External HDD question

gangstaj8 · Post by **gangstaj8** » Mon Jul 11, 2005 11:47 pm

I hope this is an the appropriate forum.

I'm considering getting an external hard drive for my wife and I to share for AMV's. Does anyone have any advice on what type I might want to get? USB, Network, other? I saw a Network drive to share files through a router, looks really spiff, are they worth the money? Is USB 2 fast enough to edit large .AVI files? Any advice would be appreciated, if I'm overlooking something please fill me in. Thanks in advance.

BasharOfTheAges · Post by **BasharOfTheAges** » Tue Jul 12, 2005 12:19 am

I usually store my clipped footage on my external USB drive. Seems to work fine speed-wise.

I'd suggest that if you plan to get an external USB drive that you just buy a large HDD and an external enclosure seperately. It's about a minute or two of work to put together and you save a lot of cash on it. Case in point: my 200GB external drive cost me $140 including shipping over 13 months ago.

gangstaj8 · Post by **gangstaj8** » Thu Jul 14, 2005 1:33 am

Hey, that's a great idea! I'll probably go that route with a hot-swapable, or spend a little extra for a network drive that's less trouble.

BTW, just out of curiosity, if one has a network drive set up properly, can one host files from it like a mini-server? Probably not, but just asking.

Thanks again for your advice.

[Mike of the Desert] · Post by **[Mike of the Desert]** » Fri Jul 15, 2005 12:27 pm

IMO, for only store AMVs, there are some (rare to find but still) Firewire keys that can keep up 'till 30GB of video.

gangstaj8 · Post by **gangstaj8** » Sat Jul 16, 2005 3:02 am

30 Gigs? I may have miscommunicated...

We want a drive to share for making AMVs, not just storing them. Will need closer to 100 or more. BTW, what's a "firewire key"? Is it simply firewire? I understand that USB 2.0 is a tiny bit faster.

BasharOfTheAges · Post by **BasharOfTheAges** » Sat Jul 16, 2005 3:52 am

gangstaj8 wrote:BTW, what's a "firewire key"? Is it simply firewire? I understand that USB 2.0 is a tiny bit faster.

I'm assuming "firewire pen drive" was what was intended there.

About your network drive question, I personally don't think a network drive would be worth the hassle of setting up (nor do i know how to do so) The external drive is simple to move from place to place to access on multiple computers and can also be used to store a significant amount of other content that you might want to bring outside of your home (away from the two or more computers you wanted to access it from) just as easily.

gangstaj8 · Post by **gangstaj8** » Wed Jul 27, 2005 8:29 pm

Well, I ended up getting an internal for my computer. We discovered that, after looking into this a little more deeply, my wife's comp doesn't have sufficient video memory to edit videos very well. This way we can share the drive on my comp (even though we have to take turns), and if we want to get a USB case for it in the future, we can cross that bridge when we come to it. Thanks everyone for your input, always help to toss ideas around.

SepherSerado · Post by **SepherSerado** » Sat Jul 30, 2005 12:57 am

You wanted to share the harddrive? Are you useing two computers? If so are they networked? and if they are networked why not just share that Drive......that is if you are useing Ntfs which you most likely should be. That way you could both store and acess the harddrive from one computer if I understood right and you are working with two computers.

gangstaj8 · Post by **gangstaj8** » Sat Jul 30, 2005 2:10 am

Yeah, sharing a single hard drive for two seperate computers was the plan, and sharing that drive over our network does work. But there are still 2 issues: #1 (as mentioned in my last post) the second computer isn't beefy enough to actually edit the large .avi files. I know there are ways to get around this, but I haven't played around with the idea yet. #2 I'm a networking moron, without Win XP, I probably wouldn't have been able to network our computers in the first place. Thus, it seems our 100mbps router is only working at around 1 or 2 mbps when transfering files over our network. (something with the settings?) This is also a downfall when trying to work with large .avi's.

Therefore, we're both using the new HDD only on my computer, which will work just fine until it's time to upgrade or replace the other one.

BTW, any tips on speeding up network performance?