Article Summary:

Underwater video guru Drew Wong explores powerful options for portable hard drives and the increasing popularity of eSata connectors. In particular, I was interested to know that there is a 2-drive RAID enclosure that supports data over eSata while pulling power from Firewire.

While FW800 is adequate for backing up, it is limited to 66MB/s, whereas eSATA is at 134MB/s. The eSATA interface isn’t bus powered but the extra speed helps smooth out the workflow of backing up and clearing the flash cards for further shooting. The most important thing is these drives are fast enough to edit with multiple streams of HQ codecs like Pro Res 422HQ.

Of course, FireWire 3200 (S3200) is supposedly just around the corner and tops out at 400 MB/sec. Until eSata gets power, it seems to be rather unwieldy for mobile use.