[MacDV] Hard drive for iBook video editing

[Mark M. Florida]

Actually, in real world performance, the 5400 RPM drives aren't that 
much faster than the 4200 RPM drives (according to benchmarks done and 
reported on various web sites).

The problem with using FireWire drives for DV capture is not that the 
drives themselves or the FireWire interface aren't fast enough, it's 
that there's contention with the FireWire bus when transferring to/from 
a FireWire camera on the same bus -- both devices *want* control, but 
only one of them *gets* it.  If you had a PowerBook, you could probably 
get a FireWire PC card, connect the drive to that and connect the 
camera to the built-in FireWire port and be good to go.  This is just a 
theory, though, and I don't know if this has actually been tried as a 
work-around for this problem. (but doesn't it make sense that it would 
work?)

Anyway, if you are doing video you definitely need a drive bigger than 
20 GB.  So shop around, check out reviews and benchmarks and get the 
biggest, fastest drive that will fit internally in your iBook.  And 
while your at it, you should partition the new drive with a partition 
completely dedicated to video -- System software and applications 
really clutter up and fragment drives in a hurry (*ESPECIALLY* Mac OS X 
-- it's a mess).  So let's say you get a 60 GB hard drive, you'd set up 
a 10 or 20 GB partition for your system and applications, and a second 
40 or 50 GB partition to use JUST for video.

Other World computing usually has decent prices, and they have 
benchmarks for most of the drives they sell.  http://www.macsales.com/

2 cents.

- Mark

On Monday, March 3, 2003, at 11:31 AM, Randy Wilson wrote:

> OK, the 20GB 4200RPM hard drive in my 600Mhz iBook (white/14.1") isn't
> cutting it any more for video editing.  Yesterday I imported a
> particular clip twice, and both times there was at least one section
> dropped out, so I had to split both versions and put the good parts
> together to get something that worked.
>
> For around $150, I can get either a "Hitachi Travelstar 40GNX" 40GB
> 5400RPM internal hard drive for the iBook (and do the surgery required
> to install it); or I could get a 100GB 7200RPM external Firewire hard
> drive (e.g., the Western Digital one mentioned in deal-mac today).
>
> I remember a while back on this list people were saying that FireWire
> drives weren't fast enough for video editing (i.e., for capture and
> export), but I have gotten the impression that things have gotten
> better.  What is the consesus now? Would an external 7200RPM Western
> Digital hard drive be likely to work fine for video editing? Would it
> likely be faster or slower than an internal 5400RPM drive (i.e., more 
> or
> less likely to have glitches on video import or export)?
>
> Thanks!
>
> --Randy Wilson
>
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