How Many Hard Drives??
 

One for CS4, one for the captured video, one to edit your project. Is that correct.
Best to have all internal?

Can I use a 7200 rpm USB 2.0 external HD for any of the above, or will that really slow things down?

What about the scratch disc?
Thanks, Tom B.

Tom,

External USB 2.0 hard drives are not recommended for anything besides the rendered output drive. That's because the USB 2.0 Hi-Speed interface itself is limited to a maximum practical (sequential) transfer rate of about 31 MB/s, and even the minimum sequential transfer speed of today's 7200 RPM hard drives greatly surpass that 31 MB/s transfer speed. (In fact, even a 5400 RPM hard drive often surpasses 100 MB/s in sequential transfers.) The average sequential transfer speed of a modern 7200 RPM hard drive connected externally via USB 2.0 Hi-Speed is about three to four times slower than the same drive connected internally via SATA.

Thanks Randall,
Didn't know there was that much difference. Thanks so much......

Randall

Have you tried any of the USB 3.0 drives yet. I haven't had a chace to them yet myself, but was hoping they would be able to work with Premiere CS5. I am hoping to keep the raw footage on the external drive and edit off of it.

Any input?

USB 3.0 is about as fast as eSATA in theory - but all of the current USB 3.0 (actually, USB 2.0/3.0) hard drives sold at most retailers spin at only 5400 RPM. The only USB 3.0 hard drive kit that uses 7200 RPM hard drives that I know of are WD's My Book 3.0 - but those drives are USB 3.0 only (no USB 2.0 support), and are relatively hard to find at resellers.

I use a wd caviar black 7200rpm in a bytec usb3 enclosure and attain writes speed in the 100mb/s range so no different than internal sata or external esata

10 MB/s is much, much, much slower than what the drive is capable of. In this case, something in your system or the drive enclosure's chipset must be bottlenecking the drive's throughput.

typo
should have read 100

That's about what the original 1TB WD Black is capable of sequentially (on the outer tracks). There are faster (sequentially) 7200 RPM drives on the market.

By the way, my "5400 RPM" comment refers to the retail-boxed external USB 3.0/2.0 hard drive kits (the hard drive already pre-installed by the drive manufacturer into an external enclosure). But in this case, the 5400 RPM drive inside those pre-assembled enclosures is roughly as fast (sequentially) as that original 1TB WD Black internal hard drive.

I was looking at the Bytecc case and installing a 7200 rpm drive.

Bruce, glad to hear you are getting 100mb/s speed. I will order the Bytecc case this afternoon.

Thanks,
David Knarr
Studio 1 Productions

I would recommend keeping your OS and apps including CS4/5 on the internal C:Drive. If you have a second internal drive or array, put your media and your project files on it. If your second drive is a USB3 drive, I would store all of the media there, and backup my projecct there, but I would keep the active project files on the internal drive. USB3 is as fast as SATA in most cases, but the additional interface is likely to lead to higher latency. The project files (and accompanying temp files) are quite small, so the bandwidth isn't as much of an issue as the latency each time a different one is requested by the app.

Mike,
I am only going to use the USB3 drive to store the media and backup files there. I have a need to move the drive between two systems at two physical location.

I just ordered a couple of the Bytecc USB3 cases, they should be here by the weekend.

David Knarr
Studio 1 Productions

I built my own, using a Seagate 2TB 7200 rpm w/32mb buffer. Works great with USB3. Very quick. No need to settle for what the packaged HD manufacturers are selling.

I use a 17-inch MacBook Pro; just upgraded the original Hitachi 7200RPM 200Gb SATA HDD with a Seagate 7200RPM 500Gb SATA HDD. I connect to external HDDs through an dual eSATA ExpressCard 34.

I also carry a 2.5-inch Seagate 7200RPM 250Gb SATA HDD in a Vantec NexStar 3 external enclose case. This case has eSATA and USB 2.0 connections.

When I am home I have a 3.5-inch Seagate 7200RPM 1Tb SATA HDD in a Vantec NexStar 3 enclosure. This enclosure offers eSATA, Firewire 800 and USB2.0 connections.

Just got in the Bytecc USB 3.0 case and USB 3.0 card.

Dropped in a Samsung 2TB hard drive with 32 meg cache. I am getting an average data transfer rate of 92 mb/s. So I am happy with it. So far, with Premiere CS5 it seems to be working fine editing footage off of the drive.

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.