All External Hard Drives?

Skywatcher wrote on 11/27/2004, 12:24 PM
Sup yall...

I have recently purchased 2 external hard drives. Maxtor 2-fittys. I am happy with them...soooo much that I'm wondering if there is an advantage (or dis-advantage) to them. I'm thinking of going all external (except for the OPS Drive).

It is sooo convenient, I dis-connect it and take it to church, capture directly to my EHD and edit at home (since I cant edit a burned DVD, Sony wake up and address this need, PLEASE!!!).

Can anyone see any dis-advantages to all external hard drives for capture, render and storage??

Skywatcher

Comments

vicmilt wrote on 11/27/2004, 1:04 PM
Actually it is recommended for you to use a different hard drive for all your media.
I use firewire connectors to interface with relatively inexpensive internal HD's.
I use one drive per client, and simply plug them into the interface, and then the interface into the Firewire port on my computer.
No problems at all, and when I finish a job, I simply store the drives on a shelf.
If there's ever a need to revise, the drives have everything I need, all in the same place that they were when I did the original project.
I not only store the video media, I also keep any music, graphics, pre-renders AND scripts, budgets - in a word, EVERYTHING that has to do with that particular job.
Been doing this for over three years now - I've accumulated a bunch of hard drives, but at $.50 to $1.00 a gig, it's really the easiest way to work and archive, all at the same time.
v.
Grazie wrote on 11/27/2004, 1:08 PM
Blimey! How many clients you had over these three years? . .. G
Skywatcher wrote on 11/27/2004, 1:38 PM
I like that Idea. At 250 Gigs per drive, I can store quite a bit. I put each project into a seperate folder and classify it.

I was just wondering if there were some type of "side affects" of doing it this way.

Thanks
Mandk wrote on 11/27/2004, 2:18 PM
THe only problem I have had is that the externals seem to wear out faster than the internals. I have replaced three western digitals and one maxtor (all under warranty ) in the past 18 months. No replacements of the internal drives.

Caruso wrote on 11/27/2004, 4:08 PM
The only negative I can think of is making certain you keep track of your media. I can't afford a separate drive for each client, and, find that I have to take pains to give each drive a volume name, and number them so that I can connect them in the same order each time I assemble/disassemble my system.

Otherwise, complex projects become a chore to open, because Vegas (or in my case, also Wavelab) cannot reassemble projects because it cannot find files in the drives that it expects to see (drive letter change if 6 externals, for instance, are not hooked up in the same order after powering down and back up again.

Other than that, I can think of no disadvantage. Unlike the previous poster, I've not had any trouble with my external drives. Had to replace one enclosure, but not the drive.

Caruso
farss wrote on 11/27/2004, 5:18 PM
I now have LOTS of external drives. I use the RH58 drive draws plugged into the matching caddy. I have one caddy in a firewire enclosure and one in The Monsta.
We have the xternal hooked up to DSR-11 and laptop, that way we can capture and edit on the main machine at the same time, saves heaps of time.
Being able to plug the drvie directly into EIDE is about 4 times faster than firewire and there's no risk of it getting knocked off the bench.
So there's no downside to using firewire IF you get the good enclosures and I've had a fee dogs, they look great but cook drives, with my solution when the drives in the firewire case there's three fans to keep it cool.
I can take my firewire drive also as part of my portable recording setup, record to the internal drive if the fan noise is a problem and then hook up the drive to hive off files between sessions.

Bob.