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Looking for a portable quick external hard drive

Nah.
It is similar/same specs to all those other portable,USB-powered, external hard drives, and that's not that great.

I have a 1TB USB 3 Seagate that is very portable, and OK for video editing at first, but as you fill it, the transfer rate drops. When it was new, it cruised at ~120 MB/s. At ¾ full it's about 85 MB/s (according to the Blackmagic Speed Tester)and it drops frames. I no longer edit from it. (I may wipe it and re-think my editing strategy after learning some good media management tips from Ripple Training.)

If you want portable, bus powered, fast and high capacity/low cost, take a look at the Western Digital My Passport Pro. It's got two of those little drives crammed into a portable case. They are hooked up as RAID 0 so you can get (so WD says) 'up to 233 MB/s'. Comes in 2TB and 4TB capacity. It's powered by the Thunderbolt port.

RAID 0 so don't forget to backup regularly.
 
Roll your own. There's plenty of 400Mb/s+ rated USB 3.0 cases in the £15 - 90 price bracket and very capable 6Gb/s SSDs you can fit yourself.

I wouldn't expect any kind of HDD to handle HD video of any kind. You'd be limited to half-HD Intermediate Codec and uncompressed audio with a HDD.
 
barkmonster said:
I wouldn't expect any kind of HDD to handle HD video of any kind. You'd be limited to half-HD Intermediate Codec and uncompressed audio with a HDD.
Click to expand...
My WD VelociRaptor Duo seems to be doing just fine editing ProRes 422. I'll check again in the morning :)
 
martinX said:
My WD VelociRaptor Duo seems to be doing just fine editing ProRes 422. I'll check again in the morning :)
Click to expand...

That would be a 10,000 rpm 15mm 2.5" HDD with a heatsink wouldn't it? 2 of them in a very expensive, non-portable enclosure in a RAID config in fact. Not a bog standard 5400rpm laptop drive?

For portability, a fast SSD in a USB 3.0 enclosure would make more sense.
 
barkmonster said:
That would be a 10,000 rpm 15mm 2.5" HDD with a heatsink wouldn't it? 2 of them in a very expensive, non-portable enclosure in a RAID config in fact. Not a bog standard 5400rpm laptop drive?
Click to expand...
Currently $449 from B&H Photo, not portable, but they are hard drives. HDDs are definitely capable of storing and streaming full high def video for editing in a portable drive - the WD My Passport Pro mentioned above can push through 230 MB/s which can handle a few ProRes 422 streams at 122 Mbps). Just not those cheap 5400 rpm standard laptop drives that every man and his dog seem to be packaging up these days, as you pointed out.

At the time of my own purchase, I had to decide between it and the Western Digital My Passport Pro (2TB for $299 or 4TB for $429), which is portable (which isn't that important to me but it was double the capacity for a bit less $$).

In the end, the higher transfer rate of the Velociraptors (~400MB/s) won out for me. If I couldn't get half a dozen ProRes streams out of that there's something wrong.

SSD was considered, but even one I made myself would be 4x or more the cost of the Velociraptor or My Passport Pro (priced approximately from One World Computing's website). It's interesting to note the incompressible data transfer rates (and that's what applies to video) are quite a deal lower than the headline advertised rate. The 'consumer' 6G SSDs are just above 200 MB/s, while the more expensive pro SSDs are much better, but also more expensive.

I agree the OP would do well to consider an SSD in his calculations. Price, capacity, speed, portability and longevity are all things to consider.

It's a good time for tech. We have so many choices. :apple:
 
martinX said:
Currently $449 from B&H Photo, not portable, but they are hard drives. HDDs are definitely capable of storing and streaming full high def video for editing in a portable drive - the WD My Passport Pro mentioned above can push through 230 MB/s which can handle a few ProRes 422 streams at 122 Mbps). Just not those cheap 5400 rpm standard laptop drives that every man and his dog seem to be packaging up these days, as you pointed out.

At the time of my own purchase, I had to decide between it and the Western Digital My Passport Pro (2TB for $299 or 4TB for $429), which is portable (which isn't that important to me but it was double the capacity for a bit less $$).

In the end, the higher transfer rate of the Velociraptors (~400MB/s) won out for me. If I couldn't get half a dozen ProRes streams out of that there's something wrong.

SSD was considered, but even one I made myself would be 4x or more the cost of the Velociraptor or My Passport Pro (priced approximately from One World Computing's website). It's interesting to note the incompressible data transfer rates (and that's what applies to video) are quite a deal lower than the headline advertised rate. The 'consumer' 6G SSDs are just above 200 MB/s, while the more expensive pro SSDs are much better, but also more expensive.

I agree the OP would do well to consider an SSD in his calculations. Price, capacity, speed, portability and longevity are all things to consider.

It's a good time for tech. We have so many choices. :apple:
Click to expand...

Not only do those drives need to be in a RAID 0 config to get those speeds but the My Passport Pro uses 5400rpm drives and has a typically over-priced Thunderbolt interface. The whole point is to have portable storage capable of HD video editing and a dual drive HDD setup won't achieve that even if lower-end SSD don't handle random writes as well as some of the higher end ones.
 
barkmonster said:
Not only do those drives need to be in a RAID 0 config to get those speeds but the My Passport Pro uses 5400rpm drives and has a typically over-priced Thunderbolt interface. The whole point is to have portable storage capable of HD video editing and a dual drive HDD setup won't achieve that even if lower-end SSD don't handle random writes as well as some of the higher end ones.
Click to expand...

those drives need to be in a RAID 0 config to get those speeds
Click to expand...
That's why RAID 0 is used - to squeeze more speed out of a system.

a typically over-priced Thunderbolt interface
Click to expand...
As a package, it's cheaper per terabyte than an SSD. Something isn't over-priced if it does what you need at a price that is affordable.

I'm not sure why you think you can't edit HD video on a My Passport Pro. At up to 230 MB/s transfer rate, it's more than capable of supporting quite a few 125 Mb/s ProRes streams concurrently. It's also portable and bus-powered. If even more streams than it can handle concurrently are needed, there's always the proxy option. Really easy in FCP X - it's literally 4 mouse clicks away to transcode an entire event's worth of clips into 17 Mbps clips. I've cut 3 camera multi cams using ProRes proxy streaming from a slow 5400 rpm Seagate portable drive, switching to full ProRes for the final export

SSDs are an option, just not the only option.
 
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