SATA Drives Speed vs. Firewire Drive Speed

[Blast1]

SATA is about 45-48MB/s sustained data rate, even though 1394a is supposed to be 50MB/s, with overhead you are lucky to get a transfer at 40MB/s sustained if you have a late model F/W chipset.

[Redgum]

You’re right, real world experience is that SATA is about 3 times more efficient overall. Firewire has its place in video editing but won’t compete with SATA.

Redgum Television Productions
Broadcast & Corporate Documentaries
Brisbane, Australia

[Fredriksdv]

I guess it depends on what kind of editing you are doing.
If you are doing uncompressed I would recommend SATA.
I have three WD Raptors striped as RAID0. That gives me a write speed of more than 150 MB/sec…

Cheers,
Fredrik Harreschou
FredriksDigitaleVerden

[Aaron Strader]

Matrox Axio’s are configurable with SATA’s.

I’ve seen tested speeds run to above 200MB/s with the right setup.

FW and USB drives are good for storage and backup, but are in no way a preferred choice in editing.
Associated issues with FW and USB drives are their external nature (power/space/cost issues).

Most modern computer systems are going to have enough space inside the system to accomodate a few more HDD’s with no problems. If you go with SATA, since it’s all internal, there’s fewer cables, lower cost, and a cleaner workspace. If I needed an extra 300GB of space, I can go buy an internal 300GB for about $120, or I can go external for $250-300.

[Doug Broomfield]

The downside to our system is there are no available bays for an additional HDD, so we will have to go external SATA. Do you have any recommendations on the best external SATA 250 GB set-up to get?(One drive, no raid needed) We can either go internal drive and throw it into an external box, or get an external one (I think Lacie makes some). Your thoughts? Thanks so much

[Redgum]

Depends how fussy you are with your setup. We’re running 6 Sata and 2 IDE HDD internal on an Asus mobo. Some are bolted in and others just lay on the case. Frequently we’re dropping drives in and out as we give the hard drive to the client at the end of the edit. No side on the case so we can pump cold air from our 3hp AC unit.
Use to be tidy until too many hard drives carked it. Haven’t had any bother for over two years now.
We’ve got a four drive external sata raid on another machine (it’s tidy) and it works fine and fast. Used mainly for e-mail (just joking!)

Redgum Television Productions
Broadcast & Corporate Documentaries
Brisbane, Australia

[Doug Broomfield]

Thanks for the feedback. Any particluar SATA drive manufacturer and model you recommend? All we need is one drive at this point.

Doug
dwb media

[Redgum]

No scientific answer to this. All our SATA drives are Western Digital simply because the Seagates died. Lost eleven in two years but I suspect this was a Raid/Power Supply problem.

Redgum Television Productions
Broadcast & Corporate Documentaries
Brisbane, Australia