Question about external hard drive

L

_Lynn_

New Member
I have a few basic questions about external hard drives. My teacher says that all students are required to buy an external hard drive with the following:
- 7200rpm
- Firewire 800
- USB 2.0
- 1TB
- Have its own power supply
We're doing some basic video editing, is this really needed? My laptop doesn't even have a firewire port, why doesn't regular USB work for video editing? And why must the drive have its own power supply?
Can someone explain please, kind of confused why we need all this just for a few sessions of very basic video editing, especially since I can't even use this $100-200 piece of hardware outside of class as my laptop has no firewire port.
Thanks
 
A USB drive will be fine. I would assume your professor meant Firewire OR USB. Having both is, as you concluded, dumb considering you don't have a firewire port.

The reason it must have an external power supply is because you cannot (afaik) get a 1tb external laptop drive (the kind that doesn't need external power supplies). Thus you are forced to get an external desktop drive, which all will require external power supplies. (Hope that made sense).

Though 1tb for basic video editing seems a bit extreme.

We here at Computer Forum, are of course not your teacher. If you want a definitive answer then ask him/her.
 
Thank you.
Are there external drives that has both firewire and USB? So it switches to firewire if the computer connected has firewire, and switches back to USB if it doesn't? My laptop has an "expresscard" and "eSATA" port, are those usable?
Also will such an external drive work on both desktop iMac and windows laptop, assuming 1TB is not a requirement (I don't think she will care if I get a 500GB one, no way we're making 1TB of video, that's for hollywood professionals)? My main concern is buying something that I can never use, because I don't use desktop or Apple computers.
 
_Lynn_ said:
Thank you.
Are there external drives that has both firewire and USB? So it switches to firewire if the computer connected has firewire, and switches back to USB if it doesn't? My laptop has an "expresscard" and "eSATA" port, are those usable?
Also will such an external drive work on both desktop iMac and windows laptop, assuming 1TB is not a requirement (I don't think she will care if I get a 500GB one, no way we're making 1TB of video, that's for hollywood professionals)? My main concern is buying something that I can never use, because I don't use desktop or Apple computers.
Click to expand...

They use different connectors, it will use which ever one you plug it in with. There's not 1 cable that will connect to everything. You can get externals with all kinds of different interfaces, some have usb, firewire and esata, some have 2 of the 3 and some only have 1.
 
kobaj said:
The reason it must have an external power supply is because you cannot (afaik) get a 1tb external laptop drive (the kind that doesn't need external power supplies). Thus you are forced to get an external desktop drive, which all will require external power supplies. (Hope that made sense).
Click to expand...

They do indeed sell 2.5" 1TB drives. I've got about 15 of these sitting in the showroom :D

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822149191
 
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