[Mulderator]

Ok, here is the deal. I am putting all my home movies on computer hard drives because I have a networked DVD player that is connected to my computer (wired network because of streaming the video). I want to use external hard drives so I can continue to add on. Is there some easy way to daisy chain them together? Also, I was thinking firewire would be necessary because of the need to stream video across the network to my DVD player.

What are the options?

 

[squidboy]

Ok, here is the deal. I am putting all my home movies on computer hard drives because I have a networked DVD player that is connected to my computer (wired network because of streaming the video). I want to use external hard drives so I can continue to add on. Is there some easy way to daisy chain them together? Also, I was thinking firewire would be necessary because of the need to stream video across the network to my DVD player.

What are the options?

I'm gonna ask you to elaborate a bit because I don't fully understand the question.

First, just how much HD space do you need? You can purchase a large drive (200-300 gig) and add it to your current rig internally for a reasonable cost.

You could store stuff there and just share it across your network to burn to your DVD player if that's what you need. (?)

You say you want external drives so you can add on but those are best suited if you really need mobility for that drive (i.e., carrying that data to other locations). If you don't need mobility I would buy a large internal drive.

If you want to copy your DVD's (lets say, a lot of them) to your HD's I would still go internal. If you need a *lot* of space (say, more than 500 gigs) I would look into a RAID configuration. What you want is doable...we just need some more details.

 

[philip kirkham]

here in the UK, i worked at a trade centre (not for the general public, just retail) and in the department i worked in there was a DVD player which worked on the same principle that you are trying to achieve, it was a standard DVD player with i think a 40GB hard drive, the principle was you placed a DVD in the machine and recorded the movie to the drive, this then allowed for the disk to be removed and taken else where, the movie and all the features of the disk were stored on the drive, in fact upto 77 hours worth of movies could be done, this allowed resonable access to each of the stored DVD's without the need for opening and loading the different disks, i believe even recording off normal TV was possible but this was not clear as no-one really checked the paperwork. The only drawback as most people were concerned was that you could not CREATE a DVD with this machine, you could only over write a movie when space was not available.

I think the machine was either a Toshiba or Deawoo, but with it being 4 months ago i cannot remember clearly.

I take it you have some way of transfering the movies to the computer in the first place.

phil

 

[Mulderator]

I'm gonna ask you to elaborate a bit because I don't fully understand the question.

First, just how much HD space do you need? You can purchase a large drive (200-300 gig) and add it to your current rig internally for a reasonable cost.

You could store stuff there and just share it across your network to burn to your DVD player if that's what you need. (?)

You say you want external drives so you can add on but those are best suited if you really need mobility for that drive (i.e., carrying that data to other locations). If you don't need mobility I would buy a large internal drive.

If you want to copy your DVD's (lets say, a lot of them) to your HD's I would still go internal. If you need a *lot* of space (say, more than 500 gigs) I would look into a RAID configuration. What you want is doable...we just need some more details.

Well, I am going to need considerably more than a few hundred Gigs. What I am doing is putting all of my home movies for 15 years on hard drive. I am NOT burning to DVD. My DVD player has an ethernet port in it, which is connected to my router. It also has server software that runs on my computer. So, all I need to do is take my remote and click on an icon for movies and then play the movies right from my living room (the DVD player plays the movies from the hard drive not from a DVD) on my plasma TV--its pretty cool. But I see this as an expanding thing also. When high definition video cameras come down to a reasonable cost in a few years, I'll probably get one of those, which means the videos will be much larger.

So the point is you can have 10 hard drives sitting under a desk daisy chained together. See this as an example:

http://www.superwarehouse.com/SmartDisk_CrossFire_160GB_External_Hard_Disk_Drive/XF160F/p/349415

My issue is what do I gain by an internal hard drive and how do I add three or four hard drives? What do you mean by a RAID configuration?

Here is a link to the DVD player I have if you need more information on how that works:

http://www.momitsu.com/dvd_880n.html

 

[Mulderator]

I take it you have some way of transfering the movies to the computer in the first place.

phil

Yes, that's easy.

 

[bonzobob999]

I think the cost would be cheaper to buy a caddy for IDE drives using USB 2.0 something like this.

http://www.akasa.co.uk/spec/cases/spec_ak_en_03sl.htm

Then purchasing Internal IDE drives for it, or indeed buying a few of these caddy's to hold your drives.
Don't know about chaining them together but with a USB 2.0 card you should be able to connect a good few drives @say 300 gig each.

 

[Mulderator]

I think the cost would be cheaper to buy a caddy for IDE drives using USB 2.0 something like this.

http://www.akasa.co.uk/spec/cases/spec_ak_en_03sl.htm

Then purchasing Internal IDE drives for it, or indeed buying a few of these caddy's to hold your drives.
Don't know about chaining them together but with a USB 2.0 card you should be able to connect a good few drives @say 300 gig each.

I like that idea because the internal drives are cheaper, but it said one of the cons was "No way of daisy chaining a few together." But I do have a number of open USB connections. There is no need to have all of the drives chained to gether at once as it easy enough to swap out a few drives here and there.

How do I know if my USB connections 2.0, btw?

 

[Mulderator]

Here is an interesting article with a lot of ideas:

http://www6.tomshardware.com/mobile...ed_adapter_a_tiny_device_with_a_lot_of_effect

 

[bonzobob999]

Looks a bit messy, external power, YUCK
Look in your system propertys under device manager/USB controllers it should tell you there if you are running USB 2.0 even so you will be able to buy a USB 2.0 card then it will allow you to keep the others free

 

[Mulderator]

Here is an external enclosure that has two firewire drives, so it looks like it can be daisy chained.

http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=31389&CatId=1204

Although I've yet to comprehend why internal drives are better than external. The price difference doesn't appear to be significant to me.

 

[MSY-Houston]

I like LaCie (Porsche) drives myself. If you've got Firewire ports, you can daisy-chain to your hearts content. They've even got one for storing 1.6 terabytes (see info from the lacie.com site below).


Desktop
Choose from 80GB to 250GB hard drives with the elegant look of Design by F.A. Porsche, equipped with Hi-Speed USB 2.0 or FireWire 400. For more capacity, try the faster d2 SATA offering 400GB at up to 1.5Gbits/s, or the d2 Extreme with Triple Interface (FireWire 800, FireWire 400, USB 2.0). For the most demanding users, we provide the most powerful drives available - LaCie Big Disk and Bigger Disk - ranging from 320GB to an astounding 1.6 terabytes, with Triple Interface or with FireWire800 and built-in RAID 0.

 

[OldDosGuy]

Mulder, I just got into video myself. I have a JVC DR-MV1S machine that will dub VHS to DVD-Rs or DVD-R/Ws. Then you can edit your home videos and take out the "junk" we all tend to take when making home videos. I have finished transferring some 43+ hours of VHS video to DVD, which is all of our home videos since 1985. Since I'm more into still photography, our VHS home videos came in "spurts," and that's why we only have about 43 hours of home video.

Anyway, just another way to go instead of the hard drive route. My plan is to edit my home videos and keep them on DVDs, number the DVDs, and keep a database of what is on each DVD. I have completed two DVDs so far.

I looked at your machine: http://www.momitsu.com/dvd_880n.html.
I will definitely read more about this machine. It looks very interesting!

OldDosGuy

 

[Mulderator]

Mulder, I just got into video myself. I have a JVC DR-MV1S machine that will dub VHS to DVD-Rs or DVD-R/Ws. Then you can edit your home videos and take out the "junk" we all tend to take when making home videos. I have finished transferring some 43+ hours of VHS video to DVD, which is all of our home videos since 1985. Since I'm more into still photography, our VHS home videos came in "spurts," and that's why we only have about 43 hours of home video.

Anyway, just another way to go instead of the hard drive route. My plan is to edit my home videos and keep them on DVDs, number the DVDs, and keep a database of what is on each DVD. I have completed two DVDs so far.

I looked at your machine: http://www.momitsu.com/dvd_880n.html.
I will definitely read more about this machine. It looks very interesting!

OldDosGuy

Yes, that is a good way, however that requires you to keep a database of what is on each DVD, etc and you need to have dozens of DVDs all catelogued with what is on them. What is nice about the Momitsu and my system is you have it all in one place at the click of a remote. You can store for example your videos in different directories and the video as long or as short as possible. For example, you could keep 40 different clips in one directory dealing with a specific topic (like vacations). You can also create a jpeg file in the directory with a list of what is each file.

One thing to keep in mind is the transfer of video to DVD is problematic I have found--often the DVD does not play correctly (you get pixelation or it freezes, etc). I have had no problems playing DVD Mpeg on the Momitsu right of the hard drive.

 

[Mulderator]

The other thing I'm thinking is I do have an old computer upstairs that I have to get rid of at this point. That computer is hard wired to my network, so I could use that to store files--just need a barebones computer with plenty of slots for hard drives. Any recommendations?

 

[bonzobob999]

Not very portable that way though.

 

[Mulderator]

Not very portable that way though.

True, but portability is not high on my priority list.

 

[squidboy]

Although I've yet to comprehend why internal drives are better than external. The price difference doesn't appear to be significant to me.

Speed.

Data transfer on internal drives are still significantly faster than (most) any external device, including firewire.

I imagine the issue then is price, performance and portability. I agree chaining external drives might be easier than if you couldn't plan your storage needs via internal drives.

But if you find chaining drives to provide adequate performance for viewing then that might be ok for you.

 

[Moby]

The other thing I'm thinking is I do have an old computer upstairs that I have to get rid of at this point. That computer is hard wired to my network, so I could use that to store files--just need a barebones computer with plenty of slots for hard drives. Any recommendations?

How many slots does it have at the moment? You could add/upgrade to bigger drives to fill all the 3.5" bays it has, use the 5.25 bays for 3.5" hard drives too with converter brackets,add a PCI card so it can take more than 4 drives. All this for hardly any cost other than the internal hardrives you would need to buy anyway for the time being.
This will allow you to start organizing/getting your videos on drives straight way. If and when the computer finally gives up the ghost, instead of replacing it, put all the hard drives in something like these. A much cheaper option than buying another computer. Plug these into any computers already on your network and add as you go if the need be.
A basic 4 bay enclosure

With this next one, if and when you fill 4 hard drives, instead of buying another full 4 bay enclosure, you could buy the individual pull out cradles with each extra hard drive and just swap them when needed. This way it gets cheaper as you go.
4 bay swappable enclosure

Or what the hell, have this and be done with it. Still cheaper than another, even barebones computer I would think. And if you can fill all 8 x 300GB hard drives, then you really need to stay in more
8 bay swappable enclosure

 

[Mulderator]

How many slots does it have at the moment? You could add/upgrade to bigger drives to fill all the 3.5" bays it has, use the 5.25 bays for 3.5" hard drives too with converter brackets,add a PCI card so it can take more than 4 drives. All this for hardly any cost other than the internal hardrives you would need to buy anyway for the time being.
This will allow you to start organizing/getting your videos on drives straight way. If and when the computer finally gives up the ghost, instead of replacing it, put all the hard drives in something like these. A much cheaper option than buying another computer. Plug these into any computers already on your network and add as you go if the need be.
A basic 4 bay enclosure

With this next one, if and when you fill 4 hard drives, instead of buying another full 4 bay enclosure, you could buy the individual pull out cradles with each extra hard drive and just swap them when needed. This way it gets cheaper as you go.
4 bay swappable enclosure

Or what the hell, have this and be done with it. Still cheaper than another, even barebones computer I would think. And if you can fill all 8 x 300GB hard drives, then you really need to stay in more
8 bay swappable enclosure

That looks like a good idea Mugsy, but how do you connect those to you computer? Do they daisy chain together by connecting one USB or firewire port or do you have to have four connections?

 

[Moby]

I assumed they connect to your computer via a single firewire connection and would show up as 4 extra drives/letters, but it's not very clear. They come with 4 external firewire ports. The 8 bay one comes with 8 external ports, maybe that suggests that they connect individually, again it's not very clear in that link. I'll look further but the worse case scenario is a 4 port firewire PCI card installed on your connecting computer. They are not expensive.
http://www.softwareandstuff.com/CRD10134.html