Need external drive advice

[Noddydog]

Hi guys,

I need to buy a fast external hard drive (firewire at least, USB2 a bonus) to do some semi professional DV video editing. There are a few out there and I just don't have the time to research them. Please feel free to give me your thoughts/recommendations/key things to look for. I have a couple of drives in mind so far (mainly because of low price), the Maxtor 7000 250Gb USB 2.0/FireWire, 7200rpm, 8MB Cache, and a Western Digital version with the same spec.

For the record here is my current PC set up;
P4 2.25Ghz (running XP)
512Mb RD-RAM
Nvidia Geforce 4 Ti4600 128Mb graphics card.
USB2 and firewire cards


Many Thanks,
Noddydog aka Nigel in sunny London (ok it's raining!)

 

[micker377]

I just use USB2 (don't need firewire). I bought an enclosure ($30.00) and put a spare 60 gig HDD in it. I'd suggest you get a setup with both USB and firewire, that way you can move it from computer to computer. You'd be surprised ALL the things you will use it for. I keep my "Ghost" back-ups on mine, besides certain B/U utilities.

 

[robertotech]

ADS Technologies makes excellent enclosures for internal hard drives and floppy/cd/dvd drives. Many are both USB 2.0 and Firewire. Big computer vendors sell these (check ADS or hard drive drive enclosure)

If you don't want to worry about connecting drives to an enclosure, you can buy La Cie products (check their website). Not the cheapest but I use them and they are very reliable. Excellent solution if you want a fast portable ext hard drive w/usb2.