DV transfer what do you think

[mikesbytes]

I have around 80 miniDV tapes that I'd like to get moved to a digital medial. My trusty desktop has long since died and would cost $$$ to get it in a state worthy of the transfer. However work has provided me a new laptop, a Lenovo T410, which has a 1394 port.

Historically laptops have not been quick enough to do DV capture, however this one has an external sata port, so I was wondering if I was to purchase an external hard drive with sata connector, would I be able to get away using the laptop, giving that I'm bypassing the internal hard drive?

Specs http://www.lenovo.com/us/en/PDFs/ThinkPad_T410_T510_Datasheet.html
Intel ® Core™ i5-M think its 2.4Gb
4Gb of ram
XP 32bit (company image unfortunately)

[Gavino]

Historically laptops have not been quick enough to do DV capture

I don't know why you say that, unless you are talking about very ancient history indeed.
I have no problems capturing DV (ie transferring by Firewire) on a 6 year old laptop, so you should have no worries at all.

[edDV]

I have around 80 miniDV tapes that I'd like to get moved to a digital medial. My trusty desktop has long since died and would cost $$$ to get it in a state worthy of the transfer. However work has provided me a new laptop, a Lenovo T410, which has a 1394 port.

Historically laptops have not been quick enough to do DV capture, however this one has an external sata port, so I was wondering if I was to purchase an external hard drive with sata connector, would I be able to get away using the laptop, giving that I'm bypassing the internal hard drive?

Specs http://www.lenovo.com/us/en/PDFs/ThinkPad_T410_T510_Datasheet.html
Intel ® Core™ i5-M think its 2.4Gb
4Gb of ram
XP 32bit (company image unfortunately)

eSATA is the way to go for this job. It would be equivalent to a second drive on a desktop operating in bus mastering mode. Capture to the OS drive is always more risky but as Gavino says, not as risky as in the past.

The eSATA drive also allows you to separate your personal use of this laptop from work use. If the machine fails, you wouldn't want the boss to be told your machine is full of personal files. Also, in these days you could be fired and asked to turn in the laptop that afternoon.

[mikesbytes]

Thanks for the feedback guys, its sounding like the approach is sound. Back in the desktop days I used a separate 80Gb IDE drive so the OS wouldn't stuff the transfer.

I haven't done the maths, but off memory is 14Gb per hour. I was thinking a 2Tb drive might do it.

And for the life of me I've forgotten what the name of the software I used to transfer with. It was a simple freeware transfer program that did almost nothing else, but it was the best when it came to avoiding frame drop

[edDV]

WinDV is all you need unless you want to edit it down.

[mikesbytes]

WinDV is all you need unless you want to edit it down.

Yeh that's the one - thanks