external hard drive?

[BowlPacker]

I am thinking about adding a hard drive to my system so I can do lossless (or very near lossless) analog video capture (two hour 8mm home videos). Is a firewire or usb 2.0 external drive even an option? I can get an external 120 GB 7200 RPM for around $250, and the extra $100 or so is worth it to me to be able to disconnect it and take it with me when I go out of town. But it's primary purpose would be video capturing, editing and MPEG-2 conversion, so would the USB/firewire connection be a troublesome bottleneck? My plan would be to do all video functions on the external drive. The only time I would move data between internal and external drives would be to burn to an internal DVD writer, and for archival purposes. Thanks...

[ptmurphy]

A USB 2.0 drive is plenty fast enough for video capture. The Theoretical max bandwidth is something like 450 Mbps.

Captured analog video at full DV quality (720 x 480?) consumes about 15-17 GB an hour on my system. So you should be able to capture about 7 to 8 hours on a 120 GB drive.

[G-man]

I have exactly that .... a 120 GB external drive and USB2 connection. No problem with DV captures (13 Gb/Hr on my system); its plenty fast enough. But make sure you have a USB2 connection, otherwise you will be quoting times in Gb/Day!

[Jester700]

For the record, firewire is also fast enough for this. Either interface would be fine; take your pick.

[BowlPacker]

Thanks, everyone, for your help!

[TheSeven7hSon]

Your new external should work fine but look around for deals on Hard drives. Sometimes I see some great deals at BestBuy that come out to be a dollar a Gig. I believe that about 2-3 weeks ago they had a sale for a 120GB MAXTOR HD for $100. It was most likely one with a 2MB memory and not the new 8MB but with files like DV you shouldn't notice.

Seven