External hard drive for Mac & Vista PC?

September 10, 2009 6:44 PM

I need an external firewire hard drive for video editing on a Mac at university. Is there a product that will also let me access the footage stored when I'm at home on my Vista PC?

We're using Final Cut Pro to log and capture our footage, which will be stored on the external drive. We're then editing on FCP, again using the external drive, but I was hoping to be able to also have access the footage after classes have finished, using my copy of Premier on my Vista PC at home.

Our lecturer recommended Western Digital drives, which I read can work on Mac and PC, but he's Mac-only so wasn't much help with my question. He's also recommended we get a "IEEE 1394b 800 (9 pin connection) Mac-compatible external drive, at least 500GB, preferably 1TB" if that helps any...

I need to go out and buy something this weekend, and am from Melbourne, Australia, so if anyone has any suggestions as to what might be suitable, and be available out here, it would be fantastic!

Thanks for your help!

posted by saileyn to computers & internet (12 comments total)

Whatever you get... you will need to utilize a filesystem that is compatible with Mac OS X and Windows. You'll be stuck with FAT32... and all it's faults. But... it just keeps truckin'.
posted by PROD_TPSL at 7:04 PM on September 10

So he's recommending what's more commonly called a firewire drive and one that's firewire 800 as that's faster for access to video footage. WD's "My Book Studio" meets these criteria, though it's not the only one. Almost all drives with a Firewire 800 interface will also have a USB interface, but double-check.

The major issue is how the drive is formatted: windows drives come formatted as NTFS while the "for Mac" drives come as HFS+. Unfortunately, neither of these can be read by the other without some help. You can buy software called "MacDrive" for your PC that will let you read a HFS+ drive on a Vista box or there's similar software that you can get to handle NTFS on a Mac.

Both system can read a drive formatted as FAT32, but that only goes to 32GB which isn't enough. Mac support for exFAT (which allows for any size drive) is not any better than NTFS support.

Since I doubt you can install stuff at school, the simplest solution is probably to buy something like a My Book Studio drive and buy MacDrive for home use. You may be able to get free HFS+ drivers for Vista but I know nothing about them - sorry.

You can also buy a cheaper USB 2.0 drive and format it as HFS+ but you may find that USB isn't fast enough to handle large video files very smoothly.
posted by GuyZero at 7:10 PM on September 10

Some PCs have Firewire ports, but it's less common now because Firewire as a standard is pretty much dead. If your PC has a firewire port, and if the HD is formatted with a PC-compatible file system (e.g. FAT32) then you just plug it in and Windows will understand it. There's nothing extra required for that.

But you're better off with USB 2 anymore. More products available, higher volume sales so lower prices.

Just in passing, some external drives have both Firewire and USB2 interfaces. I've got an external drive from Seagate like that.
posted by Chocolate Pickle at 7:16 PM on September 10

I haven't had very much luck with using FAT32 on my volumes. I have endless horror stories about students who purchased a USB flash drive or an external HD which almost always ship as FAT16 for FAT32 formatted volumes...and then data corruption occurs and they end up losing their work. I long ago stopped recommending FAT32 as a reliable volume format for cross-platform work.

Much more reliable is NTFS, but here's the catch. While Mac OS X has support for reading NTFS volumes, it's read-only support. There are some 3rd-party (and unsupported as far as Apple is concerned) extensions you can install (NTFS-3G and MacFuse and Paragon NTFS) these all require that you be able to install them on the Mac OS X machine. I suspect that you'll be using Final Cut Pro in a lab environment and won't have this option.

Therefore, the only solution left that I can think of is to install a utility that will allow you tread an HFS+ (also called Mac OS Extended) volume on your Windows PC. MacDrive is one such product. There are one or two more but I am not recalling them at the moment.
posted by mrbarrett.com at 7:21 PM on September 10

Ugh, proofread, Damien, proofread!

....allow tread an HFS+ = allow to read an HFS+ ...

So the best solution is to:

1) Install a Firewire card in your Vista PC.
2) Purchase a Firewire 800 external HD and format it HFS+
3) Install MacDrive on your Vista PC to read the HFS+ volume

Sorry for the fractured answer. Premature e-click-ulation. Hope this helps.
posted by mrbarrett.com at 7:26 PM on September 10 [1 favorite]

Thank you so much for such quick replies everyone!

I think GuyZero and Damien (mrbarrett) might be right on the money with using the MacDrive software on my Vista PC. And thanks for spelling it out so clearly Damien, that's exactly what I needed!
posted by saileyn at 7:34 PM on September 10

If you get a drive with both FW800 and USB you won't need a PC FW card unless you find USB too slow.
posted by GuyZero at 7:38 PM on September 10

FWIW, in the video editing arena, Firewire is much more preferred than USB 2.0. This is mostly because USB 2.0 is much more processor-intensive. When copying large files or doing intensive I/O operations to a USB 2.0 drive, the computer's operating speed takes a significant hit, and this can cause slowdowns in video editing software like Final Cut Pro or Premiere.

Yes, you can use USB 2.0. Many people do and it's a nice fallback. But if you're serious about performance and want to open and edit your video files directly from your external HD, you'll want Firewire, not USB 2.0.
posted by mrbarrett.com at 7:43 PM on September 10

Use MacDrive and format HFS+. FAT32 has file size limits that could cause serious headaches with video files. I'd get a triple interface drive: USB2/IEEE1394 (Firewire)/eSATA. FireWire is dying, no question, but USB2 is slow and you'll feel the pain when doing video work.
posted by chairface at 11:01 PM on September 10

I use macdrive to access my external on a WinXP machine. My external is the WD My Book and I got it with SATA as well. USB 2.0 is slow on the video even in playback and no lie, it does not come close to what I would want for editing, but I am on some pretty crappy hardware.

Get separate externals for back-up of your main and file transfer. There will be much less weeping.
posted by jadepearl at 11:59 PM on September 10

I agree with mrbarrett's approach. I would take it a step further and also look into turning that vista machine into a hackintosh. Having the programs you use at school on your home machine will definitely give you an edge.
posted by bravowhiskey at 9:48 AM on September 11

Thanks again everyone for your help.

Like jadepearl, I ended up with a WD My Book with USB, Firewire and eSATA. It runs nicely on school's Mac Pros with Firewire and formatted HFS+ (after some initial confusion with the drive formatting itself to FAT32) and I use Macdrive to access it from my Vista PC.
posted by saileyn at 7:51 PM on November 22