External hard drive for AVCHD footage.

jamber

Recently I purchased Canon HF100 High Definition camcorder and now I need somewhere to store my AVCHD files and the external (possibly portable) hard drive of 500-1000Gb should be OK. I have an idea of taking it with me on vacation and over there transfer files from camcorder to hard drive.
Because there are so many to choose from like SATA, ESATA, Western Digital or Hard Drive Media players like 500GB ScreenPlay HD Multimedia Hard Drive from Iomega in particular I need your advice which one is more reliable and most appropriate for this.

mshulman

Will this be your primary storage? I'd suggest an external array, so that if a drive fails you won't lose your data.


Here's an example... http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16822136146

__________________
Toshiba HD-A2 and HD-A3
PS3
Sanyo PLV-Z3
Canon HF-10
Onkyo 805

"I eat green berets for breakfast and I'm very hungry!"

jamber

Yes, it would be my primary storage, but 2TB looks huge. Having read a lot about those external drives over last few days(I am not good at technical things) I am glad that mshulman pointed to Western Digital brand, the same I was thinking about. But I would consider 750GB Western Digital My Book plus a portable Western Digital Passport 320GB. I hope I can take it abroad along with my HF100 and transfer files from SDHC at any internet shop.

There's also another option to keep video material - Multimedia Hard Drives, like Iomega ScreenPlay HD Multimedia Drive (500GB), but they are not full HD yet.

I need somebody to confirm that my choice of hard drives is OK or to give a better option.

mshulman

While the drive is listed as a 2TB drive, it really would only be 1TB. IT's a unit that contains 2 1TB drives. In 1 configuration the drives can be combined giving 2TB of space. In another, they can be mirrored giving 1TB of space.

Mirrored would be the option you'd want as it would be more reliable.

If you didn't want a solution like this, then you'd want 2 separate drives so you can manually copy the data between the two. Storing everything on a single drive would be a bad idea. You definetely need some sort of backup.

__________________
Toshiba HD-A2 and HD-A3
PS3
Sanyo PLV-Z3
Canon HF-10
Onkyo 805

"I eat green berets for breakfast and I'm very hungry!"

TomInJax

Another option if you are traveling and don't want to take a computer along - is a portable memory card reader:

Digital Foci 120 GB Card Reader

I have one and it works for both my DSLR and my HF10. And it reads SDHC cards.

-Tom

__________________
Canon HF S100

jamber

Yes, I fully agree with you and I am thinking of burning some files onto dvd's too.

And thanks Tom, I checked the Digital Foci Photo Safe 120GB Digital Picture Storage. It looks slow to me - to transfer 1GB from sd card to Storage takes 5 minutes, 8GB = 40 min.
Price of Foci is about $150.00 to compare to Western Digital Passport portable drives of 320GB $130.00 - 140.00. And one can drag and drop files or cut / paste.
The main plus for Foci Storage is that it doesn't need a PC.
So, I am thinking about Western Digital 320 GB Passport 2.5" USB 2.0 Hard Drive, I hope there's nothing wrong with my choice.