[tramahound]

I am thinking about attending this year’s MacWorld New York conference primarily for their new Hands-on Final Cut Pro workshop. One of the requirements of those attending is a firewire hard drive, and I’m unclear on a few firewire hdd particulars. First, since I will be using the drive in conjunction with my tibook 400, how does one daisy chain the drive to the tibook and dv camera allowing me to capture footage directly to the firewire drive rather than to the slow tibook internal drive? Do all firewire drives have two 6-pin connectors on them to allow one to do this? Also, is it possible to do what I need using one of the firewire hdd cases where you can swap out any ide drive? Does anybody have a recommendation for a particular brand/model firewire case as well as their pros and cons? The ide case ones are significantly quicker, correct? The only problem I can see with those is the size factor; they’re pretty large, especially when I’ll be traveling through NYC and all. The firefly drives are perfect size-wise, but they’re only 4200rpm and that wouldn’t be very useful for video use. I’m thinking about this unit from owc, but it has an external power supply and I’m not sure I’ll have access to an outlet during the class. http://eshop.macsales.com/Catalog_It...em=OWCMEFW80GB
I would love to hear anybody and everybody’s opinion on the firewire hdd subject so that I can make the best choice possible. Thanks.

[PeteWK]

I've got one of the TransIntl.com drives with a 4200 rpm drive in it that works fine for what I do (I'm not a production professional but do use the Mini DV at work).

You just plug the HD into your TiBook and the video camera into the other HD port. The camera doesn't need to be plugged in because of it's battery. It would be in your best interest to have a large capasity camera battery and an extra Powerbook battery in case you can't plug in somewhere.

If you get a empty case, you can install a 5400 rpm drive for about 145 dollars extra (32gb IBM).

PeteWK

[CarpetFluff]

I have a 20 Gb Lacie Pocketdrive, it has two firewire ports and USB 2 and was quite pricey (because of the dual nature of the connections) but it's pretty fast, it does eat up the juice rather quickly when connected to a laptop running on it's battery though and I imagine this will be the same for any drive you buy.

I should think most drives come with a 'through' port of some kind because obviously they're looking for you to buy more of their drives and stack them.

Actually now that I think of it I think I remember seeing some very small adapters to connect any internal drive to a firewire cable. This thing didn't have a case so you're left with an ugly looking internal drive on the outside but it sure solves the problem of size and if you're just keeping it in a laptop bag then you're laughing.

But for the life of me I can't remember who the supplier was, they made a few different versions including a USB one and as far as i can recall it took power straight from the firewire cable and it was quite cheap. If you post an inquiry on this forum about it someones bound to know. In fact i'll do it for you!