What is a good hard drive to use for video editing?

[richdvd]

Everything is going to China, and until the last is made there, I will buy one that is not.

I agree.
On a side note-I just looked at my Apple iPod and it says

"designed by Apple in California, assembled in China"

I thought the iPods were made in the US.

Sorry to get Off Topic here

[Jester700]

TBoneit wrote

Budz, I believe you need to rethink that statement.

If Seagate believed they'd need to replace their drives they wouldn't offer the long warranty. The fact that they offer a 5 year warranty means they do not expect to have to warranty the drive. A Warranty replacement in these days of shrinking margains mean you went in the hole on that unit. IE instead of making money on the sale you lost money. Same for computers as drives. The Labor on warranty repairs eats any profit margain.

In my opinion as I have already stated any brand of hard drives will eventually fail one way or another. A company in my opinion that gives a long warranty does not have faith or confidence that their products will last. That is just my 2 cents. Who really cares about profits for a corporation, just the CEO's really care cuz that's who's making all the money.

now back to the topic at hand. buy whatever brand you want to get and can afford. Every brand of hard drive will fail one way or another.

Though I agree that there are bad examples by most (maybe all) brands, your logic on warranty is faulty. TBone is right - a longer warranty displays greater company confidence in the product. Besides, it is a practical benefit - IF it goes bad in the warranty period, you don't pay for the replacement. Seems a no-brainer to me, and it's worth a little extra.

[TBoneit]

[quote=lacywest]

So ... How long have you running the other 3 ... a year ... months ??

The fan in them can't be too bad ... I can put my hand back there and feel the air blowing out.

I wasn't saying that the fans are noisy due to being bad just that they could be quieter!

I've been running them varying periods of time. Generally I replace a bad drive and then when the RMA comes in I mount it in the external case.

Proabaly over a year for the first one.

Cheers

[edDV]

FWIW

My storage strategy is to edit on internal drives and store "projects in progress, but not done" on external drives. That way I can selectively load projects to various computers without having to copy all DV material machine to machine.

Archive storage is usually to MiniDV tape for DV and DVDR for graphic and audio elements.

[lacywest]

[quote=TBoneit]

So ... How long have you running the other 3 ... a year ... months ??

The fan in them can't be too bad ... I can put my hand back there and feel the air blowing out.

I wasn't saying that the fans are noisy due to being bad just that they could be quieter!

I've been running them varying periods of time. Generally I replace a bad drive and then when the RMA comes in I mount it in the external case.

Proabaly over a year for the first one.

Cheers

No No ... I have no complaints about the fan noise ... but someone in this thread spoke negative about mounting them in these type of enclosures.

So you are a good source of information for asking how they are doing so far.

I have two USB 2.0 ports open for more addon harddrives. And the one Bytecc enclosure I have works great.

I have brought it with me to work and burnt CDs for the guys on my Dell 5150.

I figure ... why not get another one and mount a 160 GB Maxtor in it and have more storage space.

If you are doing well ... then ... great ... Right ??

I do have one Maxtor "One Touch" External 80 GB ... running.

I dont use it for video capture ... just storage or for video editing / conversion.

As for video capture ... well my Panasonic DMR E50S with DVD-RAM does just fine. And then I transfer to my computer.

Take care Tboneit

[jknutson2]

I also don't understand lordsmurf's recommendation not to use RAID. My only guess is the following:

RAID 0 (striping) doubles the failure rate chances for the filesystem. Although it is recommended that your conversion input and outputs exist on separate disks (striping might help this case), most conversions are CPU bound, not I/O bound, so striping doesn't help the performance.

RAID 1 (mirroring) just doubles the disk space and really only helps if you plan to permanently keep your conversions on disk instead of burning them to DVD.

So if performance isn't helped and better reliability isn't necessary, then why inject RAID into the mix.

This is all conjecture on my part, so I expect to be corrected if I didn't get this right.

Jim

[ShaneJensen]

Well, don't know if anyone will care, but thought I'd share anyway. I've come to a decision and just ordered a Seagate 160GB internal to have for now. I plan to get a second hard drive in an external case to use for extra temporary storage for current video projects and for converting and rendering, but I will only do capturing on the internal. The Seagate 300GB will be in the external case when I get it, probably in a few months or so. May or may not be the best of the best, but it's going to be better than what I had going the first time around.

I wouldn't have come to this type of conclusion without all of your ideas and suggestions. Thanks again for all your help, it's really greatly appreciated. I'm sure I'll be back in the coming weeks or months with more questions or concerns.

[gmatov]

Are you saying you hate that Max 250 so much you will not RMA it for a replacement?

You said it's from April 2004, still under warranty, unless you bought it from a vendor in a "white box" who gives a 30 or 90 day warranty, and even then, Maxtor will warrant it for the full year.

Seems penny foolish-pound foolish to me.

What do you do when the Seagate goes out in less time than those here are telling you they WILL last? Hate them too, and change brands, again?

All drive maker's products will have failures. Some here, with drives that have run forever (most have not, they have been retired as too small, a larger drive was too cheap to pass up, etc.) are BS'ing you. Everybody has their favorites.

Look at the DVD burners. This is the best, no, this is, no, mine is. At least there are real differences in burners. NO difference to speak of in hard drives. They simply store data, and all at a rate WAY higher than any of you need for video.

Ah, well, send me that piece of crap Maxtor and I'll RMA it myself.

Cheers,

George

[budz]

gmatov wrote

Ah, well, send me that piece of crap Maxtor and I'll RMA it myself.

Hey! George you beat me to that! I do agree with you if he won't RMA the drive give it up to someone who will.

[ShaneJensen]

Are you saying you hate that Max 250 so much you will not RMA it for a replacement?

You said it's from April 2004, still under warranty, unless you bought it from a vendor in a "white box" who gives a 30 or 90 day warranty, and even then, Maxtor will warrant it for the full year.

Seems penny foolish-pound foolish to me.

What do you do when the Seagate goes out in less time than those here are telling you they WILL last? Hate them too, and change brands, again?

All drive maker's products will have failures. Some here, with drives that have run forever (most have not, they have been retired as too small, a larger drive was too cheap to pass up, etc.) are BS'ing you. Everybody has their favorites.

Look at the DVD burners. This is the best, no, this is, no, mine is. At least there are real differences in burners. NO difference to speak of in hard drives. They simply store data, and all at a rate WAY higher than any of you need for video.

Ah, well, send me that piece of crap Maxtor and I'll RMA it myself.

Cheers,

George

Settle down. I know all hard drives fail and there really isn't one better than the other. However, when a majority speaks of one particular brand, well. Ever hear of the phrase, "majority speaks"? It's common sense as well as my opinion. When a majority speaks it's usually for a valid reason, and that is why I posted here in the first place, to see what the majority would say. I figured I would try a different brand anyway. I'm not going to have any experience with other brands if I keep going with the same one. You got to at least agree on that.

As for RMA or whatever on the Maxtor, I don't know if I can. I didn't send in the registration when I first bought it. Could I still use the warranty anyway? If I can then I would get a replacement and use that as my second video storage.

[ShaneJensen]

Hey! George you beat me to that! I do agree with you if he won't RMA the drive give it up to someone who will.

Not gonna happen.

[davideck]

ShaneJensen -

If you call Maxtor, they will ask you for the serial number of the drive. They can then determine if the drive is still in warranty. No registration is required.

If you test the drive with powermax and receive an error code, then Maxtor is very accomodating. They will send out a replacement drive right away, and as long as you return the defective drive within 30 days, no money changes hands.

[budz]

Geez! ShaneJansen lighten up :P

As for RMA or whatever on the Maxtor, I don't know if I can. I didn't send in the registration when I first bought it. Could I still use the warranty anyway? If I can then I would get a replacement and use that as my second video storage.

ummmmm.....you don't have to send in a warranty card to get a RMA for a Maxtor hard drive.....i never did.....i got my replacement drive as long as you run the POWERMAX EXE utility on the drive.....you will get a code after the testing is done with POWERMAX.....depending on the code you get will determine if the drive is failing or if it's already dead..... you will need to write down that code.....then you contact Maxtor via phone.....they'll ask you a few questions and give them that code.....then if it's a code that indicates the drive is dead they will give you replacement drive......

in order to run the MAXTOR POWERMAX utility make sure that dead hard drive you have is connected to your mobo ide and not a pci controller card.......good luck

[ShaneJensen]

Where do I get the Powermax utility? Does it come with the CD that came with the hard drive?

[lordsmurf]

Are you saying you hate that Max 250 so much you will not RMA it for a replacement?

I've done this before and have no regrets. I figured if so many have broken, no reason to get another one to add to the landfill. Count my losses and quit while I'm ahead. Lost hard drives are no fun to mess with, especially on a computer that is needed for work. WD and Seagate and never look back.

[davideck]

Where do I get the Powermax utility? Does it come with the CD that came with the hard drive?

Yep - Boot to the CD and it will be one of the selections.

Or- you can download a floppy version from maxtor.com

[DVDDave]

RAID 0 is working for me. 2 Seagate 160 SATA drives.

[edDV]

Of course RAID zero can be made to work, but does it offer any advantage vs. data risk disadvantage?

Highly respected tech sites have done benchmarks and claim no advantage
http://www.anandtech.com/storage/showdoc.html?i=2101
http://storagereview.com/cgi-bin/htsearch?restrict=&exclude=&method=and&format=builtin...RAID+benchmark

You decide but I'm happy to not bother with RAID 0 any more except for older drives.

I just configure the extra RAID ports on the motherboard as EIDE 3 and EIDE 4.

[budz]

ShaneJensen wrote:

Where do I get the Powermax utility? Does it come with the CD that came with the hard drive?

You can download it from MAXTOR.COM, it would be better to use the latest POWERMAX EXE which is version 4.09.
http://www.maxtor.com/portal/site/Maxtor/menuitem.3c67e325e0a6b1f6294198b091346068/?ch...&downloadID=22

[gmatov]

This is ridiculous.

You say you are gonna dump the drive, till you get invites to send them to me or Budz, then you say "Settle down." then you say "You mean I CAN RMA it?", and, mebbe you don't know, but there is a "warranteed thru XX-XX-XXXX", or a "Mfd XX-XX-XXXX" on the lable. And as written above, go to Max and type in the SN and you will get a "Warranted till". It's a big, new drive. They are not so common that they have expired warranties.

As to the Smurf, to toss away a hundred and a half or so of drive, because "So many have broken", is silly. I have returned WDs, in fact most of my returns have been WDs, though I usually buy Max, and my latest purchase was a 200 Seagate, which I will watch closely, mainly because it IS "Made in China", which means it will be my last Seagate till the others also go to China full time. 5 years? Screw 'em. They're killing our country. You should know that! You were unable to get a job for, how long?

Shit, keep going to WalMart, where, I just read, 74 % of their products are made in China.

NO drive manufacturer has a monopoly on "forever" drives. They are ALL mechanical devices, and, worse, electronic to boot, so you WILL get failures. Guaranteed.

Bullshit, all 'o yunz,

George

[lacywest]

This is ridiculous.

You say you are gonna dump the drive, till you get invites to send them to me or Budz, then you say "Settle down." then you say "You mean I CAN RMA it?", and, mebbe you don't know, but there is a "warranteed thru XX-XX-XXXX", or a "Mfd XX-XX-XXXX" on the lable. And as written above, go to Max and type in the SN and you will get a "Warranted till". It's a big, new drive. They are not so common that they have expired warranties.

As to the Smurf, to toss away a hundred and a half or so of drive, because "So many have broken", is silly. I have returned WDs, in fact most of my returns have been WDs, though I usually buy Max, and my latest purchase was a 200 Seagate, which I will watch closely, mainly because it IS "Made in China", which means it will be my last Seagate till the others also go to China full time. 5 years? Screw 'em. They're killing our country. You should know that! You were unable to get a job for, how long?

Shit, keep going to WalMart, where, I just read, 74 % of their products are made in China.

NO drive manufacturer has a monopoly on "forever" drives. They are ALL mechanical devices, and, worse, electronic to boot, so you WILL get failures. Guaranteed.

Bullshit, all 'o yunz,

George

Now ... when I install a new drive .... I use for a label .... Nov 17 2004.

Nov 17 2004 ... was the day I installed it and it is the label I have on a Maxtor 80 GB ... and this info you guys have been posting ... I'm going to do it ... because it has already developed bad clusters.

Maybe they will make them better if people ... follow up on the warranties.

[funkguy4]

samsung made in korea, no?

[gmatov]

edDV,

Do you know what the hell you are doing?

You are talking sacrilege to some of these kids. They read it and they are, are , mind you, gonna do it.

Poster above you, for 1, DVDDave, 2 160 Seagate SATAs, RAID 0, "Works for me!" Of course it works. Maybe tomorrow, too, but watch your ass Saturday, 320 gigs down the tubes.

They absolutely NEED 100MB data throughput, and not Burst, they want sustained, for their max 3.6 MBs video capture. They NEED 8 MB buffer and 7200 RPM same, for their max 3.6 MBs.

Jesus Christ, 16X DVD burn is not fast enough for these f'in kids.

4 f''n minutes must be too goddamned long to concentrate on 1 job, burning a DVD.

Ah, my heart pumps purple piss for yunz. What a buncha dorks.

Cheers,

George

[DVDDave]

edDV,

Do you know what the hell you are doing?

You are talking sacrilege to some of these kids. They read it and they are, are , mind you, gonna do it.

Poster above you, for 1, DVDDave, 2 160 Seagate SATAs, RAID 0, "Works for me!" Of course it works. Maybe tomorrow, too, but watch your ass Saturday, 320 gigs down the tubes.

They absolutely NEED 100MB data throughput, and not Burst, they want sustained, for their max 3.6 MBs video capture. They NEED 8 MB buffer and 7200 RPM same, for their max 3.6 MBs.

Jesus Christ, 16X DVD burn is not fast enough for these f'in kids.

4 f''n minutes must be too goddamned long to concentrate on 1 job, burning a DVD.

Ah, my heart pumps purple piss for yunz. What a buncha dorks.

Cheers,

George

George---why the he** r u criticizing my system?? it has been going a very long time and has never crashed. also, you say 320 gigs down the tubes. You don't think that I don't back up my drives. Let me tell you, your computer has just as much of a chance of crashing and losing your hard drives just the same as mine. Please don't speak for me or my computer again.

Lordsmurf---Maxtor hard Drives are CRAP!!!!!! I agree with you.

Dave

[ShaneJensen]

edDV,

Do you know what the hell you are doing?

You are talking sacrilege to some of these kids. They read it and they are, are , mind you, gonna do it.

Poster above you, for 1, DVDDave, 2 160 Seagate SATAs, RAID 0, "Works for me!" Of course it works. Maybe tomorrow, too, but watch your ass Saturday, 320 gigs down the tubes.

They absolutely NEED 100MB data throughput, and not Burst, they want sustained, for their max 3.6 MBs video capture. They NEED 8 MB buffer and 7200 RPM same, for their max 3.6 MBs.

Jesus Christ, 16X DVD burn is not fast enough for these f'in kids.

4 f''n minutes must be too goddamned long to concentrate on 1 job, burning a DVD.

Ah, my heart pumps purple piss for yunz. What a buncha dorks.

Cheers,

George

CRAP!! You are way too eccentric George. Every post of yours is nothing but criticizing others.

[DVDDave]

Righ On Shane Jensen!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[mattyboy]

If you were going to move around HUGE video files a raid array 0 would give you a big boost in performance. A couple of WD raptors in raid 0 would be sweet.

[DVDDave]

If you were going to move around HUGE video files a raid array 0 would give you a big boost in performance. A couple of WD raptors in raid 0 would be sweet.

my thoughts exactly

[funkguy4]

psh why WD raptors when u could have seagates?

[jknutson2]

If you were going to move around HUGE video files a raid array 0 would give you a big boost in performance. A couple of WD raptors in raid 0 would be sweet.

But it would only help if you are copying either into the RAID 0 array our out of the RAID 0 array. If you are editing the video files, then you are CPU bound and if you are copying from RAID to RAID, you're back to spindle contention.