USB 2.0 Vs Firewire Extrenal Drives – Performance Difference?

[Steve Connor]

[Philip Davies] “After a recent visit to the Apple store to enquire why my new Mac is struggling with FCPX more than it should, they suggested it was down to footage being held on a USB 2.0 external drive…

With USB 3.0 not available on the new Macs and Thunderbolt drives costing a fortune, the only option seems to be firewire. Has anyone compared FCPX performance using footage on USB 2.0 vs Firewire drives?

I’m skeptical because I’ve noticed sluggishness when all footage is on my computer’s internal drive.
“

They are absolutely right, USB 2.0 is completely unsuitable for editing, firewire is the bare minimum you should be using. Also using your internal drive will also slow things down a lot as well.

What format are you editing?

Steve Connor
“FCPX Agitator”
Adrenalin Television

[Philip Davies]

Thanks Steve.

I’m working with AVCHD.

If firewire is the minimum, what other alternative is there? There are no USB 3.0 ports on new Macs and it’s difficult to fin any thunderbolt drives (and those that do exist are too expensive for the number of drives we go through).

[Steve Connor]

Firewire should be fine for AVCHD, just make sure you set background rendering to “off” and only render when you need to.

TBolt drives will drop in price eventually

Steve Connor
“FCPX Agitator”
Adrenalin Television

[T. Payton]

AVCHD? Humm. Which Mac do you have? How much ram?

——
T. Payton
OneCreative, Albuquerque

[Philip Davies]

3.4 GHZ I7
4GB RAM
AMD Radeon HD 6970M 1024 MB

[David Eaks]

FWIW I’ve had great experiences with LaCie D2 Quadra’s (2 drives daisy chained and setup as software RAID-0) connected via FW 800. It’s easy, cheap and provides decent amounts of storage and speed.

This isn’t a solution for you but I just saw this new item available for preorder at B&H- https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/840972-REG/Seagate_STAE121_GoFlex_Thunderbolt_Adapter.html

I’ve never used a Goflex drive but it looks like you could potentially dock a bare drive on this to be connected to your iMac/MBP via Thunderbolt. Now, I’m not saying it would be wise to do so, as it may not be held securely. Just thought I’d share.

I’d really like to see a 2-drive Thunderbolt dock soon (if nothing else, just for quickly dumping finished projects to back up drives), but I’ll need a Thunderbolt Mac Pro first…

[James Bayliss-smith]

[David Eaks] ” FWIW I’ve had great experiences with LaCie D2 Quadra’s (2 drives daisy chained and setup as software RAID-0) connected via FW 800. It’s easy, cheap and provides decent amounts of storage and speed.”

Do you think I’d be able to set up a software RAID with a 1TB Western Digital Home edition and GRAID 1TB (that is already RAIDED 0 internally from 2 500 GB drives)

Somehow I think not but I’d be interested to find out. I’m guessing same brand/model/size works for software RAID’s

Cheers

[David Eaks]

I don’t think that is a good idea. I’ve never setup any RAID with anything but perfectly matching drives.

[David Burch]

I would say a 7200 RPM Firewire 800 drive is a bare minimum. I personally use e-SATA drives, along with a couple of adaptors from Sonnett that allow me to get e-SATA from the Thunderbolt port on our iMac. This setup, along with a dock for bare drives, allows me to get decent speeds for editing (still not as good as a Raid array, but good enough for most projects).

I would highly recommend looking into some of the new Thunderbolt products as they become available. Currently, I agree that they are mostly too expensive, but really the Pegusus Array is no more costly than a comparable fiber or e-SATA array would be. The LaCie Little Big Disk is a bit pricey, but not much more than 500 GB FW800 drives were a couple years ago. I suspect portable, fast TB drives will be available within the next couple of years.