best approch to increase disk space on PC?

[Angelo Mike]

I do the first two options. I have a hard drive in an external enclosure connected via an esata cable that I keep my projects on, and I have another hard drive in an external enclosure connected via a USB 3.0 cable that backs everything up.

http://www.scenethroughglass.com

[John Rofrano]

I have an external eSATA enclosure that holds up to 5 drives in cradles. I regularly swap them out with client drives as I’m working. I also use them to archive by OS backups.

~jr

http://www.johnrofrano.com
http://www.vasst.com

[Gilles Gagnon]

Thanks to you both.

1. editing right off Esata drive (in a dock) provides good performance in Vegas?

2. I’m told USB3 is faster than Esata. Would I not be better off to go USB3 (with sata drives in dock)?

Thanks again !

Gilles

[John Rofrano]

[Gilles Gagnon] “editing right off Esata drive (in a dock) provides good performance in Vegas?”

Yup. I finish edited three seasons of the PBS series, “Painting & Travel with Roger and Sarah Bansemer” directly from my eSATA enclosure with the drives that Roger sent me. These were all 3 camera shoots with about 20+ tracks. It’s the same as having the drive internally in your case (i.e., it’s an extension of the same SATA bus). I had no performance problems at all.

[Gilles Gagnon] “I’m told USB3 is faster than Esata. Would I not be better off to go USB3 (with sata drives in dock)?”

I don’t have USB 3.0 so I don’t know (my computer is 5 years old). I guess it should be fine as well.

~jr

http://www.johnrofrano.com
http://www.vasst.com

[Angelo Mike]

I don’t believe USB 3.0 is faster than esata. Either way, USB 3.0 is still very fast if that’s your only option.

http://www.scenethroughglass.com

[Dave Haynie]

None of the above… exactly. I use internal SATA drives, one per major project, AS replaceable drives, using a SATA frame like this one: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0028Y4DAO/ref=oh_o00_s02_i01_details

So you get full SATA speed, no need for an external power supply (though I do have external RAID and a NAS, they’re usually used for other things). And when I’m done, the drive goes on the shelf as an archive of the finished project, in case I need to go back to it at some point. Sure beats backing up to a stack of BDs…

-Dave

[Dave Haynie]

[Gilles Gagnon] “2. I’m told USB3 is faster than Esata. Would I not be better off to go USB3 (with sata drives in dock)?”

The peak data rate on USB 3.0 is 5Gb/s in “SuperSpeed” mode. The preak data rate on eSATA will be 1.5Gb/s, 3.0Gb/s, or 6.0Gb/s, depending on the version of SATA you have (people say “SATA-I”, “SATA-II”, etc. but that’s not the official designation of the different editions).

The fastest HDD I know of are the enterprise-level SSD drives, which don’t write terribly fast, but hit 150-160MB/s sustained reads, if things go well. 160MB/s = 1.3Gb/s. So basically, you shouldn’t care all that much about the interface, when it comes to speed; all the latest interfaces (including Thunderbolt, if you want to toss that into the mix, and even GigE is a contender) are fast enough for a single drive. In fact, it’s common to drive a whole RAID or JBOD box from a single eSATA port, and you probably still get full speed (which is kind of the point of 6Gb/s SATA… there’s no possible reason you need that speed for a single drive, yet).

USB 3.0 has the advantage of still working with USB 2.0 gear, which is useful if you have a reason to move the drive from PC to PC. Though I have the same SATA Frames in both my desktop PCs… and GigE networking between them as well, so moving files around isn’t much of an issue.

-Dave

[John Rofrano]

Dave, Thanks for that link. I have been meaning to buy one of these but never knew which one to choose. I’m definitely going to pick one of these up. You can never have too many ways to connect more storage.

~jr

http://www.johnrofrano.com
http://www.vasst.com

[Gilles Gagnon]

A big thanks from me too Dave. This looks like it’ll do the trick! Didn’t know there was such a thing.

I’ll definitely pick one of these up as well.

Gilles

[Gilles Gagnon]

Dave,

There are great reviews on the unit you mentioned. The unit doesn’t have a separate power switch…

Do you hot-swap yours with success? or do you always turn off you PC to switch HD?

Gilles