Best 3TB External Hard Drive?
 

Hey everyone,

Before I begin capturing my 20+ hours of home movies I need to get an external hard drive to keep the files on, since avi files are so large. I'll be putting the footage on dvd eventually but I'd like to always have the avi footage just in case. From the internet research I've been doing the opinion towards Seagate and WD is split down the middle. So I thought I'd ask what everyone here thought. Thanks!!

i prefer Seagate

Volks, what do you think of this one?

http://www.bestbuy.com/site/backup-p...0005&cp=1&lp=2

decent price - i have no experience with that particular external
but ive had many Seagates and never had a complaint.
i have had WD's fail

Oh boy. I've had a 2tb WD for nearly 2 years now. I wonder why people have problems with these things. I only plug mine in to back up my pc, maybe 5 times a year.

I don't pay attention to "best" because every product will have some failures. For me, the more important issue is, "Exact compatibility of power connector" so, when I have more than one external drive, I can take one unit from desk to desk witout always unplugging and dragging the power-brick with me.

It seems like a small issue, but get two incompatibles and tell me how pleased you are when you've grabbed the wrong power brick, driven to some location only to discover the error then!! Grrr...

So, I buy for the sake of the power-brick's compatibility. (PS - both WD and Seagate have, at times, switched connectors so Older Units can't be used with Newer Power Bricks. Grrr. That's why God invented generic external drive cases.)

I would not suggest anything over 2TB. Too many problems, especially with external drives. Once you hit 2TB, many drive dump the file table. Only some new computers can use internal 2TB+ drives, and external is only available on the much-slower USB2/3 connections. No eSATA, otherwise you'll have major issues.

Check out the Fantom drive: http://www.amazon.com/s/?_encoding=U...ch-alias%3Daps

You can get:
- USB3
- USB2 + eSata
- USB2 + eSata + Firewire 800 ("Quad" drives)

They also have 3TB and 4TB, if you insist.

These are often Seagate drives. That is higher-end brand like Lacie, yet changes normal prices unlike Lacie. Fantom does not manufacture its own hardware, but instead uses the best from other manufacturers.

Western Digital is not a very good drive. Of all the drives that have failed us in past 10 years, almost all were Western Digital, Toshiba or the now-defunct Maxtor. Hitachi and Seagate have worked well, with Seagate being the quieter drive and therefore more preferred.

Whatever is in the Fantom is fine. Sometimes you see WD Black drives in it, which are the best in the WD line.

Everything in use here is either Seagate or Hitachi (internal) or Fantom (external). Highly suggested.

Ugh not only is my 2tb external a WD, but my portable is 1tb toshiba. I've noticed that sometimes files are missing in the 1tb, but nothing major. When I notice something missing on the portable, I'll just copy and paste it back on from the 2tb. So in this regards, my WD is better than the Toshiba. Then again, I hardly ever plug in the WD. Probably only plugged it in 20-30 times in almost 2 years. Whereas the Toshiba gets plugged in a lot more often.

Thank you for all that info LS. I think Best Buy must have some sorta deal with Seagate and WD, because there's only 9 reviews for the 48 Fantom drives they have for sale. That or consumers really don't like giving a chance to something that's not popular. I've heard about never going over 2tb because of tech issues. I'm hoping that someday they'll get those bugs worked out.

Now, I've done the math on this. When capturing AVI with virtualdub, 1 minute and 8 seconds is exactly 2gb of data. So one hour is 120gb. I have roughly 20 hours of home movies footage, give or take an hour (some stuff I don't wanna record). So that's roughly 2.4tb. This is the only reason I want a 3tb. However, if there's a way to record smaller data size (like with a smaller video picture capture size for example) without losing picture quality, I'll do that. I know the guide says to record AVI at 352X480 instead of 720X480, but unless I'm missing something here, when I recorded with my dvd recorder in that size (longer play speed recording on my dvd player), the picture quality was terrible. Only thing I can figure is that since this was a dvd recording, it was MPEG instead of AVI, which I'm guessing makes a difference.

Trust me, the Fantom drives are VERY popular professionally. Not just for video, but photographers, designers, etc. Consumers want "cheap" and "name brand" (even if that brand/manufacturer isn't good). And often "name brand" is not at all representative of the products in that industry.

Resolution has nothing to do with quality. Bitrate does, and the bitrate allocation to the resolution. Of course, none of that matters for lossless or uncompressed video, only compression like MPEG-2. Even then, MPEG-2 can be fine. But some recorders have terrible 352x480 encoding, especially Panasonic chipsets. Many choose stupid setting, such as the Panasonic 720x480 4-hour mode, which was almost all blocks on many recordings.

You should see the Best Buy rating in the December 2013 issues of Consumer Reports. It's only somewhat better than Walmart, which was last on the list. B&H, Amazon, Newegg, etc -- all better, all more reliable (including product reviews). Though Newegg had slipped quite a bit in recent times. 3 out of every 5 purchases was made from Amazon!

LordSmurf brought up the 3Tb capacity and there is a good argument for staying 2Tb & Under: older computers and 32-bit systems can't handle 3Tb drives without installing special trick-drivers.

I have to span a variety of computers, and I never get larger-than-2Tb capacities for this reason - compatibility across every computer I'll run across.

But I also go for "common power connector" too!

That's actually a myth! Many newer systems (post-2010 dual and quad cores!), and using a 64-bit OS, have the issue. It's about the hardware, not just age or OS. And the tricks often do not work. I've tested this, and seen a high fail rate. It's why I've stopped myself at 2TB, and just buy more drives when needed.

If you do get a larger-than-2TB drive, fill it up first. Be sure it doesn't have issues past 2TB.

Like I said, OLDER COMPUTERS AND 32-BIT SYSTEMS...

Sheesh.

He quoteth but does not readeth!

I'm gonna have to go with the USB 3.0 models, as my computer doesn't have eSata, and USB 2.0 is too slow. So I've narrowed it down to 4 options on that amazon page link. The GD2000U3A, the GF3B2000U, the GF3B2000UP, and the GF3B2000U32. However, in the "compare" section of one of the pages, it says that the GF3B2000U and the GF3B2000U32 are not external. They're NTFS. Will this affect if my PC is compatible? It's a windows 7 dual-core.

- NTFS is a file system used by Windows
- External is the opposite of internal.

There's no relation.

I've seen problems on Windows 7 64-bit. It's not just 32-bit OS that have problems.

And I guess "new" can be relative. But in the computer industry, "new" has meant "3 years" since the 1990s. But systems from 3 years ago still have problems.

Like I said, if you think that it's simply "older" + non-64, you may be in for a nasty surprise. You could be happily filling up a 3-4TB drives, hit 2TB of data .... then it's fubar. Blank. No files. Corrupted file table.

Sadly, the new/64 aspect is a myth. It's not true.

Alright, between the 4 products I mentioned, both Amazon and Newegg (B&H didn't have them) give the GF3B2000UP the best reviews. As for the extra 4-500 gb of space that I need, I'll bite the bullet and get another portable external 500gb.

Get two 2TB drives. You can never have too much space. :2cents:

Good point :)

Just wanted to add that I re-read a few of the guides on the site and fond out that AVI degrades over time. This means I won't be keeping my captured footage in AVI footage (which was my original plan). This means I'll end up capturing and creating dvd as I go, and keeping the captures in MPEG form for safekeeping. This means I won't need a 3tb after all. I think in total my home movies footage on dvd is around 90gb. Though granted that was from dvd recording, hehe.

Where does it say that? I bet you're reading it wrong. Because that may not be correct.

The problem is that "AVI" is just a container. Uncompressed video has no loss (nor lossless, hence the name), while compressed XviD/DivX will. So what is the "AVI" file holding? Which codec?

In the guide "Introduction to Digital Video Capturing, Recording TV" it says:

"Most AVI codecs are intended only as temporary working format, not meant to be final products. An AVI typically serves no purpose outside of an editing environment on a computer using Windows. It has little compression applied, and can easily be manipulated a few times before degradation occurs to the video information. This is opposite of television/DVD formats like MPEG".

I wrote the guide. But it needs better wording.

The large filesize of AVI is what makes it temporary (working files), not archive/distribution. MPEG and other compressed formats degrade much quicker after multiple re-encodes. All video degrades after multiple re-encodes -- assuming something was done to it, which is likely if it re-encoded! Time alone doesn't degrade digital formats; that's analog formats, though not as bad as myths would suggested (35-65 years, not less).

That clear it up? :)

Thank you LS, that *pretty much* clears it up. My only question is, assuming I capture with virtualdub (or CMC if I can get it to work) in AVI format AND do my color correction and the like before saving the file, is there any loss in quality if I save the file as MPEG instead of AVI? I'm guessing the bitrate has something to do with it.

Don't use CMC for AVI. It's for NTSC MPEG only.

There is more loss with compressed formats.
MPEG = compressed.
The higher the MPEG source and destination bitrates, the lower the loss on re-encodes.

AVI is just a container.
Huffyuv = uncompressed image (compression data only). No loss for pure re-encodes. Loss comes with editing/filtering.
But AVI can withstand far more passes. That's why it's used as an intermediary for processing.

Make sense?

Ok, so capture my home movies with Vdub in AVI format, do filtering on the first pass, save as an AVI only until I'm ready to make dvds.

Yep.

And sometimes AVI files will have 2-3-4-5 (or more!) passes. Some errors require certain programs. Not everything can be done in one. Sometimes the same filter has to be used 2-3 times. Sometimes it's not wise to do more than 2-3 filter at once, if you're not sure of the results.

Post sample clips (in new threads) when you have errors to fix. I'll advise. :congrats:

Thanks again for clearing that up LS. And thanks for the tips about the filters. TBH, there's not too much footage that needs any hardcore correcting (overall, amongst 20+ hours of footage at least), and even then *I don't think* I need too many filters. I've messed around with Vdubs filters a little bit with my first recordings pass on dvd (back in May of this year, long before I discovered this place) and have a pretty good idea of which filters to use. Or at least which ones I've gotten comfortable with. I made sure to save the filter settings for each event as well (each event needs it's own custom settings). I will definitely post some clips in the near future and you'll see what I mean.

Go WD Hard drive

Ok I'm back on this project (personal matters and other projects sidetracked this one). Now, My choices are:

Fantom 2 TB 7200 RPM USB 3.0/2.0 External Hard Drive with 3-Year Warranty (GF3B2000UP) for $131.99 + shipping on amazon

Another Fantom (same as above) but from some site called Rakuten (based in Japan) for 133.70 (free shipping)

Toshiba - Canvio Special Edition 2TB External USB 3.0/2.0 Portable Hard Drive - Black $104.99 at bestbuy.com

Toshiba - Canvio 2TB External USB 3.0 Hard Drive - Black $101.56 also shipped through the japan merchant

Since I'm buying 2 external HD's, it really boils down to, save myself 50-60 bucks and take the risk with the japanese vendor that I've never heard of, or spend the extra cash and go with amazon.

What do you guys think? I'm unemployed ATM and while I have the money to spend either way, I'm still not crazy about spending an extra 50-60 bucks if I don't need to.

Rakuten is the former Buy.com. They owned several things for years, and are as reliable as Newegg or Amazon. That said, I prefer Amazon for mist items. I prefer the Amazon return policy. It's better than Newegg or Buy/Rakuten.

I'd always grab a 2tb Fantom.

In fact, I'd avoid Toshiba, as those are terrible drives.

Being unemployed sucks, but the job market is improving. The recent return showed 6%, down from ~10% at the height of the recession. I wish you well. I actually don't envy NY cost of living, but the jobs situation is better in populated areas from my experience.

Thanks for kind words KP.