2nd Hard Drive help

[vidnut]

Hi all,

I do not have enough room on my existing hard drive for all my recently shot wedding video footage, so am looking to add a 2nd drive to my system, and hoping to use for video exclusively. I found a drive that I can afford, but the box says it needs an available SATA or SATA 133 port, or something like that. Can someone please tell me how I find out what ports/interfaces for hard drives my computer has? I have XP Home on a Sony VAIO desktop, P4. Thanks for the help!

[JC/DV]

Since you have a VAIO, post the model number and I'll look it up.

[vidnut]

Its a VGCRB30. Thanks very much for the help!

[JC/DV]

Its a VGCRB30. Thanks very much for the help!
According to Sony site, it comes with a 200 GB SATA drive. I can't find any details on the motherboard, but open the case and look at the port that the hard drive attaches to, its about 3/4" or so.... if you have an extra port, then you can attach an extra SATA drive.

Good luck.

[ssvp]

From Sony Regarding your Model Series

How to install an SATA hard drive.



Follow this procedure to install a Serial ATA (Serial Advanced Technology Attachment) hard drive.

Turn off the computer.
Unplug the power cable from the back of the computer.
Install the Serial ATA hard drive according to the manufacturer's instructions.
Ensure the hard drive is only powered by one set of power plugs. NOTE: Some Serial ATA hard drives have two Power connections, one for Serial ATA style power plugs and one for ATA style power plugs.
Ensure an Serial ATA cable is plugged into a free Serial ATA connector on the motherboard.
Ensure the other end of the Serial ATA cable is plugged into the hard drive. IMPORTANT: The design of the computer case may require an Serial ATA connector with a 90-degree bend in the cable. If such a cable is not supplied with a new drive or one is not available, one can be purchased from the Sony® Direct Accessories and Parts Center Web site at http://servicesales.sel.sony.com (http://servicesales.sel.sony.com/), referencing part number 1-962-826-11.

[vidnut]

Wow, thats fantastic! Thanks so much for the help! I am grateful.

[vidnut]

Ok, another question then, just so I cover all my bases before the cash outlay. What about an External Hard drive? Is an external USB2 or Firewire 7200rpm Hard Drive adequate for putting all the raw video footage onto, and editting within say Premiere while accessing the raw video from the external drive? Will it keep up and do the job?

[JC/DV]

Firewire will sustain the datarate much better than USB2 will. I would just go with a SATA internal drive--especially if you are using only 1 computer.

[Billy]

Firewire will sustain the datarate much better than USB2 will.
The things I've read say the opposite, that Firewire 400 has a faster burst rate, but USB 2 has a faster sustained rate.

Firewire 800 is a different animal, but most people I know don't use that.

[JC/DV]

The things I've read say the opposite, that Firewire 400 has a faster burst rate, but USB 2 has a faster sustained rate.

USB2.0 has a higher burst rate at 480 Mbps and Firewire is at 400 Mbps, but sustained (continuous) data rates are higher with FW... if USB was better at continuous data rate, whey is it not standard on our video cameras for video capture instead of firewire?

Here is a page with tests run with the 3 flavors...
http://www.barefeats.com/usb2.html

[Billy]

USB2.0 has a higher burst rate at 480 Mbps and Firewire is at 400 Mbps, but sustained (continuous) data rates are higher with FW... if USB was better at continuous data rate, whey is it not standard on our video cameras for video capture instead of firewire?

Here is a page with tests run with the 3 flavors...
http://www.barefeats.com/usb2.htmlOkay, maybe I remembered backwards. :icon_redface: Which wouldn't be too unusual since I don't deal with USB or Firewire drives on a regular basis.

[ssvp]

I'd go eSATA..

[vidnut]

Does eSATA use the same connectors as SATA?

[RatVega]

OK, I know this is the PC Forum and I'm a Mac guy, but here's the low-down:

FireWire is better suited for video than USB because of the differences in the bus architecture. USB was designed for fast response to peripheral devices (like mice, keyboards, printers, etc.) that need fast service but have modest dataflow requirements. FireWire is almost the opposite, where the emphasis is on sustaining high data transfer rates but not responding to interrupts as well. For the ultimate in video editing horror, try setting up a system with USB video storage and a FireWire mouse. :icon_eek: (Actually, I don't think there is such a thing as a FireWire mouse for exactly this reason...)

PATA (Parallel ATA) is a fairly new term that is used with the "old" ATA drives (ATA100, ATA133. etc.) to differentiate them from SATA (Serial ATA) which is newer and faster. The two use different controllers and aren't interchangeable at the hardware level. Whatever your motherboard is set up for is what will be the "correct" drive from a design standpoint, but most systems can accept a controller board to adapt to the other style.

SATA is unique in that it runs at the same speed whether it's internal or external because of the controller design. The downside is that if you have an eSATA (external SATA) drive, it will only work with a system that has an open SATA channel to attach to since the architecture is based on a "one disk per channel" rule. There are a few controllers designed to daisey-chain SATA drives like FireWire or USB, but to do so they mux/demux the channel signals which slows the peak speeds and you'd need that kind of controller on each station that wanted to mount the drive.

From a speed standpoint SATA is faster in single spindle performance and much faster in RAID configurations. But since either is fast enough to service DV-level playback demands this is only a biggie if you're a speed freak or have a workflow that has much higher dataflow demands.

If your system is based on ATA drives, about the only thing that you could that would be a mistake would be to buy an ATA drive with a spindle speed lower than 7200 RPM since it may not be able to keep up. These show up from time to time and are usually quite cheap...

[ssvp]

Does eSATA use the same connectors as SATA?

No eSATA is a different connector. Typically a external eSATA Raid array comes with a PCI or PCIE Raid controller card with 2 eSATA ports.