An External HD Question

Alex_Dragon · Post by **Alex_Dragon** » Sat Dec 06, 2003 8:55 pm

Ok I am running a 98se, 300mb ram,Pentium 2,6gig machine.I would like to know how well an external Hard drive would run on this setup.I need more space and i could replace my internal one but i don't have the time or effort to do so.I don't have room in the tower for an extra hd so that idea is out.I do have 2 usb ports I just want to know if saving hufyuv clips to the external hd will make them choppy or in any way worse.

Scintilla · Post by **Scintilla** » Sat Dec 06, 2003 9:24 pm

Are your USB ports USB 2? And how about the external hard drive you're looking at?

My dad has an external hard drive that, I believe, is capable of connecting to the computer via USB 2 OR IEEE 1394. But I don't think he's ever tried to play videos off of it.

The impression that I get is that accessing files from external hard drives is generally slower than from internal ones, and high-res HuffYUV videos are hard enough to play back at the full frame rate as it is (I don't think my computer can do it, and I've got an Athlon XP 2000+)...

narcted · Post by **narcted** » Sun Dec 07, 2003 12:26 am

In my experience with Ulead video editing products, I would recommend against using external HD when actually editing. The firewire and USB 2.0 are not as fast as the internal ATI 100 ribbon connection. Plus it is not as direct a connection to all your other PC resources. People who have asked me about this when experiencing problems had out of sync audio, it stuttered, and/or worst case, the program would crash out.

Also check the rpm of the external. Most internal HD sold today run at 7200.

I don't really have any feedback if you're just using the external HD to just watch. Nobody has asked me about having that problem.

External HDs can be used. You can store excess video on them, but I would recommend that you always have your information on an internal HD when you are using it to actually work on a project.

TaranT · Post by **TaranT** » Sun Dec 07, 2003 3:27 am

I use several external drive kits. They're primarily for data backup, but I've used them in every way I use normal IDE drives. I've burned CDs and DVDs, played AMVs, even done some editing. It all works, although as a rule I only edit from an internal IDE drive.

I only use Firewire kits since WinME has native support for it. I don't remember if 98SE supports Firewire. If not, you'll need the drivers that come with an interface card. Same for USB2.

And your USB 1.0 ports are probably not going to work. I mean, the data will transfer well enough, but you'll be waiting a (really!) long time. And you can forget about editing with it.

Another option - if you're connected to a network - is network-attached-storage. This is similar to the Firewire and USB kits, but it plugs into the network and looks like a server to your system.

sukotsuto · Post by **sukotsuto** » Sun Dec 07, 2003 7:18 pm

I think USB2.0 has a possible max of 480 megabits/sec whereas firewire has a possible max of 400 megabits/sec. Remember to get that in bytes/sec divide the number by 8.

But from the articles compairing the two,, true maximum performance goes to firewire.

http://www6.tomshardware.com/storage/20 ... hd-09.html
http://www.digit-life.com/articles/usb20vsfirewire/
http://www.pcworld.com/howto/article/0, ... g,7,00.asp

TaranT · Post by **TaranT** » Mon Dec 08, 2003 2:08 am

I'm not sure the speed difference between USB2 and Firewire (400) is worth noticing except in special circumstances. But the new versions will improve things quite a bit. Firewire 800 (IEEE-1394b) cards are available now. A Google search turned up at least one external drive kit for Firewire 800 ($120): http://www.firewiredirect.com/firewire/ ... a800.shtml.

Ravage382 · Post by **Ravage382** » Sun Dec 21, 2003 11:11 pm

narcted wrote:In my experience with Ulead video editing products,

Ulead products are not a good benchmark for a drive. I had problems with reading a .vob file from a local drive.

A USB 2 drive is fast enough for video editing. It is on par with a firewire drive. It is quite common in the video editing industry to use external firewire and usb 2 drives for video work, espicially in a university setting.