David,

That's a pretty good result - for a drive that spins at only 5400 RPM.

Randall,

The drive is a Samsung 1tb drive F1 are 7200 rpm, not a 2tb. Sorry for the typo.

Most of my drives are 2tb now a days. I wasn't thinking, just assuming it was a 2tb drive.

Randall,

Also, the program I was using to test the transfer rate was reporting 92 mb/s transfer rate.

However, this morning when I copied a large amount of files over the the 1tb Samsung drive via the USB 3 port, Windows reported a high data transfer rate at first due to the Write Cache and Better Peformance being selected for the drive. But, after about 10 mins Windows was reporting around 62 mp/s, which is still good.

I am able to edit QuickTime PhotoJPG video files with no problem (at least none yet) off of the drive.

Sorry about the typo in the other post about the 2tb Samsung drive, it was a 1tb Samsung F1 7200 rpm drive.

David, That's still quite good for an external USB connection, especially since third-party controllers usually have higher latency than native core-logic chipset drive controllers.

Randell,

I wish it was a better transfer rate, but it will do.

I have 4 Firewire 400 drives connected up to the same system and I am able to get around 34 mb/s transfer rate with them using either the built-in ports or a 1394 card in one of the slots.

I am using the Bytecc cases with the 934 chipset in them.

I had to use the Oxford Semiconductor firmware developement kit to get the transfer rate up that high, otherwise the transfer rate was around 24 to 25 mb/s.
The software allows you to configure the transfer rate in the 934 chip set, among other things and to configure ID information about the external drive.

OK then...... just to help me understand..... Is this correct??
1. I need one drive for my OS and CS4
2. I need another for my video capture and all the assets.
3. I need a third drive to edit the project.

Can I use any of the above for my scratch disc?? Will an external HD w/USB 3.0 work just about
as well as an internal 7200 rpm drive???

I have a 1Tb USB3 external and am really pleased with it. In fact it is surprisingly fast. I still only use it for data and backup though. My set up is a 10k rpm 300Gb Raptor drive for OS and current projects; a 150Gb Raptor for scratch; two WD , 1Tb internals, and the 1Tb USB3 external.

This is for Photoshop CS5 mainly as I am new to video editing.

Thanks Trevor... I found a great answer to my question(s) and MORE. Look at this:

Adobe Forums: Storage rules for an editing rig. Some...

I finally got a consumer Seagate 2TB USB 3.0 external hard drive kit for $100. Sequential-speed-wise, it is about as fast as the fastest single 7200 RPM SATA hard drives; however, its relatively slow random access speed belies the fact that the drive spins at only 5900 RPM instead of 7200 RPM. And my results with USB 3.0 showed how "slow" the first-generation Western Digital 1TB Caviar Black hard drive really is (it spins at 7200 RPM, all right - but it uses three 334GB platters instead of two 500GB platters, resulting in its maximum sequential transfer speed barely topping 100 MB/s compared to roughly 140 MB/s for the 2TB Seagate FreeAgent GoFlex Desk USB 3.0 external drive that uses three 667GB platters).

I've inspected further, and discovered that the 2TB FreeAgent GoFlex Desk USB 3.0 drive is actually a newer Seagate Barracuda Green SATA 6 Gbps drive with 64MB of cache pre-installed inside an external case. (Too bad the 1TB version of this drive is of a different series - the older Barracuda LP drive nominally with a SATA 3 Gbps interface and 32MB of cache. And it costs the same as the faster 2TB model where I got the drive from.)

wow 34MB/sec out of firewire400? i get 29-31 out of USB 2.0 multicard reader. SD class 10's and CF 30MB/sec rated of course. perhaps my older mobo was firewire 800 and i am thinking that it was faster than that.