Best practices: Sharing portable SSDs between desktop and laptop?

studio-4 wrote on 6/27/2021, 11:48 PM

I read a fairly concerning post (quoted below) from fellow member, Video_flaneur, from the thread, "Can't open project between two computers," regarding the sharing of drives between two computers (I thought this more general title would be more searchable). Since each copy of Vegas grants users two licenses, I have one installed on my HP Z440 Xeon desktop and will install my second license on my new Asus 17.3" Ryzen 9 laptop.

I plan to ingest my entire library of miniDV/DVCAM footage onto my HP Z440 since it has both a Blackmagic Intensity Pro 4K HDMI capture card and an IEEE-1394 FireWire interface board installed. I'll then copy my files onto portable SSDs for use with my laptop. I'm considering one of two offered by B+H PhotoVideo since they provide free two-day shipping, and also credit the sales tax if using their credit card:

• LaCie 5TB Rugged USB 3.1 (data-transfer rate: 130MB/sec.): $179.
• Samsung 2TB T5 portable solid-state drive (data-transfer rate: 540MB/sec.): $219.

A few questions:

1. Is the LaCie's 130MB/sec. data-transfer rate adequate for 1080p24 video files?
2. Has anyone experienced any license/plug-in issues with this workflow?
3. In addition to below, are there any additional best-practices recommended for this workflow?

Here is the quote from Video_flaneur :

"Windows 10 can create a problem with certain laptops when swapping an external drive between computers, as I have learnt the VERY hard way. Some laptops are configured to save current configuration info to disc to enable fast startup. If the disc is removed (even after after a full shutdown) and returns from as second computer which has attempted to do the same thing then certain files become unreadable. The workaround going forward is to go to Windows settings on both computers and hidden under power management settings disable 'fast startup' [emphais added] but that does not recover the corrupted files . . . "

—Video_flaneur

Comments

RogerS wrote on 6/28/2021, 12:14 AM

1. You can disable fast startup here: Control Panel\All Control Panel Items\Power Options\System Settings

2. I use USB 5TB portable drives for video editing. That transfer rate is adequate for compressed video but if you start to do multicam or overlap multiple streams may run into performance issues. For that reason I sometimes move projects onto an internal SSD while I'm working on them and then put back on the regular hard drive when done.

3. Make backups. Buy two of any harddrive and regularly make a backup copy of all files.

studio-4 wrote on 6/28/2021, 12:28 AM

Good stuff @RogerS. Thanks!

FernC wrote on 6/28/2021, 1:04 AM

I'd get the Samsung T5, much more portable, lightweight and faster. If you had to , could work from media files directly from the drive with no slowdowns. Intel's work well with T5, AMD's can have a problem with T5 and especially T7

JN- wrote on 6/28/2021, 2:20 AM

RE: Fast startup. I have found occasionally files simply go missing that I definitely copied to say a drive, ejected properly and they then weren’t there when I go to the next machine. So I must check that out today, could be the culprit. To make the files “appear” when connected to the second drive I found that running the check drive tool fixed it, even though it would say no faults found on drive.

I don’t use the following system to do work on external drives, it’s simply for copying and syncing, then doing all work on Laptop or PC.

I use two 5tb drives to go between laptop and PC, (and visa versa) for major syncing between the two. I use a 500gb t5 for largish copy only transfer and either a thumbdrive or dropbox for smallish copy stuff.

I keep one of the 5tb drives off site, then maybe once a month, swap them around. If I mess up somehow and delete and sync, so all gone, I may be able to get the files back from the off site drive. Of course not as good as a proper incremental backup system, but it suits my needs.

For the 5tb syncing, a long time ago, as the number of folders grew, I made up a batch file front end that drives the robocopy MIR command. The only danger with that is to ALWAYS get it right when selecting the source and target drives, as the MIR command deletes all files on the destination that are not on the source, but then that is what I want.

Before that, for syncing, I used to sync folders one by one in Directory Opus using Ctrl Y. I still use that for typically one folder now.

Note that the 5tb drives are pretty slow, and get worse as they fill up.

Howard-Vigorita wrote on 6/28/2021, 2:44 AM

I use T5 ssd's too. For a while I was plugging them directly into my camera's usb-c port when shooting, doing the editing on them, then filing them away as my archive. I've gotten away from that lately since although they're fast for periodic access, they really don't have the ability to sustain the transfer rates needed to capture high bitrate raw formats without dropping frames. For that, sata ssd's are better. I would recommend the SanDisk Ultra 3D with a StarTech sata to usb adapter cable... I've been successfully test recording ProRes RAW with that and relegating my T5's to archival storage. Next step up is m.2. Nvme ones make good random access disk drives but the sata's are better for sustained large-block transfers... I use Samsung 970's as embedded disks and Samsung 860 sata ssds for dual purpose camera & disk. Usually with an m.2-cfast/usb adapter.

studio-4 wrote on 6/28/2021, 9:39 PM

Great replies everyone—thanks!

I'll probably just get the LaCie 5TB portable if its 130MB/sec. transfer speed is fine for 2K video (i.e., my Sony FS700's highest quality recording-speed is only 28Mbps!). But wIth the $300 I "saved" (by not getting the $1,799 Asus), I may apply that toward a PNY Technologies 4TB M.2 SSD for $649 (total of 4.5TB of on-board storage). A bit steep, but I only have the one available M.2 slot on this laptop. Or get a cheap 1TB M.2 SSD and use the LaCie for my primary media storage.