Use of external hard drive

[Bob D]

When using a USB connected external hard drive with video files in PE, is it best to copy the file to an internal hard drive or leave it on the external hard drive? Are there any pros or cons to leaving it on the external drive?

Bob D

[Gooder]

I have done both, Bob!
I think it really depends on what your workflow choice is

I am editing my own Weding film and the video files brought in from the camcorder are on a 500GB external drive, along with photos, music, and audio taken from the day. The whole project is on this drive in a folder and I also have another two smaller projects also on this drive in a separate folder.

My extra internal 250GB drive (not the OS drive) holds ( a copy of the auto saved files from Pro CS3 ) various motion menus, backgrounds, music, fx, most of the things I would use over and over for other projects. Which is also backed up to an external offline 250GB drive (call me cautious)

I'm sure my workflow could be improved upon but it works for me so far!
I know that if anything happens to the PC then my work is still on my external 500GB drive!!!

I would be interested in hearing what other forum members have to say.

Cheers,
Lee

[Bob D]

Thanks Lee,

So you don't see any performance issues on the timeline if using an external hard drive? I guess, that is where I would have expected maybe some delays.

Bob D

[Chuck Engels]

Bob, I have used my external drive and internal drive for projects and scratch disks.
Most times I don't even notice a difference between the two. Best thing is to give it a test on your machine.

[Gooder]

So you don't see any performance issues on the timeline if using an external hard drive? I guess, that is where I would have expected maybe some delays.

Not so much and if any, it has been worth it to have projects safe in the event of a PC crash, or anything like that!

As Chuck said "Best thing is to give it a test on your machine", I agree

You could just use your external drive to store the video, photos, music and other media. Then use your internal drive for render/preview files, ( scratch disk )that way you should not see any timeline performance issues! I will be doing that for my next porject as render files can be re-created so no loss there.

If you have a latest PC spec machine then I do not think it will matter where you have your projects!

Cheers,
Lee

[Bob D]

Thanks guys. I'll check it out on my next project.

Bob D

[Briantho]

I now have 10 500 gb external drives all connected with USB 2.0 - but never all at the same time! Yes, 5 terabytes. Mostly Western Digital. A few of them are simply backing up current projects. I keep all files related to video editing on them and nothing on my two machines. That way, when I have some rendering/burning to do I simply 'safely remove hardware', connect the drive to the other machine and let that run while I get on with something else on my prefered machine.

500 GB drives are SO cheap these days that I'll probably buy a couple more during the summer.

About 10 years ago Bill Gates did a presentation on 'The Terabyte Server' and we were all suitably impressed ;-)

[Gooder]

10 500GB drives!

Very nice, Briantho!

I think you and Chuck might be in competition with each other
Only joking.

Lee

[Chuck Engels]

Brian Wins!!!

I only have 2.5TB of space and some of that is internal

[Briantho]

Oh well.. if you want to bring in internal then chalk me up for another 0.6 terabytes. Now, where did I last see that file....? ;-)