it's a good time to be a video creator
there are amazing cameras and phones
that all shoot 4k and are a lot more
affordable than ever before allowing us
to produce much higher quality content
without the need for a crazy feature
film budget the issue with this 4k high
quality content though it's huge
now most creators end up reaching for an
external hard drive to be able to
offload their footage from their
precious computer hard drives the thing
is there are a lot out there and they
are definitely not created equally
now B&H was kind enough to let me kind
of wander their store in search of the
best hard drives for 4k video editing
that meet my criteria and I came up with
four now if you have a newer MacBook Pro
then you have a bunch of these
Thunderbolt 3 ports that double as USB
3.1 type C gen 2 ports as well so that
means that on that computer or any other
computer that might have those type of
ports you'll get close to that
theoretical speed now I though for this
test I'm going to actually use the
lowest common denominator that I know
everybody has on their laptop which is
USB 3.0 so this means that the speed
test that I'm doing here are gonna show
you what the lowest speed you would
possibly get are but obviously if you
have those other ports you'll get even
faster first up the new Samsung t5 SSD
now supporting a USB 3.1 gen2 it has
theoretical speeds of up to 540
megabytes a second so using my USB 3.0
port on my razor blade the t5 averaged
about 320 megabytes a second in my
real-world testing of just copying and
pasting files from and to the drive but
that speed was still plenty enough for
me to be able to use my 4.6 K footage in
premiere directly off of the drive
without any hiccups at all and again if
you have those new reports like 3.1 gen2
you'll get closer to that theoretical
speed
besides the performance though it is
also laughably small when it arrived and
I first opened it I literally laughed in
surprised at how tiny it was picking it
up caused a second laugh as it's also a
lot lighter than it looks now I
personally love the blue color even
though it is only available
250 and 500 gig models but the metal
body that is on all the models is a nice
modern aesthetic that I appreciate who
says drives can't look good - in the box
it includes a USBC - USBC cable as well
as a USB c2 USB a cable which means
it'll work with any laptop you have and
finally it's not crazy expensive for use
as an editing a scratch drive the 250
gig starts around 130 dollars the 500
gig is about 200 the one terabyte is 400
and the 2 terabyte is 800 next up we
have a drive on this list from a company
that you may or may not be familiar with
the atom raid SSD from Glyph
technologies also a decent looker it's
small and compact with a rubberized
casing and metallic frame I seriously
love that companies are trying to make
hard drives look better by the way it is
also a USB type-c SSD that comes with
both the type C - type C and type A
cables and as a bonus it's also
Thunderbolt 3 compatible now thanks in
big part to that thunderbolt
compatibility and the fact that it has
two SSDs in raid 0 format it can do
theoretical speeds of up to 800
megabytes a second which is just insane
now again to hit the top end of that
speed you need a Thunderbolt 3 port
which is faster than USB 3.1 gen2 type-c
but then if you had the 3.1 type C gen 2
you would probably get closer to the
theoretical speeds as the T 5 has now
for me using my USB 3.0 port
lowest-common-denominator
I saw about 420 megabytes in the real
world copying a file to the drive and as
of the t5 that speed is plenty for me to
use it to edit my 4k footage in premiere
without having to move the footage off
the drive and if you end up moving to a
laptop with any of those mentioned ports
down the road and then this drive just
like the others will only get faster
pricing for the atom though is a little
more expensive than the t5 probably
thanks to that Thunderbolt compatibility
which I'm sure doesn't come cheap and I
couldn't find anything that wasn't 1 or
2 terabytes so those seem to be the only
options the one terabyte is 460 dollars
and the 2 terabyte is about
820 now the next one isn't as pretty as
the first two but it does come from a
name in the storage world that I think
you might be familiar with
SanDisk SanDisk's extreme 900 SSD is
technically the fastest drive at least
on paper on this list but again to hit
those you would need the specific port
but even without it I managed to hit
about 420 megabytes a second on average
using that 3.0 port and while it is also
the largest SSD on this list it's still
pretty tiny and definitely portable and
also includes both that USB a and C
cables now the SanDisk comes in three
options that I could find a 480 gig for
three hundred or so a 964 460 or so and
a 1.9 2 terabyte for 740 making it also
one of the cheaper options for the top
two sizes while not as competitive as
the others on the lower end and finally
another household storage name brings
the cheapest option on this list Western
Digital starting at just about $100 for
the 256 gig model it's about 200 for the
512 and 360 for the one terabyte so it
is undercutting the other guys by a
little bit the drive is super tiny would
all be a bit cheap feeling and instead
of including two separate cables it just
has a USB type-c adapter for the other
cable it also supports USB 3.1 gen2 like
the rest and can do theoretical speeds
of about the same five hundred and
fifteen or so megabytes a second my
actual speeds using that 3.0 port though
was about 300 megabytes a second now
with all of these that USB 3.1 type C
Gen 2 port means that it's going to be
more compatible across any Mac or any
Windows computer and can use that USB
3.0 like I mentioned and those
Thunderbolt type-c ports but it also
means that they are all a bit future
proofed and as more and more laptops
come out they're going to start having
those 3.1 gen2 ports and that means
these drives will be able to go with you
to your next lab
and again even without that they're all
still super fast as is right now they
handled my 4k and even my 4.6 K footage
editing directly from the drives they're
all tiny and light enough to carry
around all day without even noticing
that they're there now I personally
think that the Samsung is probably one
of the craziest ones on here just in
terms of the price to the size the fact
that it's so light you can carry it
around and not to mention the metallic
look definitely looks good next to my
metallic laptop while also still being
priced sort of right in the middle
but regardless any of these on this list
will work well with Mac or Windows and
also allow you to edit directly from the
drive even large sized footage which is
great they also will last for a long
time to come there guys let me know if
there's other drives that I missed that
meet all of the criteria that I wanted
would love to check those out as well in
the comments below
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