Quote: I'm sure this may have been covered already but has anyone reached any conclusions about USB connections for external hard drives.
I know that in theory USB 2 is too slow a connection for playing H.264 video files for editing purposes but many probably still use them.
I've been using USB 3, my PC is a Quad core, but it is only an i5. I just wondered if my, 4TB Seagate desktop, external hard drive is actually hampering editing with PowerDirector 12.

Any ideas would be welcome

I do not recommend editing from a External USB Hard Drive, USB 2.0 or USB 3.0.
Access is slow and USB Drives have a bad habit of going to sleep.

I have seen too many questions of what happened to my Videos, I have Black videos where they are supposed to be.


USB hard Drives are great for storing your video files, but for Editing you should keep your project on an internal Hard Drive while editing. It does not have to be C, it can be any internal drive.

After you are done you can Pack Project Materials and store on a USB 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.

Quote:
I do not recommend editing from a External USB Hard Drive, USB 2.0 or USB 3.0.
Access is slow and USB Drives have a bad habit of going to sleep.

I have seen too many questions of what happened to my Videos, I have Black videos where they are supposed to be.


USB hard Drives are great for storing your video files, but for Editing you should keep your project on an internal Hard Drive while editing. It does not have to be C, it can be any internal drive.

After you are done you can Pack Project Materials and store on a USB Hard Drive.

Thanks for your reply, Carl. It's kind of what I was thinking of. I just have more video material than the space available on my internal drive. Suppose the problem now is that I use the same PC for everything elses as my video editing !
Now, how can I get another PC just for editing?

Cheers
I just want to edit and make pictures, walk my dog and go fishing.

Hi Kyle -

The accepted wisdom is just as Carl said, & that's how I generally work.

Recently I packed a project & copied it to a USB flash drive to transfer it to a different PC... so all the required media was on the USB stick. On the other PC, I inadvertently opened the project from the USB device and started working on it. Two hours later, I finished the session - THEN realised I'd been working off the USB stick (in a USB 3 port).

Nothing went wrong. No black spaces. Everything was saved. All good.

So - even though I didn't do it by choice & I wouldn't make it my standard workflow - it worked fine.

Cheers - Tony
Visit PDtoots. PowerDirector Tutorials, tips, free resources & more. Subscribe!
Full linked Tutorial Catalog PDtoots happily supports fellow PowerDirector users!

Hi Kyle 40,
Using an external hard drive can be problematic, it can also work.

I have used an external drive and I "pinged" it to keep it active. I used NosleepHD, a free program to keep the USB connected hard drive(s) active. With HDD getting larger there is more likely to be energy saving sleep modes and a time lag for start up. The speed of accessing data is another area you must consider to. With video editing there is a heavy reliance on data being available for the program when it's called for and having a HDD sleep or the disc become slow to start is very noticeable with some drives.

USB stick drives are likely to be encumbered by Fat32 and file size restrictions and are not useful to most editors using large files/output productions or calling on source files that are large (over 4GB). SD cards have the same Fat32 issues.

FAT32 = File Allocation Table 32bit

Internal SSD and HDD, I have noticed that having an SSD C drive, there is a lag for the other HDD to catch up. One could make a case for "pinging" internal HDD when fast SSD is insitu.

So Kyle 40, my opinion is, use the external drives for your general data & storage and run internals for Video. I would also suggest you "double up" and make sure all data/video is duplicated and stored on separate HDD/SSD's

Dafydd

Quote: Hi Kyle 40,
Using an external hard drive can be problematic, it can also work.

I have used an external drive and I "pinged" it to keep it active. I used NosleepHD, a free program to keep the USB connected hard drive(s) active. With HDD getting larger there is more likely to be energy saving sleep modes and a time lag for start up. The speed of accessing data is another area you must consider to. With video editing there is a heavy reliance on data being available for the program when it's called for and having a HDD sleep or the disc become slow to start is very noticeable with some drives.

USB stick drives are likely to be encumbered by Fat32 and file size restrictions and are not useful to most editors using large files/output productions or calling on source files that are large (over 4GB). SD cards have the same Fat32 issues.

FAT32 = File Allocation Table 32bit

Internal SSD and HDD, I have noticed that having an SSD C drive, there is a lag for the other HDD to catch up. One could make a case for "pinging" internal HDD when fast SSD is insitu.

So Kyle 40, my opinion is, use the external drives for your general data & storage and run internals for Video. I would also suggest you "double up" and make sure all data/video is duplicated and stored on separate HDD/SSD's

Dafydd

Thanks Dafydd.
So if I understand you correctly Dafydd, my external USB drive is likely to go into standby mode while it waits for a few moments, causing the timeline to appear as if the file isn't playing correctly no matter what edit software I'm using !
That would mean that even the high data rate available from USB 3's is not consistent.
OK, I'll transfer some video files to my internal drive and see if it helps....
Makes me think that syncing up 16mm footage wasn't too bad after all

Cheers all for spreading some light

I just want to edit and make pictures, walk my dog and go fishing.

I'm new at this and have not done anything complicated or longer than 30 minutes when produced, but I have been using a WD 1TB Passport for all my video work and have not noticed any problems.

Not to say this is the best way, but it can work and not cause problems, at least if you don't ask too much of it.

I think there is a setting in the WD software that allows you to tell the USB drive to never go to sleep.

I've been working with an i5 Ultrabook with only 4 meg of RAM and a 128 gig SSD. I've upgraded now to an i7 with 8MB RAM and USB 3.0 and it is a lot faster. Still only a 128GB SSD, however, so I'm still using the external drive.

Apologies if I've misspoke on any of this!--Paul Manuel

Quote: I'm new at this and have not done anything complicated or longer than 30 minutes when produced, but I have been using a WD 1TB Passport for all my video work and have not noticed any problems.

Not to say this is the best way, but it can work and not cause problems, at least if you don't ask too much of it.

I think there is a setting in the WD software that allows you to tell the USB drive to never go to sleep.

I've been working with an i5 Ultrabook with only 4 meg of RAM and a 128 gig SSD. I've upgraded now to an i7 with 8MB RAM and USB 3.0 and it is a lot faster. Still only a 128GB SSD, however, so I'm still using the external drive.

Apologies if I've misspoke on any of this!--Paul Manuel

Hi Paul, welcome to the PowerDirector forum.
You are very welcome to join in on any chat. I find lots of helpful comments that way
Most of my work at the moment are only short form videos. I no longer produce the features, life is getting in the way.

While checking up hard drives and trying to speed up my not so old PC, I saw a review on YouTube about how SSD's can speed up rendering video files. There appears to be a big improvement!

Cheers for now

Cheers I just want to edit and make pictures, walk my dog and go fishing.

Quote:
Thanks Dafydd.
So if I understand you correctly Dafydd, my external USB drive is likely to go into standby mode while it waits for a few moments, causing the timeline to appear as if the file isn't playing correctly no matter what edit software I'm using !
That would mean that even the high data rate available from USB 3's is not consistent.
OK, I'll transfer some video files to my internal drive and see if it helps....
Makes me think that syncing up 16mm footage wasn't too bad after all
Cheers all for spreading some light

Hi Kyle 40,
I don't have a USB3 connected external, so cant comment on the capability from first hand experience.

The use of externals is more to do with the device itself rather than the connection/cable data transfer rate. If the device is slow to function or is slow compared with an internal SSD (Solid State Drive), the "C" Drive, then you'll notice the lag.

The thing with the externals is you can "pull the plug" and move the data to another computer. If you use it for editing then you are more likely to run into some basic issues as Carl has mentioned. For Example:
Use a Flash Drive or a WD My Book to edit one's video, they'll work ok, no problem, however if you pull the plug on the device the local address (C,D,E,F,J,K,L,M, etc) is reset or not. You may put the plug back in next time after you've restarted, you may have pulled a multi-slot portable card reader out at the same time. Once that that sort of thing happens the source location/local address in the project file becomes incorrect. (If you've pack the project this wouldn't apply). Externals have their uses, being canny is for you to do, not the device.

Again, just an opinion, I like my external devices and do switch them between computers and have used them as source video storage, but I pinged them.

Dafydd

Just found a link to a test with an external Drobo Mini RAID drive that may be of interest to people.
http://www.dpreview.com/articles/4193777512/accessory-review-drobo-mini-raid?utm_campaign=generic&utm_source=notification&utm_medium=email&ref=notification I just want to edit and make pictures, walk my dog and go fishing.