External HDD when editing?

Hey,
Im using Premier CS5.5 on a MBP 13" i5 8gb Ram, I have two hard drives; one is a Lacie 500gb (firewire 800) and the other a Seagate (1Tb) Firewire.

The problem I have is that when running speed test on either harddrives gives me 70mbps on the Lacie and 50mbps on the Seagate. However, in reality, when editing, the Seagate proves to work faster without as many needs for rendering. When I got the the Lacie and formatted through Disc Utility, what I options should I choose for best performance? What I had before was Mac OSX Journaled.

If you're a pro, what do you do, do you use the footage of an external HDD? If so what brand?
Thanks,
Robin

You will basically need a better enclosure. Firewire 800 is pretty slow these days VS Esata/Thurderbolt/USB 3.

If you have either Thurderbolt, or an express card slot, you could look at Caldigit, they are coming out with pretty cool new drives that are MBP compatible.

You'll also have to look at RAID enclosures for anything significantly faster than what you are getting now.

Vince Becquiot

Kaptis Studios
San Francisco - Bay Area

Thanks for the reply. My MBP doesnt have thunderbolt port, If I get a USB3.0 external drive you think that'd be faster than firewire 800?

FYI, Im editing Log C Alexa footage.

Perfect! Will it be portable as well?

[Robin Changizi] "Thanks for the reply. My MBP doesnt have thunderbolt port, If I get a USB3.0 external drive you think that'd be faster than firewire 800?"

No. Your MBP don't have USB 3.0.

It will run instead at downgraded USB 2.0 speed, so FW800 would be significantly faster.

Walter Soyka
Principal & Designer at Keen Live
Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
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