Travel Hard Drive

I'm looking for an external HD to use as a scratch disk for FCP on the road. What are you guys using?

I have a Macbook pro, and while I'm happy with my HD solution at home, I don't want to take it around the world with me. I think I want something compact, lighweight, bus powered, USB2/FW400... 80 - 120 GB should be big enough, you think?

Any recomendations? Tell me what works for you. Thanks.

Danb

We use Seagate HD (5Yr warr) in Macally enclosures.

They even have an OTG one: PHR-250OTG

There are also less expensive/complex enclosures out there.

Happy with this setup.

Michel Gilbert

There are new SATA 160GB drives from Hitachi. Since you have a macbook Pro you are limited to FW400. Check out enclosures from Transintl called the miniXpress. Has FW400 and 800 as well as USB 2 HS.

If I were you, I'd upgrade the internal drive of the macbook with the 160GB and then use the old drive in the new enclosure. Internal SATA is always faster unless you get the La Cie Little Big Disk which stacks 2 minidrives for a raid that is bus powered. I'm going to buy that when I get back to the US. My friend just loves it on FW800 mode. I understand in FW400 mode however it isn't as fast but a nice alternative to carrying 2 separate drives like I do now.

The 17" has FW800 Drew. Do you know Dan has the 15"? Those Little Big Disks sound nifty.

Tony

Would you advertise smaller or bigger as a male?

He mentioned FW400 not 800, thus by logical deduction, my dear watson...

Here's a link to some tests on the drives.

I don't need advertise mate

But from now on... thou shalt be known as sherlock

dammit anthony, everywhere i go here...comparisons...

Enjoy that rum mate!

What about something SMALL to travel with? Maybe a DVD a day? But I agree that my crappy 60 gig Dell ain't cutting it no more. I need to either upgrade (which is impossible right now since I blew 10k on a new system) or get on board with a back HD, but space is limited. Probably need 100 gig to be safe. Any PC suggestions?

Joe

All those storage options work PC or Mac and are as small as it gets for 100GB. 2.5" drives, 160GB are available at around $220.

"But I agree that my crappy 60 gig Dell ain't cutting it no more."

 

If your laptop does everything you need it to do, other than have enough storage space for images, consider carrying two ext. HD's and storing there rather than on your laptop and 1 ext. HD. One can buy quite a few ext. HDs before buying a new laptop begins to make fiscal sense.

 

My favorite external disks are the "Silver Portables" from Iomega. Very small, very light and compact, have proven to be reliable over the years, and have a power switch. I have a couple of them, 100 and 120 gb (both are 2.5 and spin at 5400), and find that they are everything I need in terms of external storage. I carry the duals so I can share with my diving friends on Macs, but if you buy the PC only versions they are $ 20 to $ 30 less expensive than the duals.

 

I also have some Western Digital disks and though they work as well as the Iomegas, are a bit bulky and lack a power switch.

I make my own external drive. Buy a 100GB laptop/2.5" harddisk, and a small USB case. The case fits the HD like a glove, so thats how small it is. It also weighs only about 100 grams. It doesnt need external power.

I buy the cases here for a few bucks.

My wife and I take 5 of them. Two each, primary and backup, and a spare.

Cor

They're not the cheapest, but I've had rousing success with all of my LaCies. The only problem I ever had with one had nothing to do with the drive itself and had everything to do with a corrupt Avid file.

On the way to delivering my last documentary (Still On Her Keel: The Legacy Of The Chester Poling...check the trailer out here) to the post-production sound studio, I actually DROPPED one of my primary drives with all of my media from my backpack on my shoulder to the asphalt. I had taken the time to back everything up on a separate drive anyway, but wouldn't you know it, the original LaCie has continued to work for me with absolutely no problems. If there was ever a test for the durability of an external drive, dropping it 6 feet has got to rank pretty close to the top.

I make my own external drive. Buy a 100GB laptop/2.5" harddisk, and a small USB case. The case fits the HD like a glove, so thats how small it is. It also weighs only about 100 grams. It doesnt need external power.

 

I buy the cases here  for a few bucks.

My wife and I take 5 of them. Two each, primary and backup, and a spare.

 

Cor

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Well if you're going to carry that many, then may I suggest you look at the Wiebetech Ultra GB. It's FW400 bus powered with 3.5" drives so you can have 2 500GB drives. Should be smaller than 5 little ones.

I happen to have a 3.5" drive here next to me. Two of my external 2.5" cases are still thinner than just the harddisk. So thats without the Wiebetech casing. With it I can probably fit 3 in the height of the Wiebetech setup. They are also significantly less wide and long.

With casing my HD weighs 140 grams. So 5 of them weigh 700 grams. The 3.5" HD by itself weighs 550 grams, without the external case and power supply (which you need if you dont have firewire on your laptop or if your laptop doesnt provide power on your firewire port). Two of the Wiebetech would weigh much much more than my 5 HDs, and be at least twice as big to carry.

But the weight isnt so much the point. It's redundancy and backup. I can fit all images for a trip on 1 of my 140 gram HDs. The second is for a backup. During travel I split these 2 over carryon and checked luggage. My wife has a set like that too. And we carry a 5th one because like anything HDs can fail and having a spare has come in handy once already (and we use it to carry movies and tv series while traveling

Cor

Good logic Cor and probably a great system for stills but in my experience I've had more success with IEEE1394 drives for video than USB2. Might just be me though.

Never hurts to put it to the test Some stuff ive currently got hooked up to my Dell Precision 650 desktop box.

C: RAID1 - 2 x 400GB SATA - 44MB/s - 4.7% CPU - 13ms

R:Firewire - 1 x 400GB PATA - 32MB/s - 2% CPU - 17ms

I: IDE - 1 x 300GB PATA - 28MB/s - 4.9% CPU - 13ms

J: USB2 - 1 x 250GB PATA - 19MB/s - 18% CPU - 16ms

K:USB2 - 1 x 400GB PATA - 17MB/s - 13% CPU - 16ms

S:USB2 - 1 x 100GB 2.5" - 17MB/s - 17% CPU - 16ms

Disk K and R are exactly the same disk and casing, just a different connection since I only have 2 firewire ports and didnt want to daisy chain them. Guess I'll reconsider that It's even more amazing that the firewire disk is faster than the internal IDE disk, although that one is older and heavily fragmented.

So, at least on my system, my external 3.5" PATA harddisk is much faster on firewire than on USB2. It's especially interesting how firewire puts no load on your CPU.

I'll personally still use the 2.5" laptop HDs while on the go. I aim for portability/weight, and the speed difference doesnt bother me while im relaxing on a liveaboard

Cor

Upgrade the drive in your laptop and put the old one in a cheap external case. Or a good external case, the laCies with the rubber bump rail look really nice.

It can be handy having one that will mount via usb or firewire, so you can mount the drive and your ipod at the same time.

I got an 80 gb La Cie hard drive for my Borneo trip. Just a little bigger than an Ipod. FW and USB connectivity and comes with a carrying pouch. Worked very well.

Dan,

Since my Lacie Big Disk Extreme just died, I've been looking into this too. Forgot to mention this when we last spoke. Fortunately I was able to recover all 500GB of FCP files and video.

In my research I've found that there are some significant issues with the Lacie drives, expecially the large ones. Also if you open up the Lacie, all it is is just 2 Western Digital drives, so you pay a bit for the name. Regardless, I was thinking about this Lacie All Terrain Drive for travel:

http://www.lacie.com/products/product.htm?pid=10722

Seems that speed, size, connectivity, portability, and single bus powered drives are just hitting the market. So expect to see more of these in the next few months.

Also another article that helped me is here:

http://www.macworld.com/2005/10/reviews/fi.../index.php?pf=1

I think I am going to build a SATA 1TB+ solution myself for desktop use and get a smaller (120GB) drive for the field. Still researching this though.