External HD for Macbook Pro

[curious]

I am looking for some advice here. We recently bought a 17" Macbook Pro for some portable editing options (w/ FCP). Got 3gigs RAM and 7200. Now we are looking for the best External Hard Drive? Will be used for HDV, DV and Beta SP. Was recommended to go with eSATA with adapter.... Firmtek set-up ?????? What drives would you recommend to put in these enclosures? Also do you need the dual system or are you fine with one? Please, any help in this area would be greatly appreciated, this world of laptop editing is very new for an older news guy, but hey its fun learning!!!!!!

[shootist]

full disclosure: i'm certainly no authority on the world of external hard drives but i'll tell you what we're using:

i have a 400GB version of this: http://www.olixir.com/

we got one with a more "durable" rep for news applications. this travels with me all the time.....it doesn't sit in an edit suite.

i'm not familiar with firmtek and their "dual system" but i will tell you that with my laptop running avid.....when i have "larger" projects as in 15+ minutes long.....my laptop alone cannot handle running the software and dealing with the large quantities of media. sync issues on playback become an issue. running the software on the laptop and the media off the external HD makes everything run smoothly.

i realize....not a lot of info...just what one TV station's using.

[dhart]

I would check with these guys. www.videoguys.com/

I have the same MAC Book Pro as you. I've been just using Lacie drives with Firewire 800. But I believe I'll need a striped drive to deliver full bandwidth BetacamSP.


Checkout this solution for the SATA http://www.videoguys.com/gtech.html

[Jonathan Kirsch]

I've heard great things about G-Tech...

http://www.g-technology.com/Products/G-DRIVE.cfm

Thinking of buying them when I get my MBP.

Jonathan