Matt Foley wrote in message <6etbje$819@sjx-ixn3.ix.netcom.com>...

>I am considering th 3 drives below...which is better? I will be using
>a Miro DV300 and Miro DC30+
>
>1) IBM IDVGS9U
>The IBM "Thresher" 9.1 GB Ultra-Wide SCSI hard drives that features a
>10,020rpm spindle speed, 6.3 ms access time, 1MB cache buffer and a 5
>year warranty.
>
>2) Seagate ST19101WD
>The Seagate "Cheetah" 9.1 GB Internal Wide-Differential SCSI hard
>drive that features a 10,000rpm spindle speed, 8.0 ms access time,
>512K buffer and a 5 year warranty
>
>3) Quantum XP39100WAV
>The Quantum "Atlas" series 9.1GB Ultra Wide SCSI A/V (Audio/Video)
>bare internal hard drive features a 7200rpm spindle speed, 8.0ms
>access time, 512K buffer, and a 5 year warranty
>
>any help would be greatly appreciated...


Since the mini-DV data rate is relatively constant and modest, you
may not need these expensive drives - an IBM 8.4-gig UDMA Deskstar 8
(around $320, with no $300 SCSI card required...) seems to work fine
with the Spark card (not yet thoroughly tested here, though...).
The software for Spark is not set up to go back and capture dropped
frames as I think it is with the DV-300... (but there just aren't any
dropped frames ;-). The Deskstar 8 is also a very quiet and cool-running
drive, in addition to being very fast (5.7M/second *minimum* sustained
data transfer rate, the ONE spec of value in mini-DV editing). BTW,
there is a slightly faster 14-gig IBM UDMA about to be available, too.
These IBM drives appear to be fast enough to not require striping when
used for mini-DV with FireWire cards, though you may need to do it
for the analogue-input DC30+ (I don't have any experience with this).
--
David Ruether
http://www.fcinet.com/ruether