What's wrong with USB 3.0 for Video Editing?

[Guest]

Hi,


So I'm researching new external hard drives to buy for my video editing set up (I use a 2012 Macbook Pro - with an SSD installed), and I keep on being told that USB 3.0 is really bad/ slow, or that USB is the limiting factor in hard drive speed.
My question is whether or not it really is as bad as everyone says? I understand that Thunderbolt is faster but there doesn't seem to be such a massive difference between the 5GBps of USB 3.0 and the 10GBps of Thunderbolt when you consider that people still seem to love FireWire 800 at 800Mbps.

Ultimately I can't afford to buy a suite of Thunderbolt drives at the moment, as much as I would like to one day, but in the mean time are USB 3.0 drives really going to be that bad?

I'm specifically looking to get a Media Cache drive at the moment and was going to get a 7400rpm USB 3.0 external hard drive as that seemed to be reasonable quick while not be extortionately expensive.


This is what I understand the various speeds to be:

FireWire 400 – 400Mbps
USB 2.0 – 480Mbps
FireWire 800 – 800Mbps
eSATA – 3Gbps
USB 3.0 – 5Gbpps
Thunderbolt – 10Gbps


Thanks very much for the help!

Jamie

 

[Moonstick2]

Thunderbolt is better for video editing. USB 3.0 isn't as good but then neither is it 'bad' as such - as with many things, it's all relative - it's faster (in both real world and theory) than Firewire 800, for instance.

Come at it from the other direction - if you can't afford to get a Thunderbolt drive now, then your choices are either get USB 3.0 or don't get anything at all. Are you just going to not buy a USB 3.0 drive and not video edit if people tell you 'oh it's so slow'?

Get a USB 3.0 drive and use it. Eventually you'll be better informed than any of us whether you need to eventually move to Thunderbolt or not.