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General discussion

preferences on external vs internal hard drive

Mar 22, 2005 8:39AM PST

I've got an opportunity to buy an external 160Gb harddrive that connects by either USB 2.0 or Firewire, or to buy an internal 200Gb hardrive, with IDE connection ATA100 7200rpm and an 8Mb buffer. This will be a secondary hardrive used to process mini dv tapes to a dvd burner.

Conveience wise the external would be best, but i'm wondering about any singificant drop in data transfer from using the external, or any other conflicting problems by trasferring from a camcorder via firewire and then going into an extranal drive via firewire or usb. To offer a little more info, the firewire/usb 2.0 card i have hooks up to a 32bit pci slot.

Thanks for any assistance,
Brian

Discussion is locked

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I shy away from firewire drives on PCs.
Mar 22, 2005 8:44AM PST

For the Apple its solid, the PC ones I just bow to the mighty wintel gods and use ... USB 2.0.

Feel free to try firewire on the PC, but do not ask me to fix it.

Bob

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thanks...usb for external sounds good! but...
Mar 22, 2005 9:32PM PST

perfromance wise, how do you think the exteral connected to USB 2.0 would compare against the internal drive (200Gb, IDE ATA 100, 8Mb buffer) Given the various specs above, is it possible to anticipate which will perform better in terms of data transfer rates? Or would they both be about the same?

I'm planning on using the drive almost exclusively for the dowmloading of the miniDV media from a firewired camcorder.

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USB 2.0 is less than than the same drive on..
Mar 22, 2005 9:39PM PST

Internal ATA. But I do use it for miniDV to USB 2.0 drive and it's never been a bottleneck. Have you tried this?

Bob

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not yet, getting ready to buy one or the other
Mar 22, 2005 10:18PM PST

Thanks for the information, Bob. As with other questions I have had your info is spot-on and a big help to my component/software selections.

Brian

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Internal...
Mar 23, 2005 3:33AM PST

Unless it's absolutely necessary, get the internal IDE. It's not only faster, but also far more reliable. External harddrives are just too much trouble.