Ingest, Edit, Author & Burn, all from portable drive?
 

Just curious the consensus of another new plan, since the HD footage consumes so much hard drive space:

Could I ingest HD footage, edit, author and burn, all from portable drives connected via usb? I have a handful of 300-500 GB portable drives and also a pair of powered external drives.

Re: Ingest, Edit, Author & Burn, all from portable drive?
 

Portable drives are usually not 7200 rpm. USB is also not the fastest interface. If it's USB 3 and you know the drives are 7200 rpm, then you could probably get away with it. Always make backups though. I've seen lots of 2.5" hard drives fail.

Re: Ingest, Edit, Author & Burn, all from portable drive?
 

Great, thank you! I am now assuming our computer drives are 7200 and we need to at least match that? My laptop has firewire, perhaps a portable drive 7200 with firewire?
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Re: Ingest, Edit, Author & Burn, all from portable drive?
 

I have several older but still reliable portable drives which are 7200's. I wouldn't think of using anything less today. AAMOF I have 2 newer ones sitting on my desk as we speak along with 2 older ones. I use them for backup as well as storage for graphics etc. Some are FW some are USB 2/3 all work quite well although the USB do seem to be a bit slower for ingest than the FW but I've never put a stopwatch to them. FW drives are getting a bit harder to find, seems most now are USB. Some will give you the option of either/or.