Moving a complete project to an external HD
 

Is there a way to move a CS project from my internal HD to an external HD and then edit from there?

USB drives are not recommended.
Just Copy/paste
Premiere will ask were is file so and so, point to external dive, select and enter.
Rest of the files in the same folder will follow.
You can skip the preview files. Just render again.

It's usually best to use the "Project Manager" to copy a project to a new drive.
This will not only ensure that you are indeed copying everything , but it also collects all files into one flat folder without any sub-folders, making it easier to relink the project's media.

Also, if you are on Windows, make sure that your external drive is always assigned the same drive letter on before you start the project. Lets say, for example, when you ran the project from the external drive for the first time, your drive letter was F: and you relinked all your media. Now, the next time you edit on the same computer, if your drive is again assigned the letter F: Premiere should not need to ask you again where your files are. But if it's assigned as G: Premiere will be looking for them on F: and will need to be redirected again.

Unless you are using esata drives, I would advise against editing from external drives. The speed is too slow via USB2, 1000Mps network and Firewire. You will become very very frustrated, especially with HDV footage.

Copy and Paste has been my solution but it rarely works after moving it.
I will try the idea of copying the files using the Program Manager in Premiere as described by Jon.
David I realize you are correct. Ideally I don't wan't to edit with an external HD but just leave the project on the external and bring it back for future editing.
I have 4 Hard Drives in my computer for a total of 4 G's and it is not enough.
Thanks everyone for all the ideas.

Using Program Manager to transfer projects
 

It works wonderfully if the Project is not too old and not too large. Projects with very large files crash part way through the process.

Considering that we now have USB3 (and soon SSD:s with USB3 interface) - editing on an external disk should be as good as editing on an internal disk.

// Lasse

Lars,

Initial reports I have seen show that while the theoretical bandwidth is much higher than USB2, the practical transfer speeds of USB3 is only marginally higher than USB2, due to the shared nature of USB, and is still a far way off from eSATA. It still is slower than FW400.

Admitted, only preliminary reports, but still...

Harm,

I don't know where you get these 'preliminary' results from but there are numerous sites that have tested USB 3 and not a single one that I have seen shows results anywhere near FW400 - they are more like FW800 and higher, and that was with the very first USB 3 PCIe cards and enclosures. Since then, I have seen some SSD/USB 3 testing that achieve 200MB/s. PC Perspective - OCZ Enyo 128GB USB 3.0 Portable SSD Review

However, my problem with USB 3 as of 2 months ago was poor drivers that corrupted 3 Windows 7 installations on 3 computers.

I've been using the WD My Book USB 3, 1TB drive with the supplied card for several months.
Although I haven't benchmarked it, it's an awful lot faster than USB 2.
So far, I haven't had any conflicts or compatability problems with Win7 64.

Whilst my Premiere CS4 projects were PAL, I had no problems with external projects on firewire 400 drives, but when I moved up to HDV, it was another story. Projects took for ever to load, and every editing move involved a wait.

I found eSATA to be fine, and now use a RAID O set-up, which runs very smoothly, even with a couple of hundred clips in a project.

I have also used a gigabit connected NAS box with a 4-drive RAID 5 set-up, which also runs smoothly with similar projects.

I have always understood that there were technical reasons why USB should not be used for video editing?

I use the USB 3 drive as an export drive, and it works fine to have the PPro project file, auto save files, etc., onboard.
But I wouldn't try to edit with the HD media on the USB drive.
Like you, I always locate the media on RAID 0 drives.