Dedicated hard drive for my video files

  • Thread starter Thread starter Ride RT
  • Start date Start date
R

Ride RT

I am starting to enjoy using my miniDv camcorder and realize I am running
tight on disk space.

I have a laptop with 40 Gig HD.

I also have a Firewire PC Card with 2 ports - one to connect my camcorder.

As I am about to buy a second HD, an extermal model, for my camcorder
files - would it be a good idea to get a Firewire HD to connect to the 2nd
port on my card ?

Or should I get a USB 2.0 HD so that it uses a different IRQ to get better
performance ?

DS
 
Hi there,

USB 2 is significantly slower than Firewire. It does rather depend on
what you are going to use the second drive for...if its not for capturing,
then it probably does not matter either way.

Sharing an IRQ is not so bad if you carefully map out which IRQ is doing
what. You can then override XP and force each device to use/share a
particular IRQ. As a rough example, if your printer had an IRQ number you
could easily force the firewire card to share that number by overriding the
default settings...so long as you do not use your printer whilst capturing
or whatever, you will be fine.

Best Wishes.....John Kelly
www.the-kellys.org
www.the-kellys.co.uk
 
It is indeed for capturing my video files from my camcorder using WMM.

Am I to understand that I could hook up an external Firewre drive to the 2nd
port of my Firewire card in my notebook, while my camcorder is sending my
video thru the other port ? Performance would be good ???

You see my main HD has only 16 Gig free and it's too close for comfort when
I work on WMM projects.

Thanks.


| Hi there,
|
| USB 2 is significantly slower than Firewire. It does rather depend on
| what you are going to use the second drive for...if its not for capturing,
| then it probably does not matter either way.
|
| Sharing an IRQ is not so bad if you carefully map out which IRQ is
doing
| what. You can then override XP and force each device to use/share a
| particular IRQ. As a rough example, if your printer had an IRQ number you
| could easily force the firewire card to share that number by overriding
the
| default settings...so long as you do not use your printer whilst capturing
| or whatever, you will be fine.
|
 
Hi there,

Well, as you already have a firewire card installed the issue of whether
or not it will take up an IRQ number is Mute. Its already there....the
options seem to me to be reduced to which external firewire capable drive
shall I buy.

I can't remember what the figures for data flow are, but I seem to
remember that a firewire card is an order of magnitude faster than USB2.
There is no contest really. But all the same I would go to my local store,
grab hold of a USB2 drive and a Firewire drive and check out the Specs for
yourself.

Best Wishes.....John Kelly
www.the-kellys.org
www.the-kellys.co.uk
 
Thank you John - much appreciated.

I'll get one of those combo enclosure - USB2/FW - and stick a fast IDE HD in
it - that'll do it.

I really was looking to know if a single FireWire PC card was up to the task
of both capturing and writing to a hard drive at the same time - whhich is
why I maybe thought writing to HD thru another I/O could improve
performance. I guess I'll be able to test it myself/

Best regards.

DS


| Hi there,
|
| Well, as you already have a firewire card installed the issue of
whether
| or not it will take up an IRQ number is Mute. Its already there....the
| options seem to me to be reduced to which external firewire capable drive
| shall I buy.
|
| I can't remember what the figures for data flow are, but I seem to
| remember that a firewire card is an order of magnitude faster than USB2.
| There is no contest really. But all the same I would go to my local store,
| grab hold of a USB2 drive and a Firewire drive and check out the Specs for
| yourself.
|
| Best Wishes.....John Kelly
| www.the-kellys.org
| www.the-kellys.co.uk
|
 
I'm sure John is much more knowledgeable than I regarding
video editing, etc., but I will share my own experiences
for your information.
I have a firewire card in my desktop PC with two ports.
Like you, I was running low on disk space on my HD, so I
purchased an external, firewire connected harddrive
specifically for video downloading and editing.
First two or three attempts at download from camera to
external drive resulted in error messages and aborted
download. Messages talked about dropped frames, etc.
I went out and purchased an internal drive and have
successfully downloaded several videos from the camera
with it.
So, my experience says that firewire download from camera
to firewire connected HD does not work.
As always, results may vary. Just my personal experience.
For info, external drive is a Maxtor 3000DV, 7200 spin
rate. advertising on their site stated it was a great HD
for video. When I experienced problems and searched their
website knowledge base, the information found indicated
the drive was good for video storage and editing, but did
not recommend capture to it. Go figure.

Brian
 
Hi there,

Oh right, I see where you are coming from. The limiting factor as always
is the FSB (Front Side Bus Speed), The amount of times the CPU has been
stepped in order to run at the speed published and of course what type of
RAM and HardDrive and finally the speed of the firewire device.

The Camera will be the slowest !!! Next the Hard drive (Unless you are
talking about SCSI hard drives) and FSB and then the USB device.

The problem you will have is the speed through the Firewire device. I am
going to assume that they are similar to EIDE/ATA cards. If both ports are
in use at the same moment in time, and because of the circuitry the data
flow through the firewire card will run at the slowest speed for both
channels. Now that might just be a problem if my assumption is correct. And,
because I am now at the limit of my knowledge and because I can't now be
sure of what will happen on the motherboards BUS I really do think you
should ask a real technician. If it was my choice I would go with Firewire.

As you are going to buy a dual external case its almost
irrelevant....they are dammed expensive though (in the UK) I saw one in a
small computer store in Worcester last week, I forget the actual asking
price but I remember thinking there's no way I am going to pay that much (I
was actually looking for an additional internal cradle for the extra hard
drives in my machine)

If you ever get to the point of being able to do a comparison it would
be a really useful snippet of knowledge.

Best Wishes.....John Kelly
www.the-kellys.org
www.the-kellys.co.uk
 
Hi Brian,

Yes, it looks as though what I suspected is in fact true.....the
firewire is being restricted by the slower device...that would mean that the
data in from the camera is not being read, hence the dropped frames. That's
a useful piece of information. Thank You.

Best Wishes.....John Kelly
www.the-kellys.org
www.the-kellys.co.uk
 
John,

Firewire is 400 mbps, USB2 is 480 mbps. USB2 should be faster, but in
practice it has more overhead so it is a little slower. There is no way it
can be characterized as "an order of magnitude", implying 10 times faster.
Essentially they are equivalent speedwise for use in a hard drive
application. USB2 appears in more PCs though.
 
Hi there,
From this link http://www.firewirestuff.com/whatis.html i have pinched the
following. :

"Real-time" bi-directional, multi-speed data transfer for all compliant
applications (read as co-processorand multi-processor ready).
Fast Data transfer rates of 100, 200, 400 and 800 Mbits/s, today, and soon
1600 and 3200+ Mbits/s, all over copper wire and fiber optic cable.
Automatic configuration Hot Plug and Play live connection/disconnection
without interruption of other host services
Free-form Fully bi-directional network topology allowing mixed branches and
daisy-chains between peripherals and peer to peer computers and
co-processors
Chip level termination no separate line terminators required
Guaranteed bandwidth assignments for real-time applications and co-existing
performance levels
Common Connectors two types, 4-pin unpowered and 6-pin powered for all
devices and applications
A Solid Standard IEEE 1394 High Performance Serial Bus is fully iLink and
FireWire compatible.

So yes you are right with respects USB2 and order of magnitude.. I'm a bit
stumped as to why I believed its an order of magnitude (I was truly
convinced I was right at about that)...I should have checked myself. I have
also pinched this from the above site:

Applications that benefit from 1394 include nonlinear (digital) video
presentation and editing, desktop and commercial multimedia publishing,
faster document imaging, home and presentation theater multimedia and plug
and play personal desktop computing. The low overhead, high data rates of
1394, the ability to mix real-time synchronous and asynchronous data on a
single line and the ability to mix low speed and high speed devices on the
same single network connection, provides a truly universal connection for
almost any consumer or commercial peripheral application. This, backed by
the openness of being an IEEE standard, now makes 1394 the preferred choice
for a number of high speed interconnect applications in a wide variety of
markets.

Although other high performance connectivity protocols like SCSI III and USB
2.0 are available, the backward and forward compatibility, peer to peer
process sharing and future performance potential make 1394 the better
performance champion. IEEE 1394 at 400 Mbps is a significant contender for
the performance champion, bested only modestly by Ultra Wide SCSI II and
SCSI III, but with the added benefits of hot plug and play.

USB 1.1 and USB 2.0 at 480 Mbps is still the methodology of choice for
master/slave peripheral devices like the human interface (keyboards and
controllers) and to a lesser extent audio and video devices. 1394 however
would have to be the storage media interface of choice over all others
because of "real time", synchronous / asynchronous peer to peer data
transfer and future potential over wireless and fiber.

Me again, I have been told by my youngest lad (A Systems Engineer for a
rather large well known company) that there is yet another standard being
developed that will be faster again. But, reading the above It does look
that Firewire with its present potential for speeds up to 3,200 MB/s is
going to be hard to beat.

Best Wishes (and thanks for putting me right).....John Kelly
www.the-kellys.org
www.the-kellys.co.uk
 
John,

No problem. I have both Firewire and USB but my most recent ones have been
USB2. I find the firewire drives causing me more trouble as far as wanting
to run scandisk at startup or not being recognized until I unplug and plug
them back in. This is my favorite drive:

http://www.lacie.com/products/product.htm?id=10063

It's my install drive. I have it loaded up with downloaded applications and
PC installation instructions. I take it to any PC I have to work on. It is
so tiny and doesn't require a power cord.

As far a video capture I could go along with that previous suggestion that
says capture to an internal drive. But any of these drives would be fine for
backup and editing purposes.
 
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