SATA enclosure for laptop video editing

[Bfavre444]

Here's the plan. I just bought a Dell 6000 laptop with plans to do some heavy video editing. My previous laptop is 2 years old and Firewire external enclosure method was only getting about 15MB/s.



Now that SATA enclosures are available, they're definitely the best choice for notebook editing. (I think). So basically I'm planning to buy an SATA enclosure to put my IDE drive into, specifically the Bytecc ME-740U2SI.

Then I'm planning to get an SATA pcmcia card to connect that enclosure to the laptop.



Will SATA connected like that through the PCMCIA slot (PCI connection) be fast enough? Or will going through PCI slow down the transfer? (since the notebook has no native SATA ports)


Are there any better setups to get the fastest connection for laptop editing?

Thanks.

 

[ribbon13]

Firewire isn't slow at all! I think your external eclosure must just suck. What kind is it? Does it have a Cypress chipset? These rock!

 

[Bfavre444]

I had the ME-720F firewire enclosure and it was slow as h e l l. I would like at least 30-35MB/s sustained for video editing. I've read many firewire benchmarks and they just cannot get up any higher than 20 MB/s average.

There aren't many reviews or setups that I could find about connecting SATA enclosure to laptop. So I'm just trying to find out if SATA is fast enough for me, or if SATA card through PCMCIA is going to be more limited than native SATA on mobo.

 

[ribbon13]

I have a Seagate 7200.8 in one of those enclosures I linked and get 45MB/s all day long.

ME-720F? Bytecc, yep, crappy enclosure... SATA would definately be an improvement from that. Like this one

 

[Bfavre444]

Originally posted by: ribbon13
I have a Seagate 7200.8 in one of those enclosures I linked and get 45MB/s all day long.

ME-720F? Bytecc, yep, crappy enclosure... SATA would definately be an improvement from that. Like this one

I only have IDE drives. So inside the enclosure must be an IDE connector. Since all enclosures are just boxes, do you know what IDE-to-SATA chipsets are good in which enclosures?

 

[ribbon13]

none... all SATA enclosures AFAIK are SATA on the inside... sorry dude.

The would be not point in having an IDE enclosure with SATA on the outside.

You could just get a SATA adapter though... you'd need a molex power connector from somewhere

 

[corkyg]

I would say your best bet is a new Firewire 800 PCMCIA card and a Fire800 external drive. I have a SATA external drive, and it occasionally has problems with "Delayed Write Failure" because Windows does not accept that it is an external drive. Mind you - this is not frequent, but with large video files, it might be more annoying.

800

 

[Bfavre444]

Originally posted by: ribbon13
none... all SATA enclosures AFAIK are SATA on the inside... sorry dude.

The would be not point in having an IDE enclosure with SATA on the outside.

You could just get a SATA adapter though... you'd need a molex power connector from somewhere

There are IDE-to-SATA enclosures out there. It's the same concept as the IDE-to-Firewire/USB2 enclosures that everyone knows about.

So I'm wondering if the IDE-to-SATA conversion inside the enclosure will be the bottleneck or limiting factor. Or if connecting the card through PCI port would add another bottleneck.

 

[imported_Kensai]

IDE to SATA won't change anything as the SATA bus is larger than the IDE bus. Anyhow, a single drive can't saturate that bus at all.

 

[Zucarita9000]

What?!? FireWire slow?... something must be wrong there. External FireWire drives are used by video professionals around the world. Get a LaCie drive or something.