External HD for 4KPro???

[PaulBusta]

I have to transfer the material on about 10 hard drives from my Reno. to my 4KPro. I won't save all of it but it's still going to take awhile. Sure wish the Pro had removable HD bays but the internal HD's we use are getting hard to find, everyone is going to the external way. So my question is who makes a good external firewire HD? I think it's been asked before but I can't find it.

Thanks much guys

[TimKennelly]

Frankly Paul, I would use USB drives as the S4P can use them.

I personally bought a VANTEC NST-D100SU external drive dock.

It uses the much easier to find OEM SATA drives and connects via USB to the S4P.

You just stick the bare drive into the slot after FAT32 formatting which you have to do on a PC with a small free downloadable program that formats a 500 GB drive in litterally three seconds or so.

I got mine here:

http://www.zipzoomfly.com/jsp/ProductDe ... t=celebros

[chetdavis]

As Tim pointed out, you can purhchase many of the contemporary external HDDs but we will continue to offer models that require no programming -- we will soon have two new External HDDs for use with both Smart Edit & Bogart SE OS Casablanca editors for the Storyboard Archive functions. These will be LaCie Poulton External Hard Drives and will have FireWire, USB and eSATA connections.

There will be two models - LACIE 750 GB and the LACIE1000 GB (also known as 1 Terabyte).
Pricing will be announced next week.

Regards,
Chet

[PaulBusta]

Tim, I like the docking idea, just switch the HDD not the whole case and everything. Does it come with Mac formatting software or just PC. My Mac only has 1.0 USB, do you need 2.0. How do you format the drive? I've never done anything like this before, I'm a real "babe in the woods". And one final question, will the Ultra 100 HDD's I have now work with the dock without formatting. Thanks.

[TimKennelly]

Lots of questions, some that I cannot answer.

I do not do Mac and cannot answer anything related to them.

Your old drives would not work with this dock as it uses the new SATA drives.

PATA and SATA drives have different physical configurations of both their IDE and power jacks.

Regarding formatting, it requires downloading from here: http://www.ridgecrop.demon.co.uk/index. ... format.htm

You download the FAT32Format file (very small), unzip and use it following the directions on the site.

The formatting is lightning quick and will work on both PATA and SATA drives.

There is a killer deal on 500GB SATA drives for $67 right now at http://accessories.us.dell.com/sna/prod ... lid=680413.

Unfortunately, my new occupation is stretching me to the limit and I am participating here as much as I can already and I simply cannot take on one on one tech support for this procedure.

So, while this is not a difficult process, if you are not fairly computer literate you might be better off buying pre-formatted drives from MSUS.

[PaulBusta]

Thanks Tim, from what I read I need a PC so it looks like I'm SOL.

[PaulBusta]

Chet, when those two drives are available would you please post it, thanks.