I have been video editing on a pc for at least 15 years and noticed early on that there is an overall improvement in speed when using two hard drives, one for the program, and other for the video.
I am editing 4K now for a year, larger files etc, so using more than one drive is even more important.
Over the 15 years the following has evolved, 5 computers later.
My computer has 3 internal drives connected to the mother board
All three drives are
plug in and can be replaced in the time it takes to shut down and reboot, using inexpensive mobile racks made by Connectland.
One of these holds the main drive, partitioned into C D and E. The C hold the operating system, PD13
operating program only and a few other important programs. PD13 items like "SAVE PROJECT" are stored on partition D including "AUTOSAVE" . D or E also holds Window stuff like "MY PICTURES" "MY DOCUMENTS" ETC ETC.
Every time a new program is installed that gives me the option to install elswere, it winds up in D or E. This keeps C uncluttered and fast at start up. C D and E total only 250Gb 7200 RPM and is physicall a 2" drive mounted in an 3" adaptor.
An external USB3 "Probox" holds 4 more drives, all partitioned with names like "RAW 4K VIDEO" "RAW HD VIDEO" "ACRONIS BACKUPS" "FINISHED VIDEOS" ETC. These are active when editing or when making weekly backups of C D and E using Acronis TruImage.
In addition I use a USB3 docking station that will receive either a 2" or 3" hard drive. It is used to
clone the CDE drive every 2 weeks, I have two of the 250GB drives, they are kept up to date and used alternately after cloning. This takes about 30 minutes.
An inherant advantage of cloning is that the clone is defragged.
This has all evolved over the years, each change typically the result of some desaster, like a failed drive forcing me to install everything from scratch over a period of days. Once that happens, and it will in time to most of us, one becomes very religious.
One advantage of using the Connectland HD plugin device is the ability to use a
seperate hard drive for editing only, installing nothing but the Window operating system and PD13 for a perfect , fast editing only system. This could be of use for those whoose C drive is hopelessly cluttered up with other programs and junk. This, coupled with an partitioned, external 2nd drive for video material would result in an editing system whose speed
and stability is only limited by its program. (assuming a reasonably fast computer)
I have two computers using 4 plug in devices and have not had ANY problems with them. At under $20 each they are a bargain! Note that there are bays under $20 that enable the HD to be installed in a PC expansion slot and accessed and removed from the back of the PC.
Not to be overlooked are the advances in GPUs, like the GTX960 of whose existence I learned from SonicNice, that can take a big load of the CPU thus allowing speedy editing with lesser CPUs.
So the short answer to Barrys question is yes, at least in my experience.
Eugene
This message was edited 5 times. Last update was at Apr 06. 2015 15:02
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