Recommendation For External HDD For Video Editing?

[kevo777]

Is anyone out there currently working with (or worked with in the past) external HDD's for editing with your typical NLE? I'm wondering what cons, if any, there are to working with external storage. Do these drives measure up to their internal counterparts? I understand that 7200 RPM is a given but what about the USB aspect. Is latency introduced at all? Are there any pitfalls at all in choosing external over internal?

[Smells_Like_Feet]

I have been editing on external hdd for over a year now with little to no problems. I was worried at first, but was very surprised that this did not introduce much if any lag.

One recommendation though would be to use firewire as opposed to USB as firewire does not add to the load on your CPU. I believe that many video companies deal exclusively with external HDDs due to their portability and it works very well.

Good luck.

-Smells_Like_Feet

[edDV]

Is anyone out there currently working with (or worked with in the past) external HDD's for editing with your typical NLE? I'm wondering what cons, if any, there are to working with external storage. Do these drives measure up to their internal counterparts? I understand that 7200 RPM is a given but what about the USB aspect. Is latency introduced at all? Are there any pitfalls at all in choosing external over internal?

What format are you editing? DV will play fine. An external drive may not be best for capture but plays fine.

The same 7200 RPM drive that sustains 35-50MB/s connected PATA/SATA will max about half that over USB. You will see the difference when copying files or "scrubbing the timeline". The USB drive will be slower and less responsive.

IEEE-1394 is a bit faster and consumes less CPU.
External serial SATA will behave like an internal drive.

[kevo777]

Excellent!

Thanks for the replies! Exactly what I needed to move forward! I will be editing DV.