As a video maker and somebody who is going to university to make even more videos, I eat up lots of hard disk space. I already have a 160GB external USB HDD that I use for archiving, but as my projects get bigger and bigger, I'm thinking of using it for current projects. This would basically mean recording raw data from fraps or my video camera directly to the external HDD and editing it from there.

This is my plan, anyway. Before I embark upon this radical Hard Disk shake-up, I need to know if it's going to be worth it. Will a USB drive be too slow to handle intensive video making? I'm a bit ignorant when it comes to the nitty-gritty of hard drives, so any advice would be appreciated.

it can handle it, but with a bit slower then an inbuilt hard drive

USB 2.0 Full Speed can handle about 30-35 MB/s bandwidth, but most mundane internal 3.5" HDDs can spit out 70+ MB/s.

Fine for archiving but you're bound to feel the difference if you work straight off it.

Yeah what ^ said.

If you want it to be portable, what about an e-SATA drive? I've never actually seen one, but I have the ports on my PC to plug one in. I presume it would have the same speed as internal SATA

Dont forget...the well known Vista feature (read: BUG!!!) that makes copying big stuff to an external/different HD slow as buggery.
I have a pretty fast system running Vista x64 SP1, and my major problem is that when I am copying LARGE files from my C: Drive to my D: drive - or one of the externals...(all running USB2.0, and I got 6GB RAM...so it shouldn't be THAT slow!)..it takes YEARS!! Jeez...sometimes I think it would be quicker just to download the damn things straight to the externals!

Just to clarify, when I boot the SAME system to XP x64, it copies nice and rapid...so I KNOW its a Vista bug! Hurry up Windoze 7!!!

Well, don't know about recording direct to HDD, but I know that my HDD struggled when I wanted to capture the clip from a DV camera onto it, using premiere...it worked fine when capturing to internal HDD, and then exporting to external HDD

Thanks for your help guys - I'll bear all this info in mind for when I try it out

Quote from dougie-lampkin :

If you want it to be portable, what about an e-SATA drive? I've never actually seen one, but I have the ports on my PC to plug one in. I presume it would have the same speed as internal SATA

I would definitely go along with the above advice. If you take a look at this review (it's for a Mac but the results should be fairly similar on Windows too) you'll see that eSATA is far ahead of USB2.0 and Firewire400 in terms of transfer rates. If you have an eSATA port on your motherboard (check the manual, Google the board model or ask us if you're not sure) then get yourself an eSATA external hard drive enclosure and a 500GB/750GB/1TB 3.5" SATA drive. Take a look here for some caddies on Dabs (note that there are USB and eSATA ones mixed in there) and here are some SATA hard drives to put inside the enclosure. That link will give you drives over 500GB. For ~£100 you'll be able to get an enclosure and a 1TB drive (you'll have about 930GB to play with when it's formatted and ready to go).

edit: As a lot of the above is probably new to you (and anyone else who is reading this topic for information) I've picked out an example caddy and some example hard drives for you to look at:

Akasa Caddy (£28.16 at the time of writing). Hard drive size is up to you. 500GB for £49.99, 750GB for £69.81 or 1TB for £86.08.

Total costs:
500GB + Caddy = £78.15 (10.42 pence per GB)
750GB + Caddy = £97.97 (13.06 pence per GB)
1TB + Caddy = £114.24 (11.1 pence per GB)

Quote from amp88 :

I would definitely go along with the above advice. If you take a look at this review (it's for a Mac but the results should be fairly similar on Windows too) you'll see that eSATA is far ahead of USB2.0 and Firewire400 in terms of transfer rates. If you have an eSATA port on your motherboard (check the manual, Google the board model or ask us if you're not sure) then get yourself an eSATA external hard drive enclosure and a 500GB/750GB/1TB 3.5" SATA drive. Take a look here for some caddies on Dabs (note that there are USB and eSATA ones mixed in there) and here are some SATA hard drives to put inside the enclosure. That link will give you drives over 500GB. For ~£100 you'll be able to get an enclosure and a 1TB drive (you'll have about 930GB to play with when it's formatted and ready to go).

edit: As a lot of the above is probably new to you (and anyone else who is reading this topic for information) I've picked out an example caddy and some example hard drives for you to look at:

Akasa Caddy (£28.16 at the time of writing). Hard drive size is up to you. 500GB for £49.99, 750GB for £69.81 or 1TB for £86.08.

Total costs:
500GB + Caddy = £78.15 (10.42 pence per GB)
750GB + Caddy = £97.97 (13.06 pence per GB)
1TB + Caddy = £114.24 (11.1 pence per GB)

Wow, that is some very detailed information. Many thanks. I must say, I'm quite tempted as well... But I don't really have a clue whether my motherboard is compatible. Hell, I don't even know what my motherboard is called! All I know is that I own this laptop.

No way that is eSATA :P We have a eSATA connecter on the top of our Medion desktop where the drive can slot in, didn't know it was as fast!

Quote from Mp3 Astra :

I own this laptop.

Unfortunately that laptop doesn't look like it has an eSATA port, according to the specifications:

Quote from http://global.acer.com/products/notebook/tm5720.htm :

A wide range of I/O ports, such as a Type II PC Card slot, a 5-in-1 card reader, four USB 2.0 ports, DVI-D1 port, IEEE 1394 port (4-pin), external display (VGA) port, fast infrared (FIR) port, and more, expand the functionality of the TravelMate 5720.

Given that, it looks like you're stuck at using USB2.0 or FireWire. Both of these choices will give you a fraction of the performance of eSATA but they're not THAT slow. You'll notice a difference in performance compared to your laptop's internal hard drive but it's not going to be a massive one. Coincidentally, I'm selling some spare parts and I have a nearly new USB2.0 enclosure which you could have for £10 plus shipping. Then you would only need to buy a hard drive to put in it (one of the ones I linked to above, for example).