Firewire 800 Drives, which is a good one?

Gang,

Looking to purchase at least a 1TB FWD800 drive for my home system. With so many drives and manufactures, would like to get some input on which to buy. From the thread about the Seagate drives, think I will stay away from those. An editor I know likes the G-Tech and La Cie drives. Just thought I would try and get a broader perspective.

Currently to handle all the media I have for the project I am working on, mix of HD and SD, but cutting in HD, is on 3 different 400 speed drives. Have some playback issues as you can imagine. Figured things would be better with the faster drive.

Also, once I purchase, better to partition the drive or not? Any advantages/disadvantages one way or the other?

Appreciate the input!!

> An editor I know likes the G-Tech and La Cie drives.

G-Techs used to be good, but the last two I've bought have left me cold -- noisy, and one of them is already struggling to stay alive despite only light use for a little over a year. And at least 50 per cent of the people in here would tell you that Lacies suck. Do a forum search for "Lacie" and you'll see the complaints.

OWC (Otherworldcomputing) has very affordable external drives with good reputation, but I don't think they have one at 1TB:

[www.otherworldcomputing.com]

So far as I can tell, CalDigit is one of the few brands with an untarnished reputation in this group. I haven't used one so I can't vouch for it personally, but there have been raves here at LAFCPUG, and at least two CalDigit personnel drop in on this forum, so you'll get an extra level of customer service just from that.

The one brand I've used myself with great results is Promax. I own about six of them, and every single one -- including a 42GB one bought in 2000 -- is still at full functionality with absolutely no problems. However, I just checked their web page and it appears they may not make FireWire external drives anymore. Check with them yourself and see:

www.promax.com


www.derekmok.com

LaCie - um...no.

G-RAID2s...not what they used to be.

I recommend CalDigit products. I own 2 FirewireVR's (discontinued) and don't have a lick of trouble. They are inexpensive, dependable and are readily available and fully supported:

[www.caldigit.com]

These discontinued FirewireVR units are being replaced with CalDigit VRs:

[www.caldigit.com]

When life gives you dilemmas...make dilemmanade.

Caldigit is a data storage company. The best at it.

I have used several drive several different drives and I think that the Hitachi drive in a Caldigit esata storage unit would be the most reliable way of storing your media.

Esata is faster than FW, so if you are doing HD your gonna need it bad.

Seagate drives just had a problem with the 7200.11 drives and they might be going into iffy status in my book.

Lacie drive are what you buy to make sure you have a chance to have drive problems. Its like a they have the quality of a Yugo or a Wall-Mart 5 dollar sweat suite.

Western Digital - I have no experience with but i have read that they are a step above Lacie. I have no idea if that means they are good because lacie is extra UN-WONDERFUL.

A Pioneer drive came in my old ppc and it still is in operation since they first made the 1.8 dual ppc. It is kinda slow as compared to the Hitachi or the iffy Seagate i just purchased.
I think its a 5400 rpm drive also.

Though its my 1st time using a Seagate I think if you have the newest firmware in your drive and that Seagate is in a Caldigit Storage unit you will be ok there also. I just like Hitachi.

""" What you do with what you have, is more important than what you could do, with what you don't have."

> > > Knowledge + Action = Wisdom - J. Corbett 1992 """"

you could have done a forum search and saved corbett another flaming from joey and what im
sure will be yet another love-hate debate about LaCie ; )

but since we're all repeating ourselves here:

personally (i am among the LaCie haters) id stay away from just about ANYTHING you can buy at your local big-box computer store. though if you have to buy from such, i have been HEAVILLY using these iomega ultramax quad interface drives
[store.iomega.com]
and theyre working as well as any other single-mechanism drive ive used.

i also use caldigit products (specifically their SVRDUO)
[www.caldigit.com]
as well as OWC mercury elite drives
[eshop.macsales.com]
and love them both.

You can do plenty of HD on Firewire 800 drives...HDV / ProRes / DVCProHD, etc. You don't "need" esata.

So, I guess the suggest of 4 other moderators was wrong. Yes FW does HD but esata is a better way to go for hd as suggested by others.

Its like saying you really do need 16gigs of ram when you can get the job done with 2gigs.

More is better.

The drive is ST31600 so its a seagate. I was looking at the wrong thing.

No experience with WD and i dont care about crappy anything when it comes to equipment. So you are correct about lacie.

""" What you do with what you have, is more important than what you could do, with what you don't have."

> > > Knowledge + Action = Wisdom - J. Corbett 1992 """"

Quote
You can do plenty of HD on Firewire 800 drives...HDV / ProRes / DVCProHD, etc. You don't "need" esata.
-joey

Quote
Esata is faster than FW
- corbett

both make very good points. you can work quite well with firewire800. but esata is probably the best, low-cost upgrade you can make to any machine...

migrating from firewire800 to esata made more of a perfomance improvement in my Macpro Octocore than adding 16gigs of ram did.

oh, and as far as partitioning goes. there is no advantage to doing so.

I have ~4Tb of FW drives; 400, 800, and the new 3Gb/s eSata dual-platter Raid 0 drives. This last type I have found perfectly satisfactory for editing 720p25 and 50.

Most are LaCie; no problems with any of them. Of course, I have multiple redundancy built in to my workflow, so even if one fails, no problems. YMMV, of course, and I have seen many passionate comments re. this manufacturer. I guess my point is that I *expect* FW drives to fail (a question of when, rather than if) so I plan for this.

I am trying to persuade my local guys to stock Caldigit; they look excellent.

Personally, the idea of a RAID 0 makes me sweat as they don't come with built in redundancy.

I'll stay clear of WDs, LaCies, and anything you can get at your local supermarket. Most of these don't come with cooling fans, and leaving those on for long periods, always makes many an editor sweat.

>Figured things would be better with the faster drive.

You bet. To work with many forms of compressed HD, you need at least FW800.

>but cutting in HD, is on 3 different 400 speed drives.

If you're going to find yourself working with a multitude of external drives, you should consider getting a RAID 5 eSATA/Fibre Channel/SCSI array. It's more efficient to work on 1 solid drive array than 4 of them scattered around the floor.



www.strypesinpost.com

Appreciate all the great input. Very helpful!! Thanks!