[MacDV] Re: Firewire drive rotation speed

[XXL]

> Hello MacDV friends,
> 
> I'm looking at large external devices for editing movies from and storing
> large image files. How critical is rotation speed. LaCie always seems to
> have a slightly slower rotation spee for their largest drive. Right now the
> rotation speeds are 7200 for drives up to 400gb but only 5400 for the 500gb
> drive. I have a 160gb drive that is 5400 rpm and occaisionaly get a "drive
> responded slowly" message. I'm not sure if it had to do with the rotation
> speed. It was usually after it was dormant for a while. Any opinion
> appreciated. Thanks.
> 
> Geno

Rotation speed is just one factor in drive performance.  The real measure is
probably best expressed as throughput.  Speed and latency are related. And a
slower device can have greater throughput if latency is favorable.

In general 7200 RPM drives with the Oxford chipset (Oxford is on is all of
them these days) will give you fairly similar performance that is fine for
DV capture.
-Joel