Quote: Hi there,
I was wondering if a portable hard drive (1TB) is suitable to use with PD12 for all the editing? The one I am considering is a USB 3.0. Would it still work on USB 2.0?
Or is it better to use the internal hard drive on the computer?
Thanks

Hi Ian

Ensure PD12 is installed on the C drive (internal drive).

You can Export your Projects and Produced files to your portable hard drive.

Happing editing

Best Regards

Neil
CubbyHouseFilms
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Hi,

Ummmm, I have PD12 installed on the E Drive. I'm guessing that is not a good thing

USB 3.0 works ok on USB 2.0?

I'm intending to upgrade the memory on the PC to try and speed things up a bit. All in all I'm very happy with PD12, and I don't want to have to do to big an upgrade on my PC. That is why I asked about using an external drive.

Thanks

IanB
PowerDirector Ultimate 18.0.3801.0 (64bit)
Dell XPS 8700, Win 8.1
4th generation Intel(R) Core(TM) i5-4460 processor (6M Cache, up to 3.4 GHz)
Nividia GeForce 720 Version 372.54 GB Dual Channel DDR3 1600MHz (4GB x 2)
2 x 1TB 7200RPM SATA Hard D

Quote: Hi,

Ummmm, I have PD12 installed on the E Drive. I'm guessing that is not a good thing

USB 3.0 works ok on USB 2.0?

I'm intending to upgrade the memory on the PC to try and speed things up a bit. All in all I'm very happy with PD12, and I don't want to have to do to big an upgrade on my PC. That is why I asked about using an external drive.

Thanks

If E is an internal drive, that is OK.
But you still with need to have 60 to 100 GB of free space on your C (system) drive.

The temporary file space is pretty much hard coded into Powerdirector.

You can store videos on external storage, but is a not a good idea to try to EDIT video on external storage. USB drives have a habit of going to sleep, and the transfer speed is slow, compared to an internal drive.

USB 3.0 is better, still not as good as internal.
USB 3.0 drives are backward compatible with USB 2.0. The transfer speed is USB 2.0.

There are USB 3.0 Cards you can install in older computers.
Carl312: Windows 10 64-bit 8 GB RAM,AMD Phenom II X4 965 3.4 GHz,ATI Radeon HD 5770 1GB,240GB SSD,two 1TB HDs.

My PowerDirector writes all new shadow edit files, splitter indexes and previews to the output directory I configured in the options, so that's drive D: for me. Drive C: is only 20 GiB, that would be a disaster, haha.

Quote:

Quote: Hi,

Ummmm, I have PD12 installed on the E Drive. I'm guessing that is not a good thing

USB 3.0 works ok on USB 2.0?

I'm intending to upgrade the memory on the PC to try and speed things up a bit. All in all I'm very happy with PD12, and I don't want to have to do to big an upgrade on my PC. That is why I asked about using an external drive.

Thanks

If E is an internal drive, that is OK.
But you still with need to have 60 to 100 GB of free space on your C (system) drive.

The temporary file space is pretty much hard coded into Powerdirector.

You can store videos on external storage, but is a not a good idea to try to EDIT video on external storage. USB drives have a habit of going to sleep, and the transfer speed is slow, compared to an internal drive.

USB 3.0 is better, still not as good as internal.
USB 3.0 drives are backward compatible with USB 2.0. The transfer speed is USB 2.0.

There are USB 3.0 Cards you can install in older computers.

So would the external drive be to slow for burning from?

Thanks IanB
PowerDirector Ultimate 18.0.3801.0 (64bit)
Dell XPS 8700, Win 8.1
4th generation Intel(R) Core(TM) i5-4460 processor (6M Cache, up to 3.4 GHz)
Nividia GeForce 720 Version 372.54 GB Dual Channel DDR3 1600MHz (4GB x 2)
2 x 1TB 7200RPM SATA Hard D

Quote: So would the external drive be to slow for burning from?

Thanks

I would not trust it.

It would be best if you copied what you want to burn to a disk to an internal hard drive.

Carl312: Windows 10 64-bit 8 GB RAM,AMD Phenom II X4 965 3.4 GHz,ATI Radeon HD 5770 1GB,240GB SSD,two 1TB HDs.

Hi Carl312,

Thanks for your reply.

Details of internal drives are as follows:
C:\ Capacity 407GB, Free 276GB
D:\Capacity 16.4GB, this drive is the Compaq recovery drive.
E:\ Capacity 205GB, Free 85.6GB
F:\ Capacity 302GB, Free 160GB
All the above drives are on a partitioned 1TB drive.
The external drive is 1TB (G:\ drive).

My default settings are Import folder: E:\PowerDirector In\
Output folder: F:\PowerDirector Out\
As I am using E: drive for most of my programs installations, including Cyberlink programs, I thought I would make this setting to the G:\ drive and continue using F:\ drive for the output. I would have a few folders on G for input files and other miscellaneous files which I normally used for editing with my previous editor. I think I can free up a lot more space on F as I have outputs from my previous editor which can be deleted.

Does this seem the right way to go. Also I am going to boost memory from 4GB to 8 or 16GB. I will have to get computer tech son to organise this for me.

Sorry if I have rambled on a bit. Any comments woud be most appreciated.

Thanks IanB
PowerDirector Ultimate 18.0.3801.0 (64bit)
Dell XPS 8700, Win 8.1
4th generation Intel(R) Core(TM) i5-4460 processor (6M Cache, up to 3.4 GHz)
Nividia GeForce 720 Version 372.54 GB Dual Channel DDR3 1600MHz (4GB x 2)
2 x 1TB 7200RPM SATA Hard D

Quote: Hi Carl312,

Thanks for your reply.

Details of internal drives are as follows:
C:\ Capacity 407GB, Free 276GB
D:\Capacity 16.4GB, this drive is the Compaq recovery drive.
E:\ Capacity 205GB, Free 85.6GB
F:\ Capacity 302GB, Free 160GB
All the above drives are on a partitioned 1TB drive.
The external drive is 1TB (G:\ drive).

Looks like a pretty complicated setup to me. My suggestion--get a 250 GB SSD, such as this one for $135:
http://tinyurl.com/qfb5lx4
and use if for your C drive with PD installed on it. Do all your work on the C drive and then export the finished product to one of your HDDs. It'll make your video editing life much better. Dell Precision 7510 Laptop
Windows 7 Pro 64-bit | Intel(R) XEON(R) CPU E3-1505M v5 @2.80 GHz
RAM: 32 GB
Windows Experience Index 7.5

Any external USB2 hard drive bought today will handle video even at 4K just fine. USB3 allows faster backups and file transfer, get it if you can.

I use 64GB memory cards on a 4K camcorder with a measured transfer rate as low as 20MB per sec w/o any problems.In fact the Sony cards recommended for their 4K camcorder hardly go any higher.

Any hard drive will do much better than that. And for regular HD even 10MB average is enough. External USB2 hard drives average about 70MB, my internal ones are around 120MB. No reason to waste your money on a SSHD.

Download the free HDTUNE and you can measure all that yourself/

I have 3 internal HD in my computer plus 4 external in a box via USB3. All are partitioned. Mostly the operating system resides on C. Other stuff is on D and E. Try to keep the C drive as pristine as possible!!. No pictures, video files, emails etc!! Do not even think about editing in your C partition! It works . but why slow your editing down if you do not have to!

CDE are one drive. All drives are plug in so I can make and use clones and swap drives in no time. Backing up is a major religion here, I became a faithful convert over 10 years ago after falling on my face big time.

In all my PC editing, nearly 18 years, I have NEVER EVER been limited by HD transfer rates.

There must be a sinister conspiracy between HD manufactures and writers of codecs, sort of tit for tat, Hd increases transfer rate, Codes increase bit rate. Just kidding. but it works out that way.

Eugene 73s, WA6JZN ex DL9GC
CYBERLINK PLEASE ADD UHD BLU RAY BURNING SOFTWARE
PD14,
Win10,64bit.CPU i7 6700,16GB ,C= 480 GB SSD ,GPU GTX1060 6GB 1 fan. Plus 3 int, 4 ext HDD's for video etc.LG WH16NS40 reads UHD.
4K 24" ViewSonic monitor.Camera Sony FDR-A

Thanks Eugen157,

Looks as though my system will be OK. I have just rendered and burnt a 15 minute DVD without any problems with the USB connected external drive. The rendering was a bit slow, but I am in the process of upgrading memory from 4GB to 8 Gb. I may even go to 16GB when finances allow it.

Thanks again. IanB
PowerDirector Ultimate 18.0.3801.0 (64bit)
Dell XPS 8700, Win 8.1
4th generation Intel(R) Core(TM) i5-4460 processor (6M Cache, up to 3.4 GHz)
Nividia GeForce 720 Version 372.54 GB Dual Channel DDR3 1600MHz (4GB x 2)
2 x 1TB 7200RPM SATA Hard D

You will not see any material improvement beyond 8GB.

Eugene 73s, WA6JZN ex DL9GC
CYBERLINK PLEASE ADD UHD BLU RAY BURNING SOFTWARE
PD14,
Win10,64bit.CPU i7 6700,16GB ,C= 480 GB SSD ,GPU GTX1060 6GB 1 fan. Plus 3 int, 4 ext HDD's for video etc.LG WH16NS40 reads UHD.
4K 24" ViewSonic monitor.Camera Sony FDR-A

Quote: Thanks Eugen157,

Looks as though my system will be OK. I have just rendered and burnt a 15 minute DVD without any problems with the USB connected external drive.

Every DVD drive I have burned with in recent years has a buffer underrun protection and should not abort when data isn't streamed fast enough. But I also never had to rely on that feature.