external hard drives our necessity for a
lot of video editing projects and
choosing the right one can make a
massive difference to the speed of your
editing in this video we're going to
take a look at the different types of
hard drives and SSDs available and my
recommendations when it comes to the
best drives of video editing hey it's
Justin browning from primal video we
release a ton of content to help you get
better results with your videos faster
if you new here then make sure you click
that big subscribe button and all the
links to everything we mention in this
video you can find linked in the
description below so let's jump into it
now when it comes to video editing
external drives can make a big
difference to the speed of your editing
as well as the security of your backups
and your archives as well now depending
on your computer configuration and setup
and depending on the hard drives that
you've already got built into your
computer where an external drive can
speed up the process and speed up your
whole editing workflow is by separating
the two so if you've got a standard hard
drive so not a super fast drive in your
computer that's got your operating
system and all your programs and
everything on it then you can really
speed up your editing by having your
performance on your external drive
having a high-speed external drive for
fast access to the footage fast access
to your project files that will speed
everything up now in some cases you
might already have a fast primary drive
or an operating system drive
combining that with a fast external
drive and again keeping the two separate
operating system and your project files
and media for your video editing can
once again speed things up even further
so really everything comes down to the
speed that you can access and transfer
your files and access and run your
programs to speed up the entire process
now there's a lot of different options
out there across a huge range of prices
speeds and configurations so in this
video we're going to take a look at what
they are and my recommendations if
you're looking for the best external
drive for video editing and make sure
you stick around because I'll cover my
simple tip to help you easily backup
your video projects on the flyer that
I've seen help save entire working
projects from being lost if your
external drive ever crashes now when it
comes to drives there's really two main
performance considerations
versus storage size and the second is a
speed obviously with video storage is
the big thing video files aren't small
so having enough storage is absolutely
critical but speed is also really
important and using slow hard drives can
really make your video editing painful
it drives these days you can usually get
one or the other relatively cheaply but
combining the two into one drive is
where it gets expensive SSDs for example
are fast but they get expensive quickly
as your storage capacity goes up hard
drives on the other hand are slower but
you can get much much higher storage
capacity versus an SSD for the same
price with that in mind using a mix of
the two different types really starts to
make sense
hard drives where the capacity is
important but speed is not so critical
and SSDs where the speed is the main
requirement but not so much the storage
turn regards to your video and your
editing process whether each of these
matter well the primary use for the
drives when you're editing our number
one working drives and number two backup
drives so number one a working drive is
where you'll store all your files while
you're working on a project and the need
so here is where speed is important
because these are the files you're going
to be working off and editing off so the
faster drives are going to improve the
response times in your editing your
rendering speed your general speed of
editing so you need something big enough
to hold your files but the focus is to
get something as fast as you can the
second one then is backup drives and
this is where your storage capacity
matters the most so you want to get
drives as big as possible to backup your
current project files for redundancy
archive or your completed projects any
b-roll footage really anything you want
to keep for the future so that you have
them handy now because these are
typically backups they were not going to
be used for working files your speed
isn't the big concern here so now that
we've covered the types of drives and
what's important let's run through what
I'm currently using and what I recommend
for each ok first off we'll look at
working drives now for small projects I
use smaller fast SSD drives both to hold
the editing project and the video
footage now has these SSDs or high speed
drives are
smaller I'll use them as temporary
storage while I'm working on these
projects these are the working drives
once I'm done with the project I'll back
it up or I'll archive the project and
they'll clear off the SSD ready for the
next project so the biggest benefit I
get from working this way is that my
working drive all the files and
everything are on high speed drive so
using an SSD so the file transfers fast
the whole editing process works fast and
it can also speed up your rendering and
exporting if you're using fast drives as
well I also make sure that the computers
I'm editing on have fast primary drives
as well so that the operating system
runs fast and so that the program's load
quick and perform well as well so in
regards to fast external SSD drives the
ones that I like are the one terabyte
and two terabyte Samsung drives these
are incredibly fast but they're not
cheap and with your external drives it
also comes down to how your drive is
connected to your computer there's no
point having a super fast hard drive but
losing all the speed with how you're
connecting it to your computer
so you want to make sure that you're
using at least USB 3 or USB 3.1 or
Thunderbolt 3 on some of the newer
devices the external drives that I'm
currently using other Samsung t3 drives
now these are small light and incredibly
fast this one's a 1 terabyte drive but
there are different sizes available so
you just want to get one that is able to
hold the size of the projects that
you're going to have and the number of
projects that you're going to have on
the go so in regards to backups and
archives this is where you've got your
slower storage which is designed for
redundancy and backups the ones that I
use are a USB 3 western digital my book
drive they have a 7200 rpm drive these
are six terabyte drives you can also
give them an 8 and I think this tends
out now or very soon as well I like to
backup all my stuff to a network storage
as well an ass so that I use that I have
a running backup of all my files and
then I use these as an off-site backup
so that I have a copy of my files here
and running and accessible if I need to
but also external in case of fire or
theft so in regards to the Western
Digital drives I'm really not someone
that is one brand specific or the other
I've got some Seagate as well
my approach to it is to get the best
bang for buck Drive when you're looking
to purchase these are the kinds of
things that you're not normally buying
every day and next time you're going to
buy one there'll be a better value drive
available higher storage cheaper price
so for me right now I'm using the WDS
the Western Digital z' but Seagate are
another solid option as well and both of
these know we have a round of five-year
warranty so they're really really good
solid drums so my process then is I use
the high speed drives the SSD for the
editing once the projects are complete
on there then I'll back up to our
network storage to our live running back
up and then I'll also transfer off to
one of these put it in the cupboard or
put it externally off-site as a backup
as well but really even with these the
transfer rate on these is actually
really really surprising they connect
them through with USB 3 I was pretty
blown away with how fast these drives
actually are and how quick you can get a
heap of data onto them we've actually
used these exact drives to edit projects
where we've had a huge amount of data
way more than you'd fit onto a couple of
SSD so they're definitely high
performance drives so my recommendation
to you would be obviously dependent on
your budget and workflow and how many
editing projects or whatever you're
taking on or videos you're producing is
try to edit off the fastest drives you
can if the fastest drive that you've got
is your internal hard drive in your
computer then use that wherever possible
look at external drives like a fast
external drives and then your backups
can be slower drives by bigger drives so
that you can back all of your stuff up
onto them and put them away in case of
fire or theft and really you should also
have two copies of your backup so one on
site and one off-site so if there is a
problem you've at least got two copies
you hate to have to pull out your backup
Drive and find that the drive did at
work or that has died sitting and not
running so I've definitely seen that
happen as well so always have two backup
copies of every backup drive the other
hard drives will need to mention in this
video are your portable backup drives
this is really a mix of the two this is
the the smaller drives that are two
terabyte this one's actually have four
terabytes it's a little bit bigger but
these are just
off your computer so these are great for
traveling with because you don't need to
take the bigger drives with the power
brick as well
these are slower drives as well most of
these are 7200 rpm so they're fast
enough to edit off but they're not going
to give you the full performance that
you would with editing often SSD or a
fast external drive but I'll take these
with me when I'm traveling so that I can
backup huge amounts of data depending on
the cameras and the projects we're
working on so that I can get the backups
going and if I have to edit off these
these will work fine until we can come
back to our higher speed drives here but
even just for portable backup drives
while you're traveling then these are
perfect so this exact one is a Seagate 4
terabyte and this is a Western Digital 2
terabyte and both of these are
incredibly cheap now in regards to
backups and not losing your video
editing projects while you're working on
them one tip that I have is to
automatically sync your working folder
with something like Google Drive or
Dropbox and how you can do that is
create a sync folder for either one of
those two and edit your project files or
your video files from those folders so
that way they're constantly updating to
Google Drive or Dropbox and the latest
version is always going to be up there
in the cloud as well now obviously this
is going to be dependent on how much
data you're actually moving around and
your internet speeds but wherever
possible I try to edit directly from a
sync folder so that if my computer died
at any given moment there is a backup
that is automatically done without me
having to manually do a backup backups
are one of those things that if we have
to do them manually a lot of people
don't do so you need to automate the
process wherever possible and having an
automatic backup to Google Drive or to
Dropbox is a great way to make sure that
that is actually done now if you are
editing in something like Adobe Premiere
then Adobe Premiere does have a cloud
backup option for you make sure you turn
it on because most people have it but
don't have it turned on so if your
internet is good enough this is
something that I would definitely
recommend you do even if it's just your
project files or the working files if
there's not enough bandwidth or internet
capabilities to upload your entire lot
of footage as well make sure your
footage is backed up to a couple of
bigger slower drives but make sure your
working files
are automatically backed up because
they're typically much much smaller now
if you are interested in our recommended
process for backing up your videos then
check out the video linked on-screen now
that covers how we backup and archive
our completed projects and the best
process to ensure that your old projects
are accessible enough to easily reuse
parts for all of them in future videos
I'll see you soon