Internal/External Conversion & Maxtor Hard Drives

I am new to the whole digital video editing game and I have a crappy Dell Laptop (Pentium 4, XP small business, 512MB RAM). It didn't come with a dvd burner, so I am thinking of getting an external one, and it seems that the Plextors are a good choice. They don't make external ones, so I am going to get a housing with the fan in it to make it external. I have a couple questions (I'll get to the Maxtor in a sec)-

Is it advisable to get one of these dvd burners and then install it in a little housing with a fan that converts the way it is hooked up to the computer from all the internal hookups to firewire or usb?

If that is ok, then I come to the hard drive. I need like 250GB, every one I know has macs and uses Lacie. I know that windows users can use Lacie with some cd that comes with it to reformat it for PCs or something but I worry that could cause later problems. The other brand I hear bandied about is Maxtor. Is this a good brand? Will it work ok with my Dell laptop and the external dvd burner? Is this setup completely asinine to edit video from my Canon XL2 camcorder? Let me know if I am being stupid is you care to stop me from making all these lovely mistakes

-beth

 

My personal opinion about "maxtor" is: They Suck! I've heard nothing but crashing issues with maxtor drives! I had a Maxtor drive one time, 6 months later it died, first it started to sound real scratchy, then it was gone! I've never had a problem with Seagate or Westerndigital though!

 

I also agree with ddp. I have had problems with Western Digital and also IBM drives but never with Maxtor HDD's.

Choices:

1. Maxtor
2. Western Digital

 

OK I will take those suggestions into consideration.

ddp - the new hd was just in addition to the laptop's memory so it would be external, as well. Just a place to store captured video. Hopefully that is ok with these Dell's. I figure I can hook the burner to the firewire and the hard drive to the USB. Or maybe the other way around...hmmm....any ideas on that would be cool, too, I guess! I know these are freshman questions, and I thank you all for taking time to help!

If anyone has any opinions about that whole taking an internal drive and putting a casing on it i will gladly listen, I am still not sure it's a great idea.

 

bethie

It's easy to do and will give you extra storage. Just make sure that you set your HDD in the external case to "Master" by the jumper located on the back of the HDD. External cases today on Newegg.com run around $30 on sale including shipping. It will take you less then 30 minutes to set it up and be up and running. These cases can also handle any full size optical drives as well such as a DVD burner.

 

yup, that is what I will be housing in it, a dvd burner. I looked on newegg and they have one with a fan in it for 43 bucks, I think I might get that one, just for extra protection against overheating (I have been hearing about people having that problem lately). The storage I will buy in it's own external case, like the Maxtor's come in.

does anyone have any ideas concerning the layout for all this external stuff? I think firewire is faster than USB, right? So since I only have one firewire input and 2 USB's in the back of my laptop, would you put the dvd burner or the extra hard drive into the firewire? My inclination is to put the dvd burner, and leave the hard drive with the USB. But then I will have to unplug the burner to input my camera for capture...

OH - and one more thing I almost forgot! If I am only putting a dvd burner into the casing, do I still need to make it the "master"? and if I get a Maxtor type hard drive, do I have to change any settings (slave/master) on that before plugging it in?

 

Ive just made a maxtor external hard drive for my pc. Had a few problems, main one was XP not recognising it.

How to fix that is remove the jumpers.

 

Will do! thanks again!