7200 vs 5400?

BenB wrote: What drive needs does photography have that video doesn't?
My Aperture library has over 13,000 photos and videos and is only 162 GB.

13,000 raw images from a 7D would take double that just for the masters. Add more for things like the aperture database plus previews. If you edited 1/4 of those images with something like the NIK plug-ins add another 400 GB... keeping your master plus a 16 bit tiff version needed by the external editor eats up disk space quickly. Almost as quickly as video :lol:

What I have is in fact 13,000 RAW images and videos from an old Rebel, a 7D, and a 5D.

I can move projects around with Lightroom (and I do), but I would guess it's not as elegant as Aperture. I really should try Aperture. I was thinking Aperture X would be out soon and I would jump in at that time.

BenB wrote: Then you need to go with a larger drive, for sure. SSD isn't an option for that much data. I only work small projects and my training stuff of the Elgato T'bolt I have now.

Simple point of interest, I'm not sure about Lightroom, but with Aperture you can segment out into multiple libraries, merge libraries, etc, so I never carry my full Aperture library with me, only the projects I need to work on.

I'm still not sure about the upgrade to a TB 5400 drive. Let me ask this: on a 7200 FireWire drive what is the bottleneck? Is it the Drive? Is it the FireWire? Is it the way the drive connects to the FireWire? Same thing for the 5400 drive. I assume it's not the Thunderbolt connection. Is there something between the drive and Thunderbolt that bottlenecks everything?

If someone has any of these drives perhaps running a test with AJA's system test will give us real numbers.
www.aja.com/ajashare/ajasoftware/AJA_SystemTest_Mac.zip

OK, I ran that AJA system test on my rugged 7200 FireWire. Left everything at default (128Megs) came back as "write 50.8 MB/s" and "Read 69.3 MB/s"

Is that what I should expect?

The graph would also be important because momentary drops in speed can result in stuttering or dropped frames. It's not just the average or peak speeds but the sustained speed. Amongst any "peaks and valleys" the valleys are potential trouble spots.

Maybe you should try using the largest file size of 16GB and also 1920x1080 but, it my few tests, I'm not seeing radical differences when doing that.

At first glance, I think your speeds are reasonable since Firewire 800 (800mbps) is about 100MB/s I believe (excuse me if my math brain isn't fully functional at the moment as I'm multitasking at the moment).

So if someone ran the same test on the 1TB rugged 5400 Thunderbolt drive, and it was close to the same numbers, then they would both have similar real world performance?

Ugh, those dips don't seem good at all.

Anyone have any experience with this drive-
www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/834410-RE...tml#pr-header-834410

I'm considering replacing my super drive with it and using it as an away-from-home editing drive in my 2011 MBP i7 17". I'll keep using my 2-Drive RAID when I'm home or can lug it around easily, but this looks like it would be a good solution for quickie light-weight edits away from home. I could grab the laptop, a pair of headphones and edit anywhere for a good hour or two on battery which is all I'm looking to do when I'm away.

The reviews are great. Anyone see any negatives to this solution for a media, Event, Project drive?

Thanks,
Dave

Offhand that looks like it's intended to be a boot/system drive given that it's hybrid. I'm not sure how a hybrid really benefits as a media drive.

You might want to look at OWC kits.
eshop.macsales.com/shop/drive_bracket/datadoubler/

Sorry to barge into your discussion, but you guys seem like being real pro's..

Could anyone please help me in finding a reliable fast external hard drive for my iMac OSX 10.7.5 (scratch disks completely full), 16 GB, where I plan to put my FCP Events (in HD) while working on my iMacdrive in my FCP Projects.

I'm going a bit nuts by surfing the internet reading hundreds of reviews about hard drives with Firewire 800 (Thunderbolt is really too expensive for me at this moment).
So I checked Western digital, G-tech or LaCie drives with 2 or 3 TB, firewire and maybe usb3 (not necessary, i plan to use firewire). My 'search' brought me these options:

* LaCie d2 Quadra USB 3.0 (which -as some say- goes to sleep very deep.. without ever waking up, and if waking up, your Finder crashes; others say it's just great)

* Western Digital My Book Studio 2TB

* G-Technology G-Drive 3 TB

Could anyone please give a good recommendation? I'm planning too spend about 200 euro max. (and i need to finish my project this weekend.... aaaaargh)


I would be very thankful!

...

Firewire 800 4TB G-Tech. I use a slightly older version
www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/893262-RE...G_Drive_USB_3_0.html

If you want speed 8TB RAID G-Tech
www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/848463-RE...G_RAID_External.html

Interesting low cost Thunderbolt RAID or JBOD (your choice) from Western Digital
www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/841455-RE...Thunderbolt_Duo.html

Low cost 3TB Thunderbolt from Seagate
www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/855371-RE...3TB_desktop_for.html

cseeman wrote: I'm not sure how a hybrid really benefits as a media drive.

Craig,

I don't know either. And I agree that most of the user experiences are based on using it as a boot drive. By the specs, it certainly doesn't seem like it would be any slower for media than a standard spinning drive and it's about the same price. I like that it has the 6GB connection.

I got the idea for this drive from Jeremy Garchow who did the MBP upgrade, isn't using it for a media drive but said, "As far as the Momentus drive, it's been working great for me and it is very fast for a single 2.5" HD. It will work great for a media drive. I don't know it's impact on battery life, I am usually plugged in even if I'm mobile. We aren't editing word docs around here. "

cseeman wrote: You might want to look at OWC kits.
eshop.macsales.com/shop/drive_bracket/datadoubler/

Yes, excellent thought. I had seen those at OWC and was planning on taking out the superdrive and putting it in an external case in case so I can use it from time to time.
--

Anyone else out there have any experience with this drive for editing?

Thanks,
Dave

Thank you!

Would the G-Technology G-Drive 3 TB (external hard drive so not the 'professional' or high performance' G Drive-version) won't suit my video editing needs?

That one would be more suited for BACK UP / STORING instead of editing?

I would really need this one then?:
G-Technology 3TB G-Drive Professional External Hard Drive (or a 2 TB)
www.bhphotovideo.com/bnh/controller/home...Q=&sku=746520&is=REG

I use a WD 2tb firewire 800, its plenty fast

Okay Lee, thank you! But can I use this drive for video editing as following: I'd like to put my events on the external drive, but work in my project on the iMac... does that work, or can't final cut read events out of an external drive ? I read that I may need an external drive especially designed for video editing? Maybe this sounds like a real dumb question.. sorry, just have my FCPX.

Why do that? On the wd i have 4 folders, final cut projects and final cut events. Then final cut projects hidden and final cut events hidden. Live stuff stays where fcpx expects it and to save looking at scrillions of projects and events i shove the non-live stuff into the respective hidden folders manually. There is a cheap script that does the same job too.