external hard drive for video editing: what type and how "fast" would be best

Hello Mille887, 


    If you will be doing a lot of video editing, you will want a
Firewire connection, and plenty of  HD room. I'd recommend purchasing
the largest external drive your budget will allow. Another option,
should your budget allow,  is to purchase several, as they are
hot-swappable with Windows XP. Most of this type of drive also comes
with a USB connection, which is slower, but still a good option. The
hard drive speed you would want would be 7200 RPM, almost standard
today in well known brands.

   "Most computers today are shipping with 30 to 80 GB (and bigger)
hard drives. Although spacious for most tasks, these drives can
quickly become full when digital video enters the picture. Why? Well,
think of it like this: every frame of video is like a JPEG photo you
might get off your digital camera. There are usually 30 frames per
second of video on a computer, so if you have a 5-minute video, that's
like having 9000 JPEG photos on your hard drive! An hour of DV quality
video will take up around 13 GB, and that's just for the
capturing?you'll need that much space again if you're going to be
outputting a final project without editing too much of the video out.
So, for an hour of video you'll need 26 GB minimum. But hard drives
are about more than just size, so we'll also delve into why
performance is important."


Factors to Look for in a Hard Drive
====================================
When buying a hard drive, there are three important factors to
consider: capacity, rotation speed, and cache. All these elements play
a role in how fast you can open, edit, and save your digital video
with Windows Movie Maker 2.
?	

Capacity is straightforward?the higher the number, the more storage
space you have. I should mention here that you'll never get the full
amount of space promised on the box. The reason is boring and
technical, but as a rule of thumb, for every 100 GB your hard drive
says it has, you'll get 93 GB of usable space.
?	

Rotation speed?the number of times that a hard drive spins around per
minute (much like a tire on a car): 5400 revolutions per minute (RPM)
is standard, and 7200 RPM is what you'll see on high-performance
drives consumer drives. On servers the drives can spin as fast as
15,000 RPM, but those drives are very expensive. For video work, and
indeed for a faster performing computer in general, 7200 RPM is the
best choice. That's not to say that if you have a 5400 RPM hard drive
you can't work with digital video, but if you're buying a new hard
drive I strongly recommend a 7200 RPM drive. Once you start opening
and saving gigabytes of data, you'll appreciate the extra speed boost.
?	

Cache size?cache on a hard drive is much like RAM on your computer.
The cache acts as a temporary storage location for the data, and since
the cache can respond much more quickly than the hard drive itself
(nanoseconds instead of milliseconds), the more cache a drive has the
better overall performance it will give. Most hard drives have 2 or 4
MB of cache?the Special Edition Western Digital drives and Matrox
DiamondMax Plus 9 both have 8 MB of cache, which makes them top
performers. I only buy drives with 8 MB of cache for this reason. "
http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/using/moviemaker/expert/dunn_03august11_hd.mspx


Seagate:
========
"There's a USB-only model, but I recommend the one that also has
FireWire connectivity and comes with a Pushbutton Backup feature that
uses CMS's BounceBack software. The device is hot-swappable and
surprisingly quiet. Withs an 8 MB cache and 7200 RPM operating speed,
it's also fast enough for DV video editing without tears."
http://www.seagate.com/cda/newsinfo/newsroom/coverage/article/1,1113,2640,00.html

This site tested Seagate againt Maxtor external drives, and both
excelled in different areas:
"What's really interesting about these results is the difference in
FireWire and USB 2.0 tests for the Maxtor drive. USB 2.0 has a higher
theoretical limit than FireWire, but the results of the OneTouch belie
that. On the other hand, the Seagate drive offers ever-so-slightly
better results for USB 2.0.

The likely cause of these differences is the respective controllers
built into the drive electronics. As we've seen in the past,
differences in FireWire or USB controller can affect overall
throughput. What is consistent here, however, is the substantially
higher CPU utilization when running USB 2.0 ? not a big surprise,
given USB's host-based nature. "
http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,1697,1375601,00.asp

"What's interesting ? and can't be demonstrated in the read-intensive
Winbench 99 tests ? is the write performance of the Seagate drive.
It's also interesting to see that, in the case of the Seagate drive,
the 1394 performance outstrips the USB 2.0 result by a significant
margin ? but the Maxtor offers better results running under USB 2.0."
http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,1697,1375602,00.asp

Seagate review
http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,1697,1375605,00.asp

Maxtor won the back-up test
http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,1697,1375603,00.asp



Maxtor:
=======
Maxtor has a highly rated external hard drive, that come in various
hard drive sizes. (I have one and it performs flawlessly and quickly).
http://pcworld.pricegrabber.com/search_getprod.php/masterid=9711266

Maxtor Review
http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,1697,1375604,00.asp



ProMax
======

ProMax has several sizes of external, firewire (much faster than USB)
http://www.promax.com/Products/Cat/Storage

"FireWire disk drives offer hot swappable, easy to transport, high
performance data storage. No termination or disk ID's to worry about.
These new disk drives are compatible with computers with FireWire
ports and are excellent for digital video and graphics applications.
Now for the first time its easy to add an unlimited amount of storage
capacity to a G3, G4, G5 iMacDV, iBook, PowerBook, PC, or Laptop
Computer native FireWire 400 or CardBus FireWire port.

Model - ATA-100
FireWire Interface - 400 Mbit
USB Interface - USB 2.0
Rotational Speed - 7,200 RPM
Length 9.5 in
Height 7.5 in
Width 2.5 in

Features:
* External System With A/C Power Supply
* Oxford ATA to FireWire Bridge Technology
* Ships With a 6 pin to 6 pin FireWire Cable
* Daisy Chain Cabinets For Added Capacity
* Warranty: 1 Year - 72 Hour RMA Repair

The Firewire drives were tested and approved on the following systems
for video and storage:
* G3, G4, G5 Macintosh and Windows Based Computers
* PowerBooks, iBooks, and Laptops
* iMacDV and iMacDV-SE With FireWire 400 Ports
* Final Cut Pro, Premiere, and Avid Xpress DV
* PC systems Windows 2000 and newer"
http://www.promax.com/Products/Detail/27465


Other external hard drives:
===========================
Here are some others:
http://pcworld.pricegrabber.com/search_attrib.php/page_id=11/popup1_attr_id%5B%5D=393/popup1_attr_id%5B%5D=393/popup2%5B%5D=2:394/popup2%5B%5D=2:394/popup2_attr_id%5B%5D=394/popup2_attr_id%5B%5D=394/popup3_attr_id%5B%5D=144/popup3_attr_id%5B%5D=144/popup4_attr_id%5B%5D=392/popup4_attr_id%5B%5D=392/popup5_attr_id%5B%5D=380/popup5_attr_id%5B%5D=380/popup6_attr_id%5B%5D=109/popup6_attr_id%5B%5D=109/p
opup7_attr_id%5B%5D=381/popup7_attr_id%5B%5D=381/sortby=popular-/start=25


If money is no object, these drives look nice, and the first one has
built in back up capability (redundancy):
http://www.videoguys.com/gtech.html


I hope this has helped you decide on an external hard drive! If any
part of my answer is unclear, please request an Answer Clarification
before you rate. This will allow me to assist you further if possible.

Sincerely, Crabcakes

Search Terms
=============
external + firewire + hard drive + video editing
best  external drive + video editing

Good answer. Very comprehensive.

Thank you for the 5 stars and the tip! Glad to be of help!
Regards, Crabcakes

The answer given above is true... for around three or four years ago,
in terms of computer hardware technology. 5400 rpm is standard?
Perhaps for laptops. 7200 is the standard rpm for the consumer desktop
market. And as far as cache size is concerned, 8 mb is the standard
these days- *especially* for tasks like video editing. 16 mb would be
a much better choice in that respect.

Then there is the matter of the question itself. Most external HDDs
are going to run much slower when compared the average performance of
internal HDDs- the issue of the bus bandwidth capacity bottleneck is
the gremlin there since many people still use regular PCI cards with
USB 2.0 or Firewire 1394a ports to connect their external HDDs. The
*best* option for someone who feels they must use an external HDD for
video editing tasks would be to have an external SATA I or II drive
connected to either an after-market SATA card or by running it through
an open slot hole in the rear of the box straight to the motherboard's
own SATA ports.

seekneutrality-ga, Do you have a specific recommendation as far as
purchasing a SATA solution? and how can I really tell if an interface
will truly achieve the 480mbps promised?

I have done some research in anticipation of purchasing an external
hard drive for video editing. I nearly purchased a drive similar to
what crabcakes recommends and realized at the last minute it would
have been a mistake. seekneutrality-ga is right on the money about the
notion of a bottle neck problem. His solution sounds awkward but it is
about 4x faster than some of crabcakes recommendations. Be careful of
external enclosure hard drives, they may be much slower because they
have an ATA interface for example.

Actually I can't quite make heads or tails of the occational external
HD that claims of 400mps and another that is an external encloser with
a 400mps connection, but admits that the HD interface runs at
100mbps.The problem lies in the "ATA100" interface. That is a 100mbps
transfer rate, not even close to the 480 mbps that you can potentially
achieve with USB 2.0.

Another clarification needed is that a USB 2.0 port (most common
version of USB in new drives) is 480mbps and firewire 1.0 is 400mbps
(most common version of firewire in new drives that support firewire).
So generally, a USB port will in fact be faster than a firewire port.
I believe that Firewire 2.0 about 2/3 faster than USB 2.0 but much
less common.

I am editing a lot on my laptop with external disc 250gb WD 7200 8mb.
The problem is yes: ata100 external enclouser. I am using USB 2.0.
So I want to buy a new USB SATA enclouser for my new 300GB 7200 8 SATA
disc. They say that the data transmition will be 150 mbps insted of
100 with ATA 100.
You think that this will help?

abductedMind above, was me earlier. What I said was partially
ignorant. My father found a document that explained the difference
between SATA and ATA and what speeds they actually achieve. A very
good external HD will achieve up to 150mbps only for what is in the
cache. In longer bursts 60mbps is more realistic, because internally
the HD can access in formation slower than it can send it up the
pipeline.

Here is the PDF: http://www.seagate.com/docs/pdf/whitepaper/TP-539.pdf

In conclution the answer is: I don't know. hehe. I am still completely
frustrated with the lack of information available in this area.

What I do know is that SATA is definetly better than ATA. I've seen
something about SATA2 as well. I don't know what that is.

I hope people continue to build on this google answer. I suggest that
we post what we buy and the results that we get.

I too am looking to buyy an external hard drive.  I plan on buying an
internal hard drive along with an enclosure to put it in.  I looking
at the "ROSEWILL RX30-U2FAB Aluminum 3.5" USB+IEEE1394 Firewire800
External Enclosure" at newegg.com and either a "250GB Western Digital
16MB cache" or a "320GB Western Digital 8MB cache."  I understand that
16MB cache is better than 8, but I have acouple questions...

Since this is going to be an external drive set up connected by FW800,
does the bigger cache make a difference?

Also, the 250GB Western digital is a SATA drive, and the 320GB is
ATA100.  From what I understand the SATA is better but I don't know if
it matters what enclosure you buy with it and if it even makes a
difference for external drives.

thanks for any input

here is some information on the drives:

Western Digital Caviar SE16 WD2500KS 250GB 7200 RPM SATA 3.0Gb/s Hard Drive - OEM 

Average Latency: 4.2ms
Average Seek Time: 8.9ms
Average Write Time: 10.9ms
Cache: 16MB
Features: Cool operating temperature Whisper quiet
Form Factor: 3.5"
Manufacturer Warranty: 3 Years
Model #: WD2500KS

Western Digital Caviar SE WD3200JB 320GB 7200 RPM IDE Ultra ATA100
Hard Drive - OEM

Average Latency: 4.2ms
Average Seek Time: 8.9ms
Average Write Time: 10.9ms
Cache: 8MB
Features: Cool-running Quiet Data Protection Enhancements
Form Factor: 3.5"
Manufacturer Warranty: 3 Years
Model #: WD3200JB

URL for enclosure:

http://www.rosewill.com/product/product.aspx?productId=81

Ah, ha! I think I have found a saticfactory easy answer. Buy "LaCie".
They are not expensive but they are the best for video editing in
their price range. If you go to their website they actually post
"sustained datarate" which is the most important statistic for video
editing. Most other makers/sellers of external HDs don't give you that
information.

Western digital seems to be the fastest in general for the least
amount of money. LaCie is what the pro's use, AND they are not
expensive.