single drive esata vs. firewire 800

[Michael Sacci]

Copying from my RAID to a single eSata drive I get roughly 5 GB/s vs. FW800 at 2 GB/s. This is on a MP tower, eSata can be internal or external and get the same speed.

[Russell Lasson]

[Michael Sacci] “I get roughly 5 GB/s vs. FW800 at 2 GB/s”

Michael, you might want to restate those numbers. There is no way you’re getting 5 gigabytes per second off of one drive.

Jay, eSATA is faster, but not as easy to use for Mac people because eSATA requires an adaptor on the macbook pro. eSATA can go as fast as around 300MB/sec, but if you only use it in a one drive configuration, it will only go as fast as that drive will go, which is generally between 100-120MB/sec.

Firewire 800 is much more convenient and in my opinion more reliable too because it doesn’t require an extra adaptor that can sometimes be a little finicky. Fastest I’ve seen a FW800 drive go is around 80MB/sec.

If you’re just dealing with DV, AVCHD, DVCPRO, HDV stuff, then I don’t think you’ll notice a huge difference. If you want a drive with eSATA on it, I’d suggest getting it with FW800 too, that way, you have a backup.

If you want to capture directly to the drive, I’ve probably suggest eSATA so that it doesn’t effect the bandwidth of the firewire bus that you’re trying to capture off of.

-Russ

Russell Lasson
Colorist/Digital Cinema Specialist
Color Mill
Salt Lake City, UT
http://www.colormill.net

[Michael Sacci]

/minute not second, I always do that, sorry.

[Russell Lasson]

If you find a drive that does 5GB/sec, I’m in!!!!

-Russ

Russell Lasson
Colorist/Digital Cinema Specialist
Color Mill
Salt Lake City, UT
http://www.colormill.net

[Michael Sacci]

I have needed to to be that fast in order to make the final cut off at FedEx. Some day soon we will have it, but then we will be wanting 5 TB/s, there is no making any of us happy.

[Baz Leffler]

[Michael Sacci] “/minute not second, I always do that, sorry.”

If it was per sec then my edit should be complete before I even enter the room!

BAz

What would I do without the ‘UNDO’ button!!!!

[Jay Soriano]

thank you all for your feedback. the minixpress comes w/ an esata port as well as firewire 800.

[Craig Alan]

https://www.barefeats.com/note06.html

if you scroll down to “insights” you’ll get some solid understanding of the options/speed. Certainly more important with a raid but worth considering.

Two drive raids are becoming cheaper. Caldigit is great if you have the bucks. I just ordered a G-Technology 2TB G-Raid3 Quad Interface External Hard Drive Array for about $350. I’ve been using a OWC Mercury-AL FW800/400/U2/eS R0 2.0TB with a macbook pro and it works fine on either the 800 or with the esata card. But only the sonnet card will give you that extra speed boost. I have a firmtek card and it is somewhat faster on esata. Plus I don’t have to worry about how many things are sharing the firewire bus.

OSX 10.5.7; MAC Book PRO (EARLY 2008); Camcorders: Sony Z7U, Canon HV30, Sony vx2000/PD170, Canon xl2; Pana, Sony, and Canon consumer cams; FCP certified; write professionally for a variety of media; teach video production in L.A.