy I’ve been going to an unfortunate amount recently told me that prices will go back down again, and that prices went so high because of the Japanese tsunami.
http://www.scenethroughglass.com
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Not the Tsunami – that hurt the tape supply. The disk drive component makers were all in the Thai flood plains. One factory made the heads, one made the platters, one made the controller boards, etc. Finally, a factory assembled them into the drives we bought.
https://www.zdnetasia.com/thai-floods-to-tighten-dells-hard-disk-supplies-62302859.htm
Since the 1Tb drives were approaching end of life (in manufacturing terms) the factories may simply retool for the next generation of 3Tb drives. We’re not likely to see new 1Tb drives for $50 again. In about a year we should be able to buy 3 Tb drives for $100.
Steve Mann
MannMade Digital Video
http://www.mmdv.com -
Buy the 7200 RPM. It’s worth it.
Al
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I’ve heard that the green drives are causing video editing problems because they keep shutting themselves down. Can anyone confirm or disprove this?
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It *can* cause problems, but maybe not serious, in that you have to wait for the drive to spin back up again. Given that, some programs, and video production is likely one of them, might not handle this sleep mode well. I never buy them, choosing to spend more to get a non green drive. You might want to see if the drive has an override in software to help turn that function off, but I think it’s in the ROM of the drive.
Al
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Al is right. I’ve got a few Fantom green drives and use them for backup only as the spin-up time averages at least 10 seconds.
It goes into sleep mode after about 5 minutes.
I looked at Newegg and Amazon and they have hard drives that are within your price range so shop around. -
Thanks, Mike. And thanks to all for you input.
Best,
GG
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