[parekhk]

Hi,

Apologies if asked before, tried searching...

I'm thinking of buying an external HDD, should I look for a Firewire device or can I directly capture to a UBS 2.0 HDD?

Or is it better to free up room on my internal HDD and capture direclty to that.

I'm quite tempted with the PC world 320GB for 79.99!

Cheers...

[redsox_mark]

USB2.0 should be fine. Both USB2.0 and Firewire support a fast enough rate... Firewire has an advantage as it has far less CPU impact and a more steady rate, but if you have a reasonably modern PC the CPU impact of USB2.0 shouldn't be an issue.

I have a dual Firewire/USB2.0 drive and it works fine in either mode. I tend to use it in USB mode as my PC only has one Firewire port and has multiple USB2.0 ports.

This is not to be confused with the connection from a DV camcorder to the PC, that needs to be Firewire. PC to external HDD can be either.

[SIP]

Hi

I have a Toshiba 320g external disc drive which only has a USB2 connection and it works fine. I capture by firewire on the PC to this HDD and the access time and playback are fine. When I opted for an external HDD, I did wonder if it would be slower than the PC's own hard drive, but this is not the case.

[parekhk]

Thanks for the advice.... I guess I'll be 80 quid down today!!!

[senu]

In general it is a good idea and £79 for 320Gb is very tempting !

I got a 240Gb from PCW for £69 which sold out with a week and promptly went back up to £90.

Reading your question and looking at this forum " Camcorders and video editing" .I suspect you want to capture video footage directly to an external USB drive.

It is ( in my experience) not always a good idea but as stated above it is a valid way of getting extra space without any hardship
Programs like Avid liquid which expect the captured footage to be in a specific directory ( folder ) with a specific path may exhibit "media not found" if in connecting more than one usb device the drive letter changes

If this is the case. It may be better to "store" captured footage on it and make it the default capture folder.

There is also a slim possibility of dropped frames from direct DV capture from camcorder via PC to the HDD but if this is not the case you are in luck.
Others may have a better experience

Originally Posted by parekhk

Thanks for the advice.... I guess I'll be 80 quid down today!!!

And me too tomorrow.

My 250GB SATA disc is 80% full of Video files and I need a backup deperately.

Was using sons fairly empty 250 GB drive as temporary dump over wireless network in summer but he has gone back to uni now.