external USB 2.0 drive for video?

[mrfeh]

I'm in need of more disk space for my ever-growing video needs. Are USB 2.0 drives fast enough for video editing/capturing?

Thanks!

[oldandinthe way]

In my opinion - NO,

They will probably work but if you are used to the speed of internal drives you will be frustrated.

I use mine for backup and do the real work on internal SATA drives.

[harley2ride]

You could look into an external Firewire drive. Even if they would work, you would still be better off adding a PCI card or a SATA card, an extra cooling fan, and an additional drive. If that isn't feasable, try buying a larger replacement HD.

[classfour]

When I build a desktop for my personal video needs, I include a removable HDD rack in the build. I have used a USB 2.0 external enclosure with one of these removable racks with my laptop [(2.6GHz), rather than the internal HDD (30GB, 4200RPM), to minimize the heat build up within the computer] without any problems, using the laptops DVD-ROM drive for ripping, etc.; and a Plextor 716UF for DVD-R burning. I do use a "laptop cooler" when doing any CPU intensive video work. I have two 2.5" drive enclosures with 30GB laptop drives, but only use these for data storage for transfer, etc., never for video use. I simply feel they would not hold up for prolonged video use. Using the removable enclosure allows transfer of the HDD to whichever computer I need for whatever type of work being performed.

Do I prefer an external HDD for video work? Not really.

Will it actually work? Yes, expecially with the fan enclosures.

Is the transfer rate sufficient? That depends on the burner, CPU, memory, etc. of the machine being used.

[jagabo]

I'm in need of more disk space for my ever-growing video needs. Are USB 2.0 drives fast enough for video editing/capturing?

Editing -- yes. Capturing -- it depends.

If you capture with a hardware MPEG2 encoder like the Hauppauge WinTV PVR or DV from a DV camcorder, yes. If you are capturing raw YUV video and saving as uncomrpessed RGB or YUY2, no. If you are saving as mildly compressed HuffYUV or MJPEG -- maybe.

[edDV]

If you have an older machine or a notebook, I'd add DV transfer to the maybe category. There is ample opportunity for lost fields when transferring from the camcorder to an external drive or visa versa. Better to use the internal drive for the transfer then copy to the external drive under OS management.

[hexxisoft]

I have no problem with it. I've got two or three USB external hard drives, and they work just fine. I've got at least one firewire as well, works fine.

I guess it could be depend on everyone's situation. I'm running a 1.8 Ghz and 512 megs of ram on this machine, I capture video on it, edit video on it. It works great.

[edDV]

I have no problem with it. I've got two or three USB external hard drives, and they work just fine. I've got at least one firewire as well, works fine.

I guess it could be depend on everyone's situation. I'm running a 1.8 Ghz and 512 megs of ram on this machine, I capture video on it, edit video on it. It works great.

Yep but we get at least one message per week about dropped frames capturing a DV stream. The important issue to understand is this is a stream trasfer, not a file copy. There is no verification and resend. If OS tasks take prioity over the stream, frames get lost.