Is separating video files on different drives still necessary or recommended?

[Jeremy Garchow]

You can use target mode to transfer the footage to your current MacPro. I just would not try to edit the footage directly in target mode. FW800 is pretty slow, and I would imagine there will be some penalty for target mode, so I would transfer that footage from your G4 to your current MacPro in target mode, and then not use the g4 anymore for storage. Make sense?

[Pierre Delafontaine]

Makes sense, yes, especially that my G4 is only FW 400! ☹

So I think I’ll do that: transfer the original DV footage to the SSD, as it may speed up rendering of any effects, image corrections, text additions and things like that, and I’ll use the 1 TB HD for renders, which will always be used “as is”.

Thanks Devrim and Jeremy! 😊

[Ben Balser]

No, it is not. Storage throughput is so far beyond what it used to be, back when that was necessary. But the answer to your op question is, “No, it is not.”

[Pierre Delafontaine]

Actually, I strongly suspected that modern machines, with their fast drives and buses, had made that video file separation unnecessary.

However, considering that only 7.5 years separate my mid-2002 PowerMac G4 and its PATA drives from my newly acquired early-2008 Mac Pro and its SATA drives, I was indeed wondering whether those 7 years had really made a difference regarding the need to separate video files as it was recommended to do back then.

So, thanks Ben and all who responded. 🙂

[Ben Balser]

Likewise, 2002 to 2008 isn’t much compared to the speed increases between 2008 and 2026. All the best to you.