Ian R. Brown wrote:
I will warn you now that I am somewhat of a lone voice on these forums for recommending USB 2.0s.
For video (and any other) use FW is faster than USB 2.0 but I don't think that is really relevant.
... 10y ago, usb was a bottleneck, 'cause it 'occupied' CPU-time on Macs.
meanwhile, the sheer numbers proof ... :
a 1080p in proRes(LT), common codec for a FCPX project, although 1080p isn't officially supported yet: 170mbps
usb2 specification (yepp, under 'best' conditions and meant as 'up to') 480mbps ...
so, in real life, with 'old' usb2 and over-the-top codec (1080p), a usb-drive should handle 'video' well.
With my old set-up, for FC/e4, I used a fw-connected drive for cache/rendering, hoping to speed up processes ...
Actually, 3 usb drives in use simultaneously with FCPX - no probs.
Next months, my mini gets a new 7.200 intHDD ... guess, this will give a lil' bump ...
If speed is an issue: Ram, even more Ram! (here 8GBs, which is max on my device)