I have been using 2 of these (4 Bay SATA to eSATA) for several years with Vegas and it has been 100% reliable:

http://www.newegg.ca/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16816132029

You might want to check different models and they do have some that are usb 3.0

Rob

I have captured to drives across a network with success, even with only a 100Mbps network, but i've also had it be less successful. If i need the external capture space what i do is capture to a local drive first, then move the captured files to the other PC afterward.

Hi Ulf

Thanks I was planning to use a standard format hard drive that could be added to a NAS at a later date.

Geoff

Thanks Rob

Thanks Chienworks

I think I am planning to do the same. Capture the DV to a local disk and then move it to another disk on a networked PC. I would then need to use that networked PC as the place where Vegas needs to go to work on a project.

Geoff

I have a dozen hard-disks on my desktop. Well, mostly in a desk drawer. I put each project on a separate hard disk that goes into a USB 2.0 hard disk drive docking station. Do all of my editing and project work on it. I also back up the hard disk to another USB 2.0 dock. I work in HDV and USB 2.0 is fast enough. The downside to USB 2 is that the backups can take a while. I have another workstation with USB 3 and an external USB 3 dock. Except for backup time, I really don't see any difference.

same as steve,,,,

@steve - really, you don't see any major advantage to usb3? i was wondering about shuffling video files between desktop and external drives. at present usb2 works fine, but can get painful shift large m2t's backwards and forwards....

I said, "except for backup time". I see no difference in the editing performance.

I use extra "bare" SATA hard drives. Mostly 1TB or larger with an Antec drive caddy that costs about $20 and was easy to install. They act exactly like the drive is installed internally -- because it actually is .. So editing performance is the same but it's easy to remove the drive and put in a different one. They can be set up to be hot swappable.

Antec Drive Caddy

ops - i thought you meant drive imaging backup....

so how much faster are they? would i notice a 'significant' difference say shifting 20 4gb files?

if i go usb3 it means i'll have to get a usb3 card for my mb. about $30, so that's no big deal, unless together with the cost of drives i'm NOT going to see any major change.....

For those weighing USB2 versus USB3 on docking drives to your system. I have found it depends. USB2 performance is particularly dependent on CPU cycles - so if your system is already struggling USB2 can really slow down and can even cause corruption and choke on very large file transfers.

USB3 design seems to be less prone to this vulnerability and generally it will be very noticeably faster than any USB2 performance.
But forewarning here, USB3 connection is best implemented in the motherboard chip set...add-on cards will very widely in perfomance dependent on where they have to be slotted.