External hard drive recommendations

[bulldog2k]

Hi all,

I need to buy an external hard drive to serve as my work horse on a project I'm editing in Premiere Elements/Preimere Pro in AVCHD format. The hard drive will have nothing else on other than movie-related files, and I'm not shooting Lord Of The Rings.

What size should I aim for, and will Firewire be fast enough?

Thanks all

 

[Alcove Audio]

I am partial to Glyph drives. They stay fairly cool, are very quiet (important to a sound guy) and have NEVER had one fail.

It's not unusual for me to come close to filling up a 500 gig drive doing the audio post on a feature.

 

[bulldog2k]

500 gig on the whole feature - video and audio - or on audio alone?!

 

[Scoopicman]

500 gig on the whole feature - video and audio - or on audio alone?!

Figure a gig per minute, for 1080 DVCProHD. For standard mini DV, around 4 minutes, 45 seconds per gig. (I think DV and HDV 1080 have the same 25mbs data rate, while HDV 720P is just over 19mbs.)

BTW, I did fit the principle photography of EXILE (1080 X 1920 HD) onto a 500 gig drive, but I shot very sparingly and deleted all the bad takes on the P2 cards.. Oh, and I backed that up to 2 more drives. I wasn't about to risk the production with a single drive! Always back up.

 

[Randy Ericksen]

Get a terabyte. Drives are cheap. I am running a Western Dynamic with Firewire. And speed is not a problem. If fact get 2 one for a backup.

 

[Alcove Audio]

500 gig on the whole feature - video and audio - or on audio alone?!

Just the audio (I work at 24bit/96kHz). There is also a second 500 gig drive for back-up/archiving. I also use a separate drive for the video (access speed).

It is not unusual for "Hollywood" films to use multiple terrabytes for audio post.

 

[Will Vincent]

It's not unusual for me to come close to filling up a 500 gig drive doing the audio post on a feature.

...

It is not unusual for "Hollywood" films to use multiple terrabytes for audio post.

In either case, as it should be. People really need to give more thought and effort to their audio.

 

[rakesh1985]

Any reputed brand like Western digital, seagate, toshiba, maxtor.....etc is a good one and a terabyte might be suitable.

 

[bulldog2k]

Thanks guys - brilliant. Is Firewire 400 ok or does it need to be 800?

 

[chilipie]

Thanks guys - brilliant. Is Firewire 400 ok or does it need to be 800?

You can probably get away with 400, but 800's safer, giving you more simultaneous streams of video (although if you're not converting the AVCHD to a more edit-friendly format this may not be possible either way).

Seeing as you're in the UK, I'll recommend this Seagate FreeAgent 500GB FW800, for only £60. I picked one up for editing a feature on (shot in AVCHD), and it's served me well.