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External Enclosed Case or External Harddrive?

The Cabl3 GuyThe Cabl3 Guy Elite Ranger
in Zocalo v2.0
Well in the effort to maximize the use of my Mac & add a little more mobility to my computing I've decided to either A buy a brand new external USB Hard drive around 200 gigs or I could buy an enclosed case that would make an IDE drive usable on my Mac for about $40.

So would it be worth it to buy a brand new external or a brand new 200 gig IDE drive + Enclosed Case?

Comments

  • SanfamSanfam I like clocks.
    External + Enclosure is typically cheaper, but External drive factory mounted in an enclosure may be more reliable as they are often better designed than those purchased seperately. *Generally* better designed, that is.

    Also, in shopping for an external enclosure, make sure you find one that can draw power from the USB or Firewire bus. I can't even begin to describe the hatred I feel for companies who market a drive at Macs with firewire ports (i.e. G3, G4, and newer imacs) onwards but ship it with a PS/2 adapter to power it....

    Having it powered by the bus means you also don't have to worry about carrying around a power brick, which sucks.
  • BigglesBiggles <font color=#AAFFAA>The Man Without a Face</font>
    One thing my friends have mentioned to me often is that the enclosure + drive ones have significantly poorer cooling than the ones designed as external drives, resulting in the need to turn them off to let them cool down regularly.
  • The Cabl3 GuyThe Cabl3 Guy Elite Ranger
    If thats the case than it would be pretty useless to me. Id need it on for at least 12 hours minimum. but I do like the fact that some of them are both compatible with 3.5 & 5.25 (CDROMS, DVD...etc) So I could use the burner I have in my current pc.
    But It will come down the drive I think.

    I recently have learned that to convert to 24p is going to eat alot of space because the GL 2 will not record in 24p...:/ Converting it will be somewhere around 10 megs per second according to what I read.
  • SanfamSanfam I like clocks.
    [QUOTE][i]Originally posted by Biggles [/i]
    [B]One thing my friends have mentioned to me often is that the enclosure + drive ones have significantly poorer cooling than the ones designed as external drives, resulting in the need to turn them off to let them cool down regularly. [/B][/QUOTE]

    Speaking of cooling...
    Don't get a plastic enclosure. For the love of Droshalla, do not get a plastic enclosure! Make sure it's aluminum (and none of that aluminum plating inside or "smooth look" exterior crap). I've had to modify a number of plastic external enclosures (Five) with larger external fans to even come close to adequately cooling the drive. The change led to a dramatic increase in noise an an even more dramatic decrease in portability due to the (Relatively) gigantic fan sticking out of it.

    Edit: Another good possibility is to splurge and buy a [b]laptop[/b] HD and a 2.5" firewire (bus powered) aluminum enclosure. For $180-190 you can get a 100gb 2.5" HD (4200RPM, 12ms seek) . Add $30 or $40 for a good quality enclosure and you've got a drive that can comfortably fit in a shirt pocket and only needs one wire.
  • SanfamSanfam I like clocks.
    [QUOTE][i]Originally posted by The Cabl3 Guy [/i]
    [B]If thats the case than it would be pretty useless to me. Id need it on for at least 12 hours minimum. but I do like the fact that some of them are both compatible with 3.5 & 5.25 (CDROMS, DVD...etc) So I could use the burner I have in my current pc.
    But It will come down the drive I think.

    I recently have learned that to convert to 24p is going to eat alot of space because the GL 2 will not record in 24p...:/ Converting it will be somewhere around 10 megs per second according to what I read. [/B][/QUOTE]

    Why convert to 24P? I see no benefit to downgrading until the final product is ready to be made. Working at typical MiniDV Resolutions gives you more flexibility in the production phase. Also, this is all raw video, so yes, it will be rather large and consume a lot of space. It's "basically" Mpeg2 and depending on the specific variation you may be using takes anywhere from 5.5mb/sec to 12.1mb/sec. However, that upper limit is only achieved at higher resolutions and shouldn't be a terribly large concern for you, especially if you keep your source tapes handy. Remember, log & capture is your friend. Keeping the timecodes and tape reference handy means you can (in some cases) safely delete the audio/video source files after the fulll processing has been completed, and that replacements can be made from the source tapes as needed.
  • The Cabl3 GuyThe Cabl3 Guy Elite Ranger
    Hmm ok so would I be ok with a 40 gig drive right now.

    At this point Im just doing experimental things with my Powershot (you can record video onto the memory card for a few seconds)
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