Interface Overkill: Education Next-Steps
This blog post references my cover story 'Interface Overkill? Is eSATA Necessary For Your Next System Design?' in EDN's May 10, 2007 edition. It's one of a series of web addendums to the print writeup.
I began the planning process on this particular project at least a year and a half ago, although the combination of last summer's sabbatical, last fall's Nepal trip and other more pressing editorial obligations kept it on the back burner far longer than I would have envisioned upfront. So I've accumulated quite a bit of research material that I thought you might be interested in perusing.
First off, check out these chronologically ordered eSATA-based product reviews from ExtremeTech and Slashdot:
- eSATA External Storage Drive Reviewed
- eSATA: Fast External Storage
- An eSATA Double Feature
- Fast, Affordable eSATA
- The 12-Drive RAID Storage Box (and commentary from a Microsoft employee)
- USB, FireWire, and eSATA–All in One External Drive
- eSATA Connectors
Next, check out an extreme last-fall workaround for the inoperable eSATA port on the TiVo Series 3 PVR (commentary by Engadget, Gizmodo and MAKE), along with a more recent Engadget hack (and the Digg commentary on it) that seems to enable the eSATA interface….and, besides, doesn't involve cracking open the TiVo case!
As you can probably imagine, high-definition video editing is one of the more demanding applications of direct-attached performance. In light of that fact, check out these excellent (and again, chronologically ordered) articles I've collected from DV and Studio Monthly.
- Laptop Dance
- Hard Drive Storage for Producers
- RAID! A high-speed, high-capacity storage primer
- Build Your Own HD Workstation
While the audio editing payload may not be as hefty as its audio-plus-video counterpart, heavy use of processing plugins (along with other complications) can still stress a storage subsystem. See The Audio Pipeline, from Mix, for more on this topic.
Finally, I'll give a shout-out to InfoStor, which (as you may suspect from the publication's name) does a consistently solid job of covering the storage industry. Below are a few articles that are particularly relevant to my cover story's focus:
