Use Internal or External HDD for rendering?

[Nigel O’neill]

Are they eSATA drives?

How long did they last?

Internal or external, you might want to explore 24/7 ‘surveillience’ HDD’s offered by Western Digital and Seagate, which are designed for constantly recording video applications such as CCTV systems. They are ruggedised meaning they will handle vibration/movement better than standard drives. They do cost slightly more, but I presume offer more reliability as they are designed for constant use. I use 4 such drives in a RAID 1 and RAID 0 configuration, with a 5th eSATA drive for backup purposes.

I used to use WD Raptors which were nice and fast, but they only lasted me 3 years, are expensive, and run VERY hot, so need active cooling i.e. a fan.

Intel i7 920, 12GB RAM, ASUS P6T, Vegas Pro 10 (X64), Vista x64 Ultimate, Vegas Production Assistant 1.0, VASST Ultimate S 4.1

[Al Bergstein]

Would need a lot more info to make a definitive statement about your drives. Obviously, if they lasted 3 months, that would be much different than 3 years.

HDDs are all rapidly moving devices and it doesn’t matter if they are internal or external, except whether the external ones are being handled a lot and traveling. Then you might want to look into drives that are ruggedized, as the last poster said.

But most hard drives die quickly or last a long time. If you care about your footage, then invest in RAID 1, which will at least continuously back up one drive to the other. Or you can invest in a backup that daily or hourly backs you up. Try Robocopy as a utility that can help in that task.

best of luck.

Alf

[Darren Campbell]

Yeah eSATA.

2 of the Seagate drives lasted 3-4 months each, and the 3rd Seagate drive only lasted a week, they were all the same models.

The Samsung Drive lasted about 2 months.

Seagate BlackArmor – https://www.amazon.co.uk/BlackArmor-WS-110-external-eSATA-300/dp/B002BH4R9U

Samsung Spinpoint – https://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/storage/2009/10/06/samsung-spinpoint-f3-1tb-review/1

Surveillience HDD’s do sound interesting, I’ll look into that cheers.

[Nigel O’neill]

Although your drives are replaceable under warranty, there is that inconvenience of replacing lost data and lost time. I had some issues with Western Digital drives and went through 3, although I later discovered the first fault was genuine. The other 2 faults were due to a dying drive controller.

The short life span indicates there could be a problem with the drive caddy, the power supply, or the way the drives are being handled. Do you use an external drive caddy that you simply slot the drives into? If so, you still need to be careful of static electricity when handling the drives, especially if you work in a carpeted environment. Do you work in an environment where there is a lot of vibration, such as living near railway lines. External strong vibrations can shorten the lifespan of any electrical equipment.

Lastly, is your computer running on clean power i.e. through a UPS or a surge protector? Power spikes and brown outs can damage electronic equipment, such as eSATA caddies!

Intel i7 920, 12GB RAM, ASUS P6T, Vegas Pro 10 (X64), Vista x64 Ultimate, Vegas Production Assistant 1.0, VASST Ultimate S 4.1