Replacing/Upgrading Sound Devices 744t Hard Drive?

[baustin]

I want to replace the 40gb factory drive that came with 744t.

Looking for specs on brands, size and speed (as to not kill my battery).

-bryan

[boojum]

Have you tried the company website?  A very good place to start.   

[spcyrfc]

there was some talk of solid state adaptors for the 7xx models.  would be pretty sweet to throw in a SS120 gb hd or some such.  not sure if it is possible tho.

[mmedley.]

http://www.sounddevices.com/notes/recorders/drive-replacement/



Go with a 5400RPM drive to save battery power vs a 7200RPM drive. I like Seagate with the 5yr warranty. Make sure it is IDE drive and not a SATA.


Here is what I replaced mine with....120GB.....

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822148130


Here is the 160GB version....

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822148073


It is really easy to replace the drive, just make sure to follow the instructions to a T. REad the instructions a few times before giving it the ol college try. It is also a good idea to replace the AA rechargable battery that holds the time and date data. Any typical AA rechargable battery is okay. I used a Energizer 2500mah from CVS.

[OFOTD]

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136159

Super easy to replace.  Installed the above 250GB drive with no problems in less than 15 minutes.   Definitely go with a 5400RPM drive.

[Sebastian]

FWIW, I just replaced my MacBook's HD. I also paid attention to the drive's power consumption to make my laptop as portable as possible. I found that Fujitsu have some of the drives with the lowest power consumption in the market. But when it comes to power consumption, nothing beats SSD drives. They come with a way higher price tag, though.

[OFOTD]

FWIW, I just replaced my MacBook's HD. I also paid attention to the drive's power consumption to make my laptop as portable as possible. I found that Fujitsu have some of the drives with the lowest power consumption in the market. But when it comes to power consumption, nothing beats SSD drives. They come with a way higher price tag, though.

Just something to remember if power consumption is a primary concern for your portable recorders (i.e. 7xx).  Most if not all of the 'green' drives save power by shutting down the platters at certain intervals.  Low power consumption is tough for a drive in continuous write mode for >30 minutes at a time usually.   Alot of the drives will shut themselves down for a period to save power, but the problem is that they make them so their power settings are unable to be changed manually to increase the shutdown time intervals.   Standard middle of the road 5400rpm drives in a 744 last what 5-6 hours on on a 6800+ mAh battery so i'm not sure exactly how much a 'green' drive would save you over the long haul.   

SSD's?   Two things there.  1. It (SSD drives) really is very much still in its infancy.  Read alot of reviews of different drives and you'll see they still have a pretty high failure rate when compared to current HD's.  Lots of articles on SSD 'performance degradation' out there.   It's just not something i'm willing to trust in the field just yet.   2. I've used a couple of SSD's.  A 64GB Transcend drive in an external eSata enclosure and have a 32GB drive in a ASUS netbook I just bought.   Think they both are just average performance wise.   Not great, not bad just average.   For the price tag I expect better performance. 

For $175 you can get a G.SKILL/Kingston/Transcend 64GB SSD or for $90 you can buy a Seagate 500GB HD.   The $80 you saved let's you buy two large capacity batteries for your 7xx to boot.

Little bit of food for thought.

[mmedley.]

Not to mention that most SSD's are not any more power saving compared to a standard rotating drives. I remember reading an article about how SSD power savings are not all that great in standard computing practice, however, in excessive data transfers (7XX's case) there have been some improvements. I almost went with a 64GB SSD for my 722, but decided against it since it is just too new of a technology and the circumstances with which the 7XX operates. Lastly, I was also concerned with how the data bursts on SSDs and how it can lockup for up to 15 seconds when operating. This is a major hurdle that plagues SSD at the moment.

[midside]

To save power (and heat), I just record on CF and dump everything to the internal HD after recording...works well.

[OFOTD]

To save power (and heat), I just record on CF and dump everything to the internal HD after recording...works well.

But then you have no data redundancy during the actual recording.   Heck that's one of the greatest features of the 7xx with HD's.   Instant backup. 

   

[midside]

Never needed it, never had an issue...that is one the even better features of the SD recorders
Nevertheless, if I run the HD, the unit gets very hot in the bag and usually I do not have the option of running outside of my bag.  To me, running nice and cool, which extends the life of the HD and recorder is a much better trade off than running hot in fear of data loss.  But, perhaps I would feel differently if I ever lost something that was really important while recording on this unit...

[notlance]

I never had a SD box mess up a CF during recording, but I've had Windows mess up a CF when I was uploading to my computer.  Since the CF was the only copy I had, I needed to extract the data from the CF via a hex editor.  Now I always record to both HDD and CF.