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Help with External Hard Drive

De_Bunk said:
Patricio...

Goto

Control Panel / System / Hardware / Device Manager / Universal Serial Bus Controllers

Click on that and look down the list...If you see the word 'Enhanced' on any entry...you can run USB 2.0

DB
Click to expand...
As I have Win 2000 in Spanish, I can't tell for sure if that word is in there. Anyway, there's no word as a possible translation, so I don't have USB2, very likely.
 
Your best CONSISTENT SPEED solution still revolves around using your internal HD as the destination (and source) device for video. Even USB2 will not alleviate your problem entirely. At full speed it is still only equivalent to one of those medium-slow-speed old model HDs, assuming optimum performance right along the data path! Other factors will come into play that can still bog it down (virus scans, indexing, driver inefficiencies, etc) Oleron's comments about Firewire go along this line.

I suggest you use the external drive as a "huge but medium-slow archive", which is what they were really designed for, i.e. a backup device. You don't need the external plugged in all the time to work either, a convenience. What it IS good enough for is burning CDs from...for that permanent embarrassing video! :D

E.g. capture video to HD, process it as you want, then transfer the result to the external archive at a more convenient time (during dinner, or overnight, say ;)), and clear the HD again.
 
Zep said:
Even USB2 will not alleviate your problem entirely. At full speed it is still only equivalent to one of those medium-slow-speed old model HDs, assuming optimum performance right along the data path! Other factors will come into play that can still bog it down (virus scans, indexing, driver inefficiencies, etc) Oleron's comments about Firewire go along this line.
Click to expand...
I'm hoping to get the USB high speed combo card in the following days. We'll see...

What it IS good enough for is burning CDs from...for that permanent embarrassing video! :D
Click to expand...
Yes, I can understand that ;)

E.g. capture video to HD, process it as you want, then transfer the result to the external archive at a more convenient time (during dinner, or overnight, say ;)), and clear the HD again.
Click to expand...
It's very likely I'll end up doing just that.
 
Zep said:
Your best CONSISTENT SPEED solution still revolves around using your internal HD as the destination (and source) device for video. Even USB2 will not alleviate your problem entirely.
Click to expand...

If firewire is available it can do this. Firewire handles multiple devices on the bus much better than USB2. I can capture video from my Firewire video-converter to my firewire harddrive without issues. And that's the older firewire 400 format, not the new firewire 800.

But I ususally capture to the internal drive most of the time -- just in case...

Kevin
 
Just to side track,

There are USB2 compatible extrenal HDD with different rpm. Notably the 5400rpm and the 7200 rpm.

I presume the one with the higher rpm need more power.
So will the lack of power affect the performance of the file transfer?
 
I'm still waiting for the firewire combo card to arrive on the mail. It's specified as "high speed USB 2.0". I've taken into account many of the kind tips offered to me in this thread. I already downloaded and installed win 2000 service pack 4. We'll see what happens.

BTW, this is the card. US$16 shipping and handling included, not that bad huh? ;)

VIACombo.jpg
 
Jyera said:
Just to side track,

There are USB2 compatible extrenal HDD with different rpm. Notably the 5400rpm and the 7200 rpm.

I presume the one with the higher rpm need more power.
So will the lack of power affect the performance of the file transfer?
Click to expand...
The big and high rpm external drives need external power. The one I own is 4200 rpm.
 
The IO bottleneck for the USB-connected devices is still the USB channel itself. You could have a RAMdisk out there - it would still not be any faster. Firewire of some variety is the current optimal solution to improve your external IO speed.
 
I finally got the combo card. Made some tests, digital video capture to the internal is flawless (unlike the other card I was using), although capturing to the external still poses technical problems. Data transfer from the internal to the external is significantly faster, it took 1 min and 12 secs for a 640 MB file, with the old USB port it would've taken around 20 minutes. So it's a major improvement in speed, I'm satisfied with the product.

Thanks all for the valuable tips.
 
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