Hard Drive Solution for Laptop Editing?

[JayInNJ]

Hi,

My main computer is my laptop. I'm thinking about how best to set it up for using VideoStudio 8.5 to edit short videos, each about 3-5 minutes long. I have some newbie questions for the experienced users out there:

1. Once each video is done, I'd like to archive it to an external drive to save space on my primary drive, though I would like to be able to bring it back and re-edit the project if necessary. Can I move entire VS projects back and forth across drives, or will VideoStudio have trouble with this?

2. I'm looking at moving up to a 512GB drive for my laptop, which would have about 300GB free for video storage and editing. That seems like it should be plenty for my purposes. Is there any reason to consider a 1TB drive?

Thanks to anyone who can help...

...Jay

[Ken Berry]

1. A lot of us do precisely this. In fact I download my video to an external hard drive (1 TB) and edit from there (with my VS on my computer of course). But you could also do it the way you describe. Once you have finished editing, VS has a facility called SmartPackage which can wrap a whole project -- including project file, video clips and any associated clips, music and photos -- and move it to an external drive. So no problems with that either.

2. This is a bit like asking 'how long is a piece of string'... It depends in part on what format your video is in since some create much larger files than others. You also need to bear in mind that as a general rule, you will need to allow roughly twice as much space while editing as a project actually occupies as a lot of on-the-fly rendering occurs which takes up space. There is also the important question of how much you are prepared to spend -- though of course the price of external USB 3.0 hard drives these days is very much less than an internal laptop hard drive. The best advice if you decide to just increase the size of your laptop drive would be to make it as big as you can afford, while first making sure that your laptop will be able to "see" all the space on a new drive. Some older laptops have motherboards which can only see up to a certain amount.

[JayInNJ]

Hi Ken,

Thanks for your advice. It's good to know that SmartPackage will make the archiving process easy!

As for the hard drive question, I recognize that there are too many factors at play for a truly definitive answer. With that said, I'll rephrase the question: Would 300GB of space be sufficient for video storage and editing, given that my videos are intended to be 3-5 minutes long, in HD? For example, a recent raw video file that I shot was about 2GB before editing.

...Jay

[Ken Berry]

Fair enough, but 'how long is a piece of string' still applies. Depends on how many videos you intend making and over what time frame. If it's not all that many, and all around that size, sure -- 300 GB would be enough (assuming, of course, that your would not be adding too many new programs). Also depends, I guess, on how big your current hard disk is: 360 GB? 250 GB? 100 GB? In other words, it sounds as though you want a new hard disk anyway for reasons in addition to video editing. So yes, 300 GB spare space on a 500 GB disk would probably be enough without having the extra expense of $70 or $80 for an external HDD.

[tletter]

Would 300GB of space be sufficient for video storage and editing, given that ... a recent raw video file that I shot was about 2GB before editing

A 512GB HDD is not a very large drive today and while you are planning that 300GB will able reserved as a work space, you may find that other nonVS-related programs and files start to eat up your work space. Personally I'd go with the largest HDD that I could afford to better future-proof the laptop. Better still yet I'd go with a SSD vice a HDD as the price of these drives has fallen substantially.

[JayInNJ]

I guess that's the thing. I have a 1TB WD Black hooked up via USB 3 that I reserved exclusively for video, and while it's a pretty fast bit of kit, I reasoned that an internal SSD would give me a bit of extra speed and more flexibility to edit away from my desk. My current internal drive is a 256GB SSD which is fine, but it only has about 50GB of free space left, so it's clearly not going to get me far with video.

If I'm going to upgrade my internal drive, I'd go with a Samsung 850 Pro SSD. The 512GB unit is not unreasonable, but the 1TB drive is a chunk of change, and I'm not so sure about pulling the trigger on it. Clearly, it's a short-term/long-term kind of choice, made all the more difficult by the fact that a year from now, that 1TB SSD will be cheaper than the 512GB is right now.

[asik1]

Hi, I don't know what type of things you do Jay, but I work with less than 50GB sometime, with no apparent issues.
and on the SSD/HDD issues, my philosophy is to spread the risk of failure. so multi smaller is better than one bigger.

[tletter]

my philosophy is to spread the risk of failure. so multi smaller is better than one bigger.

Big or small, the key is effective backup so your RTO and RPO can be met.

[JayInNJ]

Thanks for your input. Maybe I'll go with what I've got for now, and then move up to one of those nice Samsungs when I absolutely have to. The price is sure to come down by then, anyway.

I appreciate everyone's help!