Will capture/editing work with this setup?

[Dear Prudence]

Hi

I hope I'm at the right section.

I need to get a much bigger hard drive.

My motherboard does not support SATA.

I know I can get a PCI card but confusion reigns when I discover SATA II
I can find a card that supports SATA II

Someone has suggested that I go for either USB or Firewire drives.

I am using ADVC 100 for VHS capture which uses Firewire (PCI card).

My question;

If I use a Firewire Hard Drive (or USB) would this clash with the ADVC ?

If this OK - are there any other reasons for NOT using USB or Firewire for video editing and capture?

Many thanks in advance - Stephen

[edDV]

Hi

I hope I'm at the right section.

I need to get a much bigger hard drive.

My motherboard does not support SATA.

I know I can get a PCI card but confusion reigns when I discover SATA II
I can find a card that supports SATA II

Someone has suggested that I go for either USB or Firewire drives.

I am using ADVC 100 for VHS capture which uses Firewire (PCI card).

My question;

If I use a Firewire Hard Drive (or USB) would this clash with the ADVC ?

If this OK - are there any other reasons for NOT using USB or Firewire for video editing and capture?

Many thanks in advance - Stephen

Best HDD for capture would be a large second internal drive. Avoid capturing to the same drive as the OS if you can.

External drives are more subject to interference from OS CPU activity during capture (or DV transfer). USB2 drive interfaces are more CPU dependent and therefore more prone to dropped frames if the OS grabs priority for its own tasks. Firewire drives are less CPU dependent but an internal drive would be better than either external solution.

If you use an external drive, you need to shut down as many CPU processes as needed for clean capture (or DV transfer).

This is more of a problem the older your motherboard and CPU.

[redwudz]

You could have conflicts with using an external HD and a ADVC-100 through Firewire at the same time. I did with my laptop. It depends on your Firewire controller and the chipset in your external drive. USB external drives have always been problematic for me, though they work fine for many people.

DV in general doesn't need a high speed HD for transfers. Even a ATA 100 would work. I would avoid an external box if you have the room and the power supply to use an internal HD.

If you don't have any IDE connections left on your motherboard, I would go with a regular ATA PCI controller, PATA or SATA.

SATA 2 is a little new yet. There are some controllers available through Adaptec, but they are pricey. SATA 2 HDs will run fine on a SATA controller, though at SATA speed.

[edDV]

The problem with DV transfers is seldom HDD speed related. Even a ATA 66 is more than fast enough. The problem is interference from OS CPU activity.

For a desktop machine, a second drive on a second disk controller allows capture to continue even when the OS has control of the main drive.

PS: once the DV stream has been transferred to a file on the HDD, the OS will assure file integrity during further copying, editing and encoding.

The only times this is a problem is when transferring DV data to and from the camcorder.