Can you edit video from an external hard drive if laptop HD is out of space?

Question

Hi,
I have a 100GB HDD in my sony vaio laptop (vgn-fe550g) and have edited video onto DVD through Roxio Easy Media Creator 9 without any issues. However, I am now running out of space because for my second DVD project I have a lot more video footage. Do you think I will experience any issues if I hook up an external hard drive and work with my video from there? I will be hooking it up via USB 2.0. Thanks!

Answer 1

Yes you can. It might be a bit slower, depending on the USB connection and how many other devices are using the same USB bus. One thing which may help. Move 20GB from your HD to the external drive, then use the two drives together for the video projects. Capture the main files to the external while using the internal for "cache" or temporary files. When you read from one and write to another you will see a net gain in performance, like when you are rendering a DVD stream from edited footage.

Answer 2

It's too slow, clear space before starting. Unless you go with firewire, that would work out a lot faster.

The guy below me may be right about the firewire, but if I were you I'd do what MC suggested. That sounds really smart, efficient, and fast.

But I guarantee you'll still end up moving the largest files off your laptop onto the external, so stop procrastinating and start that process ASAP.

Answer 3

I don't get your question, you mean you want to stream it from the camera to the HD? If it's not detected by the computer you need to install some drivers. Does the camera come with a driver CD? Install that and see what happens.

Answer 4

You should be able to do this with no problems at all.

To correct earlier responses, it will not be too slow. USB 2.0 is faster than standard Firewire.

Answer 5

Yes you can, though it may be a little bit slower.