[John Fryatt]

Thanks for the response, Tom!

Both my external drive, where my media is, and my internal drive are 7200rpm. I would assume the internal works faster because of its built-in SATA interface (vs. my external drive connected via FW800). BUT now that I’ve set up the drives as you suggested (external storing everything), I am experiencing much smoother playback from the timeline! How is that possible?

Lastly, wouldn’t it make sense to divide up the HD work between the two drives, so the external is handling media files and the internal is doing previews?

Your insight is much appreciated, as much of these arrangements are counterintuitive to me…

[John Fryatt]

Oh, and crucially, assuming I have all footage on an external drive, should the preview files/media cache be located on the external or internal drive?

[John Fryatt]

Eddie, I have basically the same setup (iMac, Premiere Pro, Canon DSLR workflow) and some of the same questions as you.

And I am also confused by the workflow that Chris Tompkins is attempting to describe. But as far as I can tell, his second response is encouraging the use of the Mercury PE, using the default MPEG preview format, not changing the preview format to H264-I think he misunderstood what you were suggesting with your question…

Anyway, that’s what I do – edit natively in H264 using the Mercury PE system. And I am saving up for the Pegasus thunderbolt drive, which seems like a fairly good deal, considering the 4x1TB drives that are included.

But to reiterate your initial line of questioning: What is the rationale behind the common refrain of “Don’t edit off your internal hard drive” that Chris has reaffirmed? What specifically arrangement is recommended? Does one edit the project file/folder on the local drive and have all clips on an external? Or the project file external as well?