External HD for photo/video editing

Hallo

I was wondering if anybody could give me any advice on a good external harddrive to be used for photo and video editing (raw footage from my 5D-2) for my MacBook Pro. I usually edit my photos in Lightroom/Photoshop and make video montages in iMovie '09 (convenient).

I only have 2 requirements:

* FireWire 800
* Minimum 1 TB, preferably 2

I have a separate harddrive for backup and such, this is mostly to speed up my editing and keep work-in-progress located on a separate storage device.

Appreciate any input,thanks.

Bump

This looks like the best thing for you: http://www.westerndigi​tal.com …/Products.asp?D​riveID=756

That WD is far from the "best thing". Take a look at this drive from OWC.

1. Is there a particular reason you need firewire? Are esata cards not available for your machine?
2. I can attest to Western Digital being one of the best hard drive manufactures.

Edit: I;ve have a few drives from this company and they seem ok so far. Have had for over a year, almost two now.
http://www.newegg.com …aspx?Item=N82E1​6822204092

Scout > What kind of drives does OWC use?

There is eSATA cards available for me yes, but I dislike having extra accessories, thus I prefer to keep it to FW800. Unless somebody can supply me with a very convincing argument otherwise (most of the time I just need some gentle persuasion)

I have a couple of old WD drives, and they haven't failed on me after all this years, so I guess that's a good testament of their performance.

Same with me, I;ve had other drives fail, never my trusty Western Digitals.

As for convincing you to use esata...

How about transfer speeds 3 times faster than Firewire 800?

eSata 300 MB/s
Firewire 800 98.25 MB/s
USB 2 60MB/s

now...
Firewire 3200 393MB/s
USB 3 600MB/s

but no one really uses firewire 3200 or USB 3 yet =P so eSata is king for now.

Of course it sounds nice, but is this data collected from real-usage or just some ideal/theoretical situation?

And even though the protocol supports it, will my MacBook Pro (late mid level 2008 model) be able to keep up with it?

toffiloff wrote in post #9439000
Of course it sounds nice, but is this data collected from real-usage or just some ideal/theoretical situation?

And even though the protocol supports it, will my MacBook Pro (late mid level 2008 model) be able to keep up with it?

In actual tests, esata easily beats FW800, especially in simultaneous read/write operations. Supports NCQ and actually can max out most ssds as well, so it is well worth it. The other good thing is that with an FIS switch and a few disks on esata, you can actually enable RAID (1, 0, 5 usually) and get higher performance and size. If your macbook supports expresscard, then you can get esata for it.

As for brand, I have all WD drives after my seagate decided to just die out of the blue. I have had one drive out of about half a dozen fail, but it still reads perfectly, just can't write to it.

basroil wrote in post #9440485
In actual tests, esata easily beats FW800, especially in simultaneous read/write operations. Supports NCQ and actually can max out most ssds as well, so it is well worth it. The other good thing is that with an FIS switch and a few disks on esata, you can actually enable RAID (1, 0, 5 usually) and get higher performance and size. If your macbook supports expresscard, then you can get esata for it.

As for brand, I have all WD drives after my seagate decided to just die out of the blue. I have had one drive out of about half a dozen fail, but it still reads perfectly, just can't write to it.

Yep, my MacBook supports expresscard + esata, I know that. What does NCQ and FIS stand for by the way? Don't I need 2x harddrives, or at least 2 drives in 1 box, to enable RAID? Any suggestions for that? I would just want maximum speed with acceptable available storage space. Thanks!

toffiloff wrote in post #9441718
Yep, my MacBook supports expresscard + esata, I know that. What does NCQ and FIS stand for by the way? Don't I need 2x harddrives, or at least 2 drives in 1 box, to enable RAID? Any suggestions for that? I would just want maximum speed with acceptable available storage space. Thanks!

you should wiki NCQ. as for FIS, all you need to know is that it works like a usb hub, but for esata, and some of them support raid along with simple switching. For RAID 1/0, you need two (or more, generally multiples of two) drives, for raid 5 you need 3 or more disks. But that's only in case at some future date you decide you need quick recovery or extra speed.

If you don't care too much and just want speed, esata+WD20EAS (either drive in external holder or the 2tb mybook with esata). I get decent speeds off that, about the same as my 10EAS internal green drive (roughly 80mb/s on larger files)

You should get a drive with both firewire and eSata interfaces, so you can start on fire then get eSata if you need it later. 5D2 files are huge (I process them occasionally), they slow my computer down quite a bit when 40D files were fine.

I like regular computers instead of laptops just because you can put a bunch of drives in using SATA easily.

themadman wrote in post #9438715
1. Is there a particular reason you need firewire? Are esata cards not available for your machine?
2. I can attest to Western Digital being one of the best hard drive manufactures.

Edit: I;ve have a few drives from this company and they seem ok so far. Have had for over a year, almost two now.
http://www.newegg.com …aspx?Item=N82E1​6822204092

Scout > What kind of drives does OWC use?

I'm pretty sure they are Seagate drives.

I picked up a Seagate 2TB for $170 or so. It's done it's job so far (not crashed).

RGVphoto wrote in post #9450802
I picked up a Seagate 2TB for $170 or so. It's done it's job so far (not crashed).

It doesn't really matter if hard drives crash, since you have a backup, right?