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500G External Harddrive as scratch disk
Hello! First off, is this advisable? Is it ok to use my external harddrive as a scratch disk for preview files, media cache and captured material? As of now, I’m using my laptop as my NLE machine for editing. Format: SD only. My point in this is the portability. The software I am using is Premier Pro CS3 under Windows Vista. Laptop is a toshiba A200, dual core 1.8Ghz, 2 gigs of ram, 90Gb HDD.
Second off, I don’t know if this situation is normal in CS3. Sometime ago, under premiere pro 2.0 in a windows XP OS, everytime after I transfer my project folder (including everything from preview files to media cache) and open the project, PP2 asks for the preview render files. In CS3, it doesn’t. Simply put, if not found, re-render again. Well, in this case I’m using the external harddrive as a scratch disk with my laptop. The latter was a PC.
I hope you guys can help me. 🙂
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8 Replies
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[Jedd Chris Dumaguina] “Hello! First off, is this advisable?”
Sure, just stick with Sata if you can or USB not firewire..
Using an external drive with 2 computers requires that the drive letter remains constant..you can change drive letters manually (Computer Management Console>Disk Management).
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Mike,
From curiosity, why do you recommend USB instead of fire wire, when everybody knows that USB is around 50% slower than fire wire and carries a much higher CPU burden as well?
Harm Millaard
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As far as I know, Firewire was designed for A/V transfers and access. USB 2.0 is actually faster in terms of peak data transfers, but its sustained rates are defeated by firewire. Firewire is more stable, as far as I know.
What about my second question? Why is it that PPCS3 does not reserve/save preview render files on the external harddrive?
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HI Jedd I just did a test from my Desktop to my laptop and the render file came through fine. Make sure your Edit>Preferences is setup ‘preview files – same as project’.
That will save the previews in a folder that will be where you save the actual project.(Ext HDD).
If you want rock solid back and forth with the ext. drive make sure you label the letter of the drive the same for all computers it is using.
This is done through; Contol Panel> Performance and Maintainence> Administrative Tools> Computer Management> Storage – Disk Management.
Select the drive right click> Change Drive Letter and Paths> Change. If the letter is not available you may have to change another one.
Setting this up properly when formatting a drive makes a world of difference because the App is always looking at the same pathways to assets/renders etc.
– Jon 🙂 -
Its always good to pick a set of external drive letters well above the system designations, like L or M or higher it keeps windows from fubaring the drive letters if something gets plugged in and it decides to play musical drive letters.
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Hi Harm,
I know of at least a dozen external USB drives used in video production without issue. Firewire drives can complicate capturing via Firewire. -
Mike,
I have several dual external disks with both USB2 and fire wire and never encountered a problem with fire wire connections. I did notice that fire wire is around 50% faster than USB on the same disk and the CPU load with USB is around 6 times higher than with fire wire.
Harm Millaard
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I just finished editing a project right now. I’m using a western digital My Book Premium 500Gb harddrive. What I noticed is that the harddrive is shutting down on long periods causing PPCS3 to hang. Plus when I capture via the harddrive’s firewire port, it also hangs. I do this because my laptop only has one DV-IN Firewire port. Will having a farther letter like L or M solve this problem? By the way, sometimes the system has a hard time detecting the drive.It takes about 5mins or longer to get it recognized. Oh yah, I’m using windows vista basic.
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