Posted by Bill's News on 07/13/06 07:54

John wrote:
>> I agree, in principal, with Ken. I have about 4 tB of MPEG2
>> &
>> MPEG4ish video on DVD, @ about 4:3 :: RW:R. This would fit
>> on
>> eight 500 gB drives and the roughly 7 cubic feet of DVDs
>> would
>> become about 1 cubic foot of HDD.
>>
>> 500 gB drives pre-packaged in external (USB or firewire)
>> housings are about $250; sans housing somewhat less.. The
>> number of DVD discs involved is over 800, so the hard drive
>> alternative is roughly twice the replacement cost of the DVDs
>> +
>> their mini jewel cases.
>>
>> Of course it's a lot easier to make the HDD choice today than
>> it
>> was 6 years ago when not only prices of both media were quite
>> different, but hard drive capacities were not comparable. In
>> this regard, I envy your newness to the fray;-0)
>>
>> However, from the point of view of damage, losing one or a
>> couple of 4.3 gig DVDs is trivial when compared with an
>> unrecoverable HDD. Of course many HDD problems are
>> recoverable, given the tools - but since 2000 I've only
>> tossed
>> one DVD that became unreadable. Some others which became
>> unplayable were still copy-able. Having made one bad choice
>> of
>> external HDD (a now discarded Maxtor 200 USB) I can attest to
>> the value of being current with backups.
>>
>> Other advantages, for those who capture TV to PC, is to edit
>> from the capture machine directly to an external. The MPEG2
>> is
>> then "ready to play" and ready to move. If reprocessing to
>> MPEG4 is desired, then the external drive can be easily moved
>> to
>> another system - as the capture/playback machine is
>> relatively
>> low power. The output of the recompression is directed to an
>> archival external drive - from which it can be backed up to
>> whatever media you deem appropriate.
>>
>> Whether you choose HDD or DVD as your storage medium you will
>> need an index to what's stored - this stuff grows by leaps
>> and
>> bounds ;-0) I chose to keep mine as an alphabetic HTML page
>> with links to either IMDB or a few of the TV episode
>> catalogues.
>> Since I use a PC as the video player now, I can call up this
>> page on the main viewing screen to make selections from the
>> numbered DVD discs. The links to descriptive materials are
>> handy refreshers.
>>
>> Finally: your friends and neighbors most likely can not
>> borrow
>> one of your HDDs to play at home, so you're keeping within
>> the
>> letter of the law;-0)
>
> Thanks for the responses I appreciate it. Perhaps I will
> consider a
> new drive instead. I think maybe I should just use the DVD to
> burn
> home movies for distribution to family and friends etc.

I guess my ramblings were not as incoherent as I'd thought;-)
DVD is a decent backup media for a hard drive and a copy of that
backup is quite shareable

>
> I don't think I will need quite that much space in storage
> though

Best Buy, a misnomer if ever there was one, is selling La Cie
600 gig pre-packaged external USB2 drives for $270 - shop around
the net for way better prolong.

>. I
> don't have that many DVDs. I have captured a lot of video
> though to
> MiniDV of family, friends, travels etc.
>
> I'll have to work out what I can afford for a hard drive
> because I
> wouldn't be comfortable without having a second to back up to
> incase
> the first crashed. I'm not sure if Data Recovery prices have
> come down
> much in the last few years? I'd probably guess that they
> haven't very
> much.
>
> So are SATA drives generally considered the best (fastest) at
> the
> moment?

For editing and authoring, dual internal drives are a must -
three would be better if you can entice your chosen software
package to allocate its work space as you direct. Hmmm, and if
you have enough memory to minimize "virtual" writes. Otherwise
think four drives. SATA, IDE not a lot of difference for most
processor intensive jobs - just my opinion though. As they say
in the milk commercials - GOT SLOTS???

For transcoding to a more compact format, an external target
drive is OK because the I/O ratio is so steeply skewed toward I.
Consider too that you'd most likely then move internal to
external and you will have wasted whatever saving by an all
internal drive solution.

> Are external USB or FireWire Hard Drives any good or are they
> a lot slower than internal SATA and ATA drives?
>
> And the drive enclosures that are on the market in
> abundance... Do you
> just buy a regular internal SATA or ATA drive, put it inside
> the
> enclosure and then you can attach it via USB or Firewire?
> Would this
> method not slow it down or does it work quite well?
>

It can be less costly to buy an external enclosure to house a
typical internal drive. But I don't think so significant a
saving as to warrant perspiration! And a lot less finger
pointing by phone support, should you need it!! Both firewire
and USB2 are slower than internal drives, but the penalty can be
slight or steep depending upon the task and more specifically
the end resting place of the data.

> Sorry for the 101 questions and thanks for the help with this.
>
> John

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