Capturing DV: Which is better, internal or external HD?

[ChachiFace]

I just bought a DAC for DV capture but need a bigger Hard Drive. Can you guys recommend which is better?

External Hard Drive using Firewire?

External Hard Drive using USB 2.0?

Internal Hard Drive?

I have both USB 2.0 and Firewire ports but don't know which is best to go with or if an Internal hard drive would be better. I'm thinking of going with 120 Gb.

ChachiFace

[Metaluna]

I just bought a DAC for DV capture but need a bigger Hard Drive. Can you guys recommend which is better?

External Hard Drive using Firewire?

External Hard Drive using USB 2.0?

Internal Hard Drive?

I have both USB 2.0 and Firewire ports but don't know which is best to go with or if an Internal hard drive would be better. I'm thinking of going with 120 Gb.

ChachiFace

I recently tried to capture from my Canopus ADVC-100 to an external Firewire drive (80GB Western Digital WD800JB...not a slow drive by any measure). The presence of the Canopus on the same Firewire bus slowed the drive down so much that it could not keep up with the capture. Scenalyzer Live benchmarked the drive's write speed at about 23 fps with the Canopus running, and over 100 fps without the Canopus. This occurred whether I had the Canopus daisy chained to the external drive enclosure, or plugged into its own port on my Firewire card. Unfortunately I don't have a DAC100 so I couldn't say if that box would behave any better than the Canopus did.

Mounting the drive internally in your PC is pretty much guaranteed to work, so that's the safest choice. But then you lose portability. If you don't need the portability, having an external drive won't gain you any advantages over an internal drive. It will just cost more, take up more space, and take up another electrical outlet.

If you want to use an external drive, I'd say either get a second Firewire card and plug the two devices into seperate cards, or get a USB 2.0 external drive (or a combo USB/Firewire drive) and use USB for the drive and the Firewire port for the capture box.

[JeDiBoY]

Buy an Internal drive, and put it in external casing, it much MUCH cheaper.

so, go with external firewire.

[jtor]

To eliminate any variable in the equation, I'd go with internal (if possible).

[pc8fan]

I also have the DAC-100 and a WD External HD (dual usb2.0/firewire). Capturing w/ ScLive into the external hd, while the both is attached via firewire has worked smoothly so far. Attaching the hd via usb works as well. I don't see much difference (speed, video quality, etc.) using either w/ my system.

[ChachiFace]

Thanks all for the responses. I'm going to go with an Internal hard drive (assuming my computer allows it). If that fails, then an external unit with fire wire will probably work just as well only more expensive.

ChachiFace