Can anyone recommend good brands that can be used with pc and mac ? 7200 is the speed I am looking at, and around 160 gigs or plus depending on price.
Thanks.

LaCie

Without a doubt, the best out there.

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http://www.jswfilms.com/

hey, i just got the lacie d2 160 gb firewire drive for my g4.

fantastic drive. fantastic price.

few tips though:

DO install all drivers

DO test thouroughly for non laggy capture BEFORE putting anything you care about on it. i had to initilize mine with a difrent block size than then the default.

on my computer (867 g4, os 9.2, fcp3) i have to plug in the camera on one firewire port, open fcp, THEN turn on and mount the hd before i can capture to it. otherwise it lags due to an apparent incompatability with my camera in the firewire bus.

Stirling | Dueling the Fates @ Zomp

I don't agree that you have to stay away from maxtor- i think some drives just crap out regardless of brand- it just happens. though I do agree to stay away from no name brands.

i work in an pc editing lab, with 6 systems using all maxtor drives for system and media drives and no problems for 2 years.

I have two firewire drives, one maxtor one western digital (internal drive inside of a firewire enclosure). No problems at all. I also bring my drives back and forth from the lab all the time.

You might want to look into getting an internal drive and puting it in a firewire enclosure if you are comfortable with installing stuff- you can save some $$ doing this (just be sure to find a nice enclosure, not a cheap one)

Also a nice place to look for hd deals is: http://www.xpbargains.com/best_deal.php/hard_drive_deals.htm

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Clyde
www.partypooperfilms.com

So is there different hd's for different platforms, I could not load footage from a pc to the drive then load it on to a mac ?

you must format the drive for either pc or mac and can't go back and forth. someone correct me if i'm wrong on this, but I'm pretty sure this is the way it is.

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Clyde
www.partypooperfilms.com

ok, i've never tried that, but...

it IS 100% compatible with both platforms, same drive ships to you no matter which platform you've got. i don't know if you need to install drivers on both copms to just copy files but i bet it's a good idea.

Stirling | Dueling the Fates @ Zomp

I just got this off the dell site in regards to the Lacie Firewire HD's

"Compatible with Mac OS and Windows, the 120 GB d2 drive enables simple cross-platform data sharing and exchange among workstations."

I think that answers my question, but if anyone has any first hand experience or conflict, I'd love to know before I make my purchase.
Thanks.

the hd that came on my computer was maxtor, it crapped out on me and the computer company sent me a samsung, then i added on a seagate... haven't had any problems with either of the new drives... so i'd stay away from maxtor

I've used the Acom Data external Firewire/USB 2.0 drives with great results:

http://www.acomdata.com/scripts/hdd-listing.asp

Jerry Jones
http://www.jonesgroup.net

hey, i run both pc and mac, heres what i did.

first off, regarding the drive itself, get an external firewire case, get an internal drive for it. i got a 120gb seagate and a case for 120 bucks at newegg.com, and that was a few months ago now.

secondly, yes, you can run the drive on both pc and mac, just make sure you format the drive on your mac, not the pc. specify the drive as a pc drive when formatting. (this was my experience with os9 by the way, i dont know about osx). heres the catch: mac cant read NTFS. if you format with pc, it will most likely format ntfs. I ran into an issue with the mac formatting my drive (as FAT) and it limited my 120gb to 55gb. i suspect there may be a way around this, anyone know if osx handles NTFS? it might.

regardless, i highly suggest an internal drive in an external case, WAY cheaper and just as reliable really. hope this helps.

on a side note, the formatting software from seagate is pretty simple and very powerful, solved some major issues for me after the mac determined my drive size was 55gb. getting the pc to believe the drive was 120 gb after that was a pain. their software made it a breeze. i dont know if formatting as FAT with that software would solve the drive size issue, it might. its worth looking into.