Internal & External Hard drives foe source or Rendered projects

[braveheart3158]

So I am getting my PC Media files in order I have 2 internal drives and 3 external SSD USB drives. I am asking because in the past I have had Source and Project footage on an external drive and some on internal. Sometimes the external drives may be plugged into a USB port. In that case when I open a project in Movie studio it says its missing files and needs to search for them.

My mental debate is, do I put all source footage on the external drive and the Projects im working on on the internal drives or visa versa. Forgive me if this sounds like a stupid question but what do you guys do?
TM.

[Cornucopia]

A lot depends on what you can afford. The BEST thing is all internal (or hot-swap). Then, archive/backup and compress/distribute to externals.
If you HAVE to compromise, it makes a little more sense to use externals for the source and internals for the destination drives, because the burden of data transfer is usually worse on writing. However, if you can't read quick enough, the you'll get render errors there too.
If you have to use externals, better hope they are Thunderbolt3, or USB-C (3.1), or Thunderbolt2 or eSATA, or at worst USB-3.0. Any less (USB 2.0 or Firewire) and you could easily have issues, even with compressed stuff.


Scott

[babygdav]

All of the footage for 1 project goes into 1 folder, which resides on 1 drive (doesn't matter internal or external unless speed is an issue, then internal). Video editor project goes into that folder.

Simple and everything stays in one place.

You can archive that 1 folder to external drive for long term storage, but should still be able to open and edit it since everything is in 1 place.