External Hard Drive for Editing?

[TreasonsBeta]

The time has come again. My external hard drive has filled up and I'll need more space. I'll be using this with Anime footage as well as 4k Live Action footage. Even with the proxy footage I use in Premiere, the program still sorely lags. I've been looking at hard drives for a while now and I think I can narrow down some specifications that I want.

- fast read and write speeds
- reliable (show me that warranty)
- large storage space

SSD
As much as I would like to work of a solid state drive for their speed, I need more than the 2TB's that most portable SSD drives offer. SSD are usually more durable but I am always working off of a desktop so durability and portability are not necessities. The few external SSD drives sold that have more than the 2TB available are ridiculously expensive too.
See example: https://www.g-technology.com/products/d ... sd#0G10290

Cheaper options
I know there are cheaper brands out there but the less known ones have tons of bad reviews (hit or miss sort of deals) Brands like WD and Seagate sell inexpensive hard drives with large storage capacities but their read and write speeds are usually terrible. A lot of them don't even list them off of their website.
See example: https://www.seagate.com/consumer/backup ... /#features

Daisy Chaining
I am not working with enough footage at once to warrant any daisy chaining.

Possible Options
I am still working off an old USB G-Drive and it hasn't let me down. Both LaCie and G-Technology came highly rated by my professor. I'd be open to any other suggestions but I'm currently looking at this type of hard drive.
https://www.g-technology.com/products/o ... es#0G03411 <-- 440MB/s | 3 yr warranty
https://www.g-technology.com/products/d ... -2#0G04085 <-- 480MB/s | 3 yr warranty
https://www.g-technology.com/products/d ... b3#0G05748 <-- 500MB/s | 5 yr warranty

Ports
The only problem with the 3rd one is that it has thunderbolt 3 and my iMac only has thunderbolt 2 ports. Apple does have an Adapter for that crossover but I'm wondering if the read/write speeds will slow down because of it. I can't find much info on that topic.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OSUDMj9cj_s

So there are my thoughts from all the research I have done so far. If anyone would like to share their experiences, opinions, and tips going forward, I'd really appreciate it.

[l33tmeatwad]

I've edited with compressed 4K footage from a USB 3.0 enclosure for 2.5 hard drives with a 7200RPM 2TB drive. While SSD and USB 3.1 enclosures are great, they aren't entirely necessary. The bigger bottleneck I've hit was processing power for handling compressed 4k 10-bit footage and not the transfer speed.

[Kionon]

I'm using a LaCie 2Big Quadra but it's only the USB 2.0 version. Of course it has Firewire 800 and so does my Mac Pro. I would need a thunderbolt adaptor for my MacBook Pro though, as it is thunderbolt 2. I have 2TB now in Raid 1 as 1TB for my project files. It just honestly seems safest. My unclipped footage (yes, I still clip) lives on a 3TB time capsule, in order to be available to any device on the network in my apartment because media.

[TreasonsBeta]

I've edited with compressed 4K footage from a USB 3.0 enclosure for 2.5 hard drives with a 7200RPM 2TB drive. While SSD and USB 3.1 enclosures are great, they aren't entirely necessary. The bigger bottleneck I've hit was processing power for handling compressed 4k 10-bit footage and not the transfer speed.

The HD 2D animated footage files are still relatively small and I haven't had a problem with them. But I've been building my uncompressed live-action library from my blu rays and it's slowed down a ton. The proxy function is the only thing allowing me for bearable editing. I know a large part of the lagging issue is my 3.5 GHz Intel Core i5 processor. It's not horrible but it's a far cry from anything great. The transfer speed isn't a huge deal for me since I add stuff overnight, and once the footage is on my hard drive, it stays there. I'm more interested in the read speeds on the drive so it plays nicely within my editing software. I honestly don't remember if my G-drive is USB2 or 3. I got it back in 2013 and it was one of their lower end drives. That may also be an issue.

[TreasonsBeta]

I'm using a LaCie 2Big Quadra but it's only the USB 2.0 version. Of course it has Firewire 800 and so does my Mac Pro. I would need a thunderbolt adaptor for my MacBook Pro though, as it is thunderbolt 2. I have 2TB now in Raid 1 as 1TB for my project files. It just honestly seems safest. My unclipped footage (yes, I still clip) lives on a 3TB time capsule, in order to be available to any device on the network in my apartment because of media.

I've gone back and forth on the idea of a LaCie vs a G-Drive
So far, I've got a REALLY old 1.5TB Seagate hard drive that's got to be over 10 years old now. It still works but I rarely use it because I'm afraid to trust the thing. As my backup I've got a WD 2TB that's almost as old as my Seagate. And lastly, I've got my old G-Dive with 4TB and I'm not sure if it's USB2 or 3. Oh I still clip my footage into sections. I learned a long time ago when I dropped a full-length HD movie file into Premiere that that doesn't work too well. My live-action blu ray footage is sectioned off into 5 min parts and I still use the proxy files while doing most of the editing.

My problem is I've got a lot of portfolio work of rendered 3D animations and 4k camera footage from college I'm afraid to lose and it takes up a lot of space. Most of it is backed up on all 3 drives just in case one of these old things decides to bite the dust. I think that's why I'll be looking at a Raid drive. Thunderbolt2 or 3 seems like the smarter option for the read and write speeds as well as the ability to daisy chain if I want to in the future. It looks like most of them also come with USB3 and 3.1 as an added bonus.

Honestly, I wish iMacs were more update friendly. It would be much easier to pop out and replace the disk drives and processors for more storage and processing power. However, I'm not too keen on taking apart my entire desktop with credit cards and suction cups

[Kionon]

Honestly, I wish iMacs were more update friendly. It would be much easier to pop out and replace the disk drives and processors for more storage and processing power. However, I'm not too keen on taking apart my entire desktop with credit cards and suction cups

I've got a Early 2008 Mac Pro 3,1 and every year it gets harder and harder to update because of the stupid software and firmware limitations Apple tries to put on perfectly good hardware. Sometimes people can hack it. Sometimes they can't. And as technology changes, it becomes harder to add all the things you want to add. I'm already out of PCIe slots and I still haven't added USB 3.0 or 3.1, but I could. I would just need to make compromises.

[TreasonsBeta]

I've been doing a lot of research for this and I think I've narrowed it down to this type of setup
https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/compare/ ... 385761-REG
with the addition of - http://www.caldigit.com/T4/
and anything else I find with more research

All excluding the Drobo seem to accept both SSD and HDD's
As for the G-Speed Shuttle, I would bet more of my money on in terms of reliability but you have to buy all of your hard drives from G-Technology and you can't have a mixture of SSD and HDD's inside any of their enclosures. Add in the factor of the price difference and as far as 4 disk enclosures, it moves it off the table for me.

The Akitio Thunder3 Quad X 4-Bay might be what I'm leaning toward but I'll be doing a ton more research on reviews before I purchase it. I want to know what their warranty and return process is in case of failure with my system. There is also the added hassle of using an Apple Thunderbolt 3 (USB-C) to Thunderbolt 2 Adapter to run the thing. The majority say it works without a glitch but a few have said otherwise.

Now it's on to selecting the 2 SSD and the 2 HDD drives I'll be putting into the 4 bays.
The SSD's will be running with Raid 0 for high speed with whatever I'm currently editing with.
The HDD's will be running with Raid 1 for high capacity backups for all my files.
Anytime I switch between footage I can clear out the SSD's and copy a new batch of footage files from the HDD's

Seagate, WD, Toshiba seem to be the main name brands to choose from for HDD
Crucial, WD, Samsung, SanDisk along with a few others are some brands for SDD
LOL so much more research is needed because I'm not even sure where to start on their spec differences.