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i'd like some advice about using an external hard drive (as my int hard drive is full).
Should i uninstall ulead on my int drive and reinstall it on the external one so all video is saved directly to that location (as opposed to saving it on the int and then copying to the ext).
i'm basically just not sure what the best way is to adjust my the operating to the ext drive

any advice is as always appreciated

Either:

1: get an additional INTERNAL HDD.

2: If you you are going to use an external drive for EDITING your projects then would advise only us ESATA as editing uses a lot of bandwith for video.

If you are using a LAPTOP then a larger internal HDD may be the go.

Can't you install the new hard drive as an internal drive? It would be much better if you could. External hard drives are fine for storing videos once they are edited, but not really so good for the actual editing. The USB interface is slower than an internal drive, and can get even slower, depending on how many other USB devices you have connected. And if it is a firewire external drive, they sometimes have write caching problems.

But if you have to use an external drive, do NOT install VS on it and run it from there. It is in any case usually better to have VS on one drive, and the working folder on another. That way the hard drive reading head doesn't have to dash all over one drive in executing a command from the program and apply it to a file or files. So leave VS on your C:\ drive and simply change the working folder in File > Preferences > General to the external drive. Remember you have to do this as well in the burning module in the first of the three icons in the bottom left of the burning screen. And of course be aware that you should probably always turn on the external drive before opening a VS project you have been working on. Otherwise, of course, VS won't be able to find the files and will give you error messages!

I agree that editing on an external drive is hazardous. If you must, transfer all your data files onto the external drive (you can run ordinary non-video ones from there) to free up space on your internal one. Uninstall all the apps you never use. IMPORTANT: after doing that, defragment the drive.

FWIW, I have VS installed on my internal HD and I do capture to and edit from my external HD and have NEVER had a problem.

I have a 1 TB E-SATA disk as an external drive. But this is connected directly on the motherboard by a rear bracket on my PC.

So, although it is externally housed, it is in fact seen by the pc as a internal disk.

This is very handy: it gives the same SATA speed as my other internal drives, but if necessary I can connect it by USB 2.0 to my laptop.

thanks for the replies, i left the ulead installed on the C drive and when specifying the capture folder, i changed it to the E (ext hard drive) where i had created a new folder to save the clips to.

this all seemed to work fine but when i want to open a project to edit, i specify the E drive but when i click on the folder i created text pops up saying 'no items match your search'

any ideas where i'm going wrong this time?

thanks again

Did you already have captured video files somewhere on your computer? If so, did you transfer them to the external drive? If so, then when you try to open the project, you would get a message saying VS cannot find them, and asking you whether you want to Relink. You say yes and browse to the folder on the external hard disk.

Conversely, if you captured to E:\, have you actually created a project (File > Save or Save As) in the folder you created? If you are trying to open a project, VS needs to find a file with the .vsp (Video Studio Project) extension.

So if you are opening Video Studio, and it has a clean library window and timeline, you choose Insert Video, browse to E:\ and choose the video you want to insert into Video Studio. Then you go to File > Save (or Save As) and give your new project a name and make sure it is saved to the E:\ drive folder. Then do your editing, making sure you go to "File > Save" every so often so that the edits are recorded in the project file. Then you can close Video Studio, and when you later reopen to continue editing, you choose File > Open Project, and browse to the E:\ drive, and open the .vsp file and start editing again from where you left off last time.

FWIW, I have VS installed on my internal HD and I do capture to and edit from my external HD and have NEVER had a problem.

Same here, FWIW the new Seagate External USB drives are pretty fast. If you can get the combo one that's USB/eSATA is also nice, provided you have an eSATA interface & the special eSATA cable.

On the one external USB Seagate I was hitting from 40 to 55MBS transferring video files connected as USB2 (Vista 32), maybe a lot of that was in the memory cache also, not sure. But it was pretty fast.

When I use my Notebook Computer for Video Editing I tend to capture (transfer) the video from my camcorder via a firewire cable to an internal hard drive - this is more reliable than placing faith in the lower speeds of a USB transfer to the external drive.

If speed is not an issue then it is possible to then move the files over to an external USB or Firewire drive and edit them from there. I have not had an issue with this but can confirm that it does take a bit longer than doing the same task from an internal hard drive.

My desktop computers all have more than one internal hard drive.
When I use a desktop computer I adopt a work flow that not only takes into account moving data from one hard drive to another, but also the IDE cable connecting that drive to the motherboard. The following diagram illustrates this better (A picture says a thousand words.)


From my tutorial: From Camcorder to DVD with VideoStudio