The Importance of Using An External HDD

One of the many questions/complaints we always see on the forum is when people are using a single-drive system, especially laptops, and complain that DR is slowing down either during renders or, just in the edit process. A quick overview of the issue - and an easy affordable fix:

Using a single-drive system is like trying to build a brick fence as fast as possible - with one arm. Muscles, heart, respiration and even your endocrine system will quickly become overwhelmed and you'll either collapse from over-exertion or worse, faint from lack of oxygen. Not a good way to start your day, face down in the mortar.

Computers are precisely the same: By forcing a single-drive to do the heavy lifting of rendering videos you're overloading every component to do the work because that single-drive has to:

- Host and talk to the OS and apps
- Host the files you're working on
- Allow continuous READ/WRITE operations 100% of the time, not just during rendering. Renders just push that schema to a 10x times load on everything else, RAM, CPU, GPU and the bus that they're all connected to which by the way, unlike the aforementioned components CAN'T be upgraded. Whatever the bus speed is that's all you get. There's no speeding it up or expanding it.

If you're fortunate some computers have more than one bus, allowing for certain components or external devices to have a separate pipeline to and from the RAM, CPU and GPU, but that's not always the case. Less likely in laptops than desktop machines.

But the simple solution to give your computer an additional "arm" to add a single, external drive. You keep the OS and apps on your internal HDD (because it's the fastest in communicating to the internal bus) and you put ALL your working files, photos, vids, audio, graphics... anything that's NOT an application goes on the external HDD.

In DR you actually assign this external as your primary asset location, so that the project files, library, renders and cache files live exclusively on the external and DON'T TOUCH the internal drive - with exception to the small reference file used by every application you're using.

Now here's the best part: With current technology the new M.2 style SSD's have become extremely fast, along with newer systems that are using Thunderbolt 4 (or the similar USB connectivity for PC's) and we now have blistering-fast connections for doing serious work on DR.

I recently upgraded to the new M4 Mac Mini, which by the way is the MOST powerful Mac I've ever owned, including last 2 versions of the Mac Pro (cheese grater and Trash Can/Turbo Tube).

I purchased a TB-4 external enclosure for a SINGLE M.2 Samsung EVO 990, 1TB drive. NOT a RAID enclosure, which is what I've been using exclusively for decades to get fast READ/WRITE speeds for editing. Guess what... this is the FIRST external HDD I've ever used - including some old-school ATTO Fibre enclosures - that is actually FASTER than the Mini's internal SSD!! Take a look at the speed tests, labeled internal vs. external, the external is faster, not by a large margin but faster regardless.

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Here's some info for those who want this setup:

The enclosure comes with thermal strips to put onto the SSD blade. DON'T.

The blade comes with it's own thermal strips front and back, assuming you intend to put it into an enclosure. TAKE THEM OFF.

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Unless you work in a dirty environment, i.e. lots of dust/dirt, pet dander etc, just leave the enclosure case off! Natural convection will keep the SSD cool. I've pushed DR as hard as I could in a 4K edit and the blade and enclosure were barely warm. But for sure if I closed the case and used the thermals to make a connection to the lid it would absolutely gotten hot.

They do make a version of the enclosure with a fan, but why bother when leaving the case open works perfectly!!

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As long as you have a TB3 or 4 connection on your computer you'll enjoy a wonderful dual-drive system without breaking the bank!!

Soon I'm going to get a second enclosure/EVO SSD and then use software RAID-0 to join them together for more than 6000 MB/s connectivity. WITHOUT spending thousands of dollars on an expensive RAID enclosure and a bunch of drives.

Yep, SkyNet is coming soon...

Cheers.

I have a similar ACASIS enclosure for my M1 Studio Max with a cheap WD 2T drive in it. Having come from editing on PC for years when things were not as fast for anything I have my PC set up with lots of drives. Boot drive OS and programs, D drive for all temp work ( cache etc 1T NVME), S drive source media 16T hard drive, move files to E drive 1T NVME for multicam though , R drive render 1T NVME . Then external RAID5 for archive important stuff on another RAID 5 too. This is still my reference PC and Studio Max is just to edit. I have them now connected to NAS with 10G ethernet to transfer files but also just a USB C drive between them sometimes. Also then use iPad.

So yes my Studio Max has nothing other than OS and programs on its drive since it does nothing but editing. Rest of the household is really PC and Android. iPad is also used for editing stuff too with Affinity as well as Resolve. Starting to use the iPad for other things like Airplay to TV etc.

That sounds like a skullcrushing environment to manage. Total geek heaven.

Back in the day prior to going Mac-exclusive, so... mid-2000's around 2005 or so, I was building my own PC's to either be a purpose built MS Flight Simulator platform or video editing workstation.

I remember Gigabyte boards being very well designed and reliable and was nearly always my go-to for building max-capability systems with ATX and extended ATX cases.

Are they still king of the hill for custom builds? (Their GPU's were less impressive, I think I used PCIe cards that came from a German company - can't remember whose.)

BTW: For those interested in video editing/render box history there was briefly another system entirely, so advanced an entire Sci-Fi series was built around it for mainline edits and, creating 3D rendered models for broadcast use:

The NewTek "Video Toaster" built around an Amiga 4000 box.

By all rights the Amiga should have taken over the world. It was way, way ahead of it's time when compared to both PC (which back then were just clones of the IBM standard business machines before MS took over) and even the Mac.

It was the first personal computer to have a full-color GUI interface, the first to have internal 2-channel stereo sound with no less than 3 chips dedicated to playback, render and processing of all audio signals and the "Kickstart" process of booting the system meant that no matter what you did in the work environment, you couldn't possibly cause a corruption or, if there had been viruses (which there were none then) you never had to worry about a non-boot machine, because all the boot-info and drivers were stored on a separate floppy disk that had to be inserted on every power-on cycle.

When the Video Toaster hit the market it literally turned the broadcast production world on it's ear; there'd never been a machine - at it's price-point - with it's capabilities and several nationally syndicated TV shows used it for primary and secondary production edits such as, Highlander, Babylon 5 (the sci-fi series), the later version of Knight Rider, and some cheesy American shows like TJ Hooker and others.

The only other system that came close - but still not as capable especially with audio - was the Quantel Editbox, but at substantially higher cost and per-seat licensing issues that made independent studios adopt the Amiga 4000/Video Toaster immediately.

The Amiga was widely adopted in Europe and even started to outsell PC's for a time, but because of stupid marketing decisions and misinterpretation by the US market the entire Amiga line was dismissed as game machine, best suited to use all its advanced A/V capabilities for next-gen games to trounce the new consoles. And then it just died completely.

Gawd... the geek came outta nowhere...

And it was built in my city, literally half a mile from my home.
Well, even nostalgia is not what it was any more.

BTW, later we had Avid on the floor just above my workplace.

And it was built in my city, literally half a mile from my home.
Well, even nostalgia is not what it was any more.

BTW, later we had Avid on the floor just above my workplace.

Did you get an Amiga for yourself? And if so which, the 1000, 500, 2000...?

I made an editing PC with the Fast Video Machine when it came out for linear editing control. Two Panasonic VHS decks and a Sony Deck. The Fast Video Machine controlled them with LANC. Eventually got three SVHS decks and a massive 4G hard drive !!! How times have changed. I got into dividing up the hard drives by function when neither CPU or drives were that fast and needed the separation to work !!

I have made all my PC's until I got the Studio Max. Often friends think I am a little crazy for spending so much on a hobby. However I drive a van that I rarely change and they drive a Mercedes etc. Over time the difference in price is a lot more than all the money I have spent on PC's and video.

Using a third-party interface such as USB or Thunderbolt is technically a non-sense. My U.2 drives are plugged natively on their NVMe interfaces with a 5,25 dock to swap them between computers. Of course, I don't use Mac for that.

Using a third-party interface such as USB or Thunderbolt is technically a non-sense. My U.2 drives are plugged natively on their NVMe interfaces with a 5,25 dock to swap them between computers. Of course, I don't use Mac for that.

This is Mac specific as there is no way to add more drives to a Mac. Not an issue of going between computers, just adding more drive space. My Studio Max has 1T internal drive and a 2T external drive. For comparison my PC currently has 500G 'C' drive, 1T render ,500G temp drive,NVME , then 2T SSD and 16T hard drive. Lots of space to add more !!

One of the many questions/complaints we always see on the forum is when people are using a single-drive system, especially laptops, and complain that DR is slowing down either during renders or, just in the edit process. A quick overview of the issue - and an easy affordable fix:

Using a single-drive system is like trying to build a brick fence as fast as possible - with one arm.

Hold on. I've been on the forum nearly 14 years, and I can't remember anybody saying "I'm trying to run Resolve on a computer with everything on one drive." I think everybody knows from the long history of computers that you need to have a boot drive (with all the software) and at least one separate data drive (which can be internal).

We usually recommend a separate cache drive (particularly an SSD), and we recommend using an additional drive for renders. I have yet to ever see anybody complain that they can't work because they're trying to boot, cache, use source files, and render on a single drive.

While I agree that SSDs are faster than ever, I don't think you need to get much faster than 2GB/s on drives, even with 8K source files. We do just fine with all the 4K work we do. If anything, the system slows down due to lots and lots of processing... not due to drive speed/space issues.

While I agree that SSDs are faster than ever, I don't think you need to get much faster than 2GB/s on drives, even with 8K source files.

Maybe yes, for multicam? Imagine 8K x 8 streams playing.

If that’s your paid job, you should be able to buy a serious SSD RAID.
Or something is wrong with your business planning.

If that’s your paid job, you should be able to buy a serious SSD RAID.
Or something is wrong with your business planning.

No need RAID. There are 60 TB U.2 drives running over 8 GB/S.

One of the many questions/complaints we always see on the forum is when people are using a single-drive system, especially laptops, and complain that DR is slowing down either during renders or, just in the edit process. A quick overview of the issue - and an easy affordable fix:

Using a single-drive system is like trying to build a brick fence as fast as possible - with one arm.

Hold on. I've been on the forum nearly 14 years, and I can't remember anybody saying "I'm trying to run Resolve on a computer with everything on one drive." I think everybody knows from the long history of computers that you need to have a boot drive (with all the software) and at least one separate data drive (which can be internal).

We usually recommend a separate cache drive (particularly an SSD), and we recommend using an additional drive for renders. I have yet to ever see anybody complain that they can't work because they're trying to boot, cache, use source files, and render on a single drive.

While I agree that SSDs are faster than ever, I don't think you need to get much faster than 2GB/s on drives, even with 8K source files. We do just fine with all the 4K work we do. If anything, the system slows down due to lots and lots of processing... not due to drive speed/space issues.

You should do your background research before posting stuff like this.

There are SEVERAL posts from users complaining about performance issues who have only a laptop with a single drive.

And, the notion that an external isn't that beneficial - every post-house in Burbank, NYC and Dallas that I work not to mention all the suppliers who make turn-key edit stations for the industry would throw that concept right back at you.

I don't care what your experience level is or how long you've been on the forum, fact is you have a history of making blanket, baseless claims about various things and personally I'm quite sick of seeing it. It's why industry pros like myself have stopped posting help on forums because of issues like this, where you're fighting someone who claims to be an expert who's sharing completely incorrect information.

In fact, this just might be the end of my involvement here as well. Thanks for helping me realize I'm wasting precious energy here.

Do your due-diligence before posting anything - because mostly you've been way wrong.
Aidos.

Hi Folks
Bummer that this has turned into a grudge match. Sometimes slow speed is disk related, sometimes it's not. Blanket statements in either direction are often wrong and usually not very useful. As are comparisons to how things worked back in the days of very slow spinning disks.

Sure, if the user has a slow spinning disk then that's likely their problem. But that slow spinning disk may very well be an inexpensive external drive attached to a relatively new MacBook with a fast internal SSD. In that case using the single internal SSD would fix the user's problem - if they had enough internal space for the media that is.

On the flip side, someone might have a single fast SSD but be using an underpowered GPU. Or a good GPU but the wrong Windows driver. Adding a fast external drive won't help them at all.

I generally work on a MacBook Pro M1 Max with 64GB RAM and a 2TB internal SSD. Sometimes I work on a project that's totally on my internal SSD. Nice compact form factor and easier to use in a cramped airplane seat. Sometimes I have the media on an external SSD. Either way Resolve is blazingly fast.

Right now I'm editing something shot open gate on an Alexa Mini in ARRIRAW. 3424x2202, no proxies, no caching. It plays smoothly on my machine with the media on an external SSD or the single internal one.

Note that in my case the internal SSD - which tests at 5000-6000 MB/s - is about seven times faster than the external. But even the relatively slow external SSD - a 4TB SanDisk Extreme Portable SDSSDE61-4T00 - will happily handle 24p 8K ProRes 422 HQ. So the ARRIRAW rate of 2262 Mb/s (283 MB/s) is a no problem for even the slow SSD's 876 MB/s speed.

Sure if I were doing multiple streams at one time I might need to think about this. Not for the internal but rather the external SSD. But in general the SSD isn't the limiting factor. There are other aspects to think about - like do I really want to prematurely age my soldered-in SSD - but speed isn't usually one one them.

I sure hope we can get back to helping people rather than bashing on each other!
Cheers!
Joe