External Hard drives?

I'm planning to use a laptop with a USB 2.0 hardware Mpeg capture device to bring some camcorder footage into the computer for editing.

Now my laptop only has a 40 gig drive in it, which is a bit limiting as to the amount of footage I can work on. Upon looking at some specs for the computer, I discovered that the drive in the laptop is only a 4200 RPM drive...and when doing a test on it, I'm getting a 21 MBps result, which IMO is terrible.

I am seeing alot of external USB 2.0 drives around for quite reasonable prices. These drives are all 7200 RPM drives, and advertise 480 Mbps (60 MBps) which I'm a little skeptical to beleive since even my desktop 7200 RPM drives do not get that kind of speed.

Now my question is, would one of these USB 2.0 drives work as far as video editing is concerned (would it be fast enough?) or would I be better off replacing my internal laptop drive with a 5400 RPM instead.

I'm thinking the external would likely give me more bang for the buck as far as storage. (but after running the speed test on the internal drive explaines why that computer runs so horribly slow)

I guess my second question, is if I went to a USB drive, will the combination of the drive, and the capture device use too much bandwidth to work properly together? I don't know if I'd have to use both at the same time, but this would be nice. (longer recording time)

Suggestions?

Maybe you should consider getting a firewire external drive. This way you will capture thorugh USB and write through firewire.

Even with firewire, I doubt you'd match the capture speed of a fast internal hard drive. You can try it, but my guess is you'll have a problem with dropped frames. Editing would probably work OK, though your laptops basic processor and bus speeds can't match those of a full-fledged PC. It's physics, folks; speed produces heat and requires a lotta clean power. Big power supplies and PC-speed operation and hi-speed processors are just too hot for most laptops. Not that it won't work, but don't expect your laptop to live to a ripe old age.

General rule, expect USB2 drive to run about half sustained transfer speed vs the same drive on an internal PATA/SATA. That assumes no loading at the CPU. The CPU gets busy for USB2 hard drive transfers.

Maxtor 7200RPM 200GB drive using Canopus Raptor Sustained Transfer Test Utility

External USB2 @28MB/s (224Mb/s) read, 27MB/s (216Mb/s) write
Internal PATA @64MB/s (512Mb/s) read, 64MB/s (512Mb/s) write

These tests vary depending on inside vs. outside disc tracks but are typical.

I just tested two more external USB2 200GB Maxtors and got 25MB/s and 22MB/s.

Explain your capture method. Hardware capture to MPeg2 would be fine. For DV or uncompressed I'd capture to the internal drive, then copy to the external drive.

I also use external hard drive for my video capture. I've never had a problem with dropped frames. I have drives on USB 2 and Firewire and both work great. Good luck

The issue with uncompressed or DV capture has nothing to do with bit rate to the external disk drive. Both USB2 and Firewire are point to point fast enough. The issue is CPU/memory throughput.

The data must flow from the import through the CPU to the USB2 or Firewire disk control utilities. This requires CPU priority. USB2 is a tougher case because the CPU acts as the disk controller.

Modern computers, even fast laptops, have no issues. Older computers, particularly laptops, may loose frames due to CPU priority.

This was a major issue during the PIII and early P4 period. Those upgrading older or slower computers may see these issues.

Last time: March 3, 2007 [4221] 15:44p

Evening Coluph,

FWIW, i'm (still) running WIN98 (non-SE) with an ECS K7S5A w/ AMD 1800+ CPU mobo.
And in this setup, I have various External enclosures. Though mainly for DV
capturing on this *slow* machine, the process of capturing dv is with ease.

Over time, I do ugrade to other external drives. I've used a 40gig, 80gig, and
now, my latest being, a USB2.0 160gig drive by SimpleDrive, (7200 RPM) purchased
for $89 bucks at Curcuit City a few weeks ago. Only gripe with this drive is
that it doesn't seem to have built-in (or exeternal) sleep-mode -- it's always on.

Anyways. It comes w/ pre-formated NTFS on it, and with some software. But since
I'm WIN98, I had to re-format to FAT32 -- and lost the free software in the process.
otherwise, Oh well. You loose some.

But, at least my OS can read/write 160gig drives. I hope it can go further than
that, cause I'm NOT planning on going XP, let alone, Vista, any time soon!

So, I don't think you'll have any trouble, given your computer specs, if I
read them correctly.

Uncompressed AVI capturing-- is another story. In the past, I've experimented
in this area. And in my trials, I have tried various capture software. One
that works mostly, was VirtualVCR. As long as I set it up for Huffy, or even,
Lagarith (lossless) codec, and in the proper Codec Configuration Areas, I
*could* get a clean capture without frame-drops, even on my slow 1800+ cpu.

The success of all this will be determined by how well your OS is driver
configured. DirectX and DirectShow drivers are key elements to success.
Sometimes, you -have- to revert back to a previous DirectX and then re-install
it, to latest (or, last known and working) version. Only trial 'n error
testing will determine your success for this.

In my case, I would make sure that I met up with the following:
** don't start a capture session right after you've been running other apps
** clean bootup -- good for starting out in 1st capture session
** no other apps running in the background
** find proper codec configuration area setup -- VirtualVCR has TWO such areas
and only one usually works best with a given codec. But, you have to find out
which one. And, you can only use ONE setup - not both.

Again, as I of this writing, my current computer specs are:
** ECS K7S5A w/ AMD 1800+ CPU mobo w/ 512MB ram

Good luck,
-vhelp 4222

I'd say, get the external USB 2.0 drive. I picked up a 250G external USB drive on sale at Staples recently and am very happy with it. Now I have two internal ATA drives and the external USB drive.

I get the same speed transferring data from/to an internal drive and the external drive, as between the two internal drives. In my case the data transfer rate is about 1GB/minute. So no slowdowns there. Also no problems burning video DVDs from the external drive even while multitasking my system at 99%+ processor usage with other software! The trick is to set the other software to run at below normal priority, if necessary, while you run your time-sensitive software (such as DVD burning or video capture) at high priority. That may be pushing it unless you have plenty of RAM. I have 1G RAM.

I partitioned the external drive into 2 equal parts, and there is indeed a slowdown when transferring data between those 2 partitions. It takes twice as long, about 0.5GB/minute. But I would seldom want to do that.

1GB/min is about 16.7MB/s or 133Mb/s.

You should be able to double that with the internal drives.

Just did some more copy tests with a 10.5GB DV file.
Gigabit network internal drive to internal drive took ~7min 25MB/s (200Mb/s)
Same file internal drive to external USB2 Maxtor 200GB ~6.5min 27MB/s (216Mb/s)

Originally Posted by edDV

1GB/min is about 16.7MB/s or 133Mb/s.

You should be able to double that with the internal drives.

Just did some more copy tests with a 10.5GB DV file.
Gigabit network internal drive to internal drive took ~7min 25MB/s (200Mb/s)
Same file internal drive to external USB2 Maxtor 200GB ~6.5min 27MB/s (216Mb/s)

I'd be happy to double it, but how?
They're Maxtor 7200rpm ATA drives in a Compaq S4020WM, now about 3 1/2 years old.

It seems the end result would depend on the characteristics of individual PCs and drives. I'm using heavy filtering in VDub and get twice the speed on my newer Athlon PC. But transferring files and capturing (transfer and capture are entirely different operations) are actually better (slightly) on my older P4. Both PCs use the same or similar internal drives, and the same two WD drives in external USB enclosures.

Capture: capture from VHS to AVI on my internal drives has yet to give me dropped frames (unless I'm using a really, really damaged VHS tape, which would drop frames on any machine when going thru a line-level TBC). Using external drives on either of my PC's, I get slightly more dropped frames on bad tapes. Drops are a little worse to external drives on my laptop, but that machine has a much older ATI card so it ain't a fair test. Using the sloooow internal drive on my laptop, capturing is useless.

6 of one, half a dozen of the other. Whatever works for you, use it.

Sat up half the night doing this, and decided I'd still rather have a full-fledged desktop PC and internal drives, and use externals if I have to transfer something so I can run 2 PC's at the same time to get all my dad's old VHS spaghetti westerns completed to DVD. I should charge for this, double.

It's a good idea to insure that there are no processes running in the background that are using system resources. Do a Ctrl, Alt, Del and make sure that no processes are running that you don't need to run. Be careful to not stop necessary system process. Some of the process names are cryptic so you can Google each one to confirm what it is. You should also scan for spyware because these can be running in the background and consuming system resources.

I use a prog called "end it all" it shuts down all process running in the background. It really helps to use most of your cpu for your capture and rendering task. You might still find it out there for free.

Another thing that is worth doing is to disconnect from the Internet while doing a capture. This ensures that no unexpected Internet communications are made such as automatic software and OS updates etc. Some of these can be unexpected and can affect a capture especially on slower systems.

Good point. I believe that "End it all" would shut down that communication with the internet. It seems to close everything that is not needed to run your computer. It's really a nice piece of software you can see a huge difference in the computers speed.