Offloading media in the field using usb 3.0

[emil tanem]

How to best connect these components for fast transfer?
The laptop has 1 usb3 and 1 usb2 port. Is it possible to connect both redstation and usb 3.0 external hdd on the same usb 3.0 port using an usb 3 hub?

other solutions? like maybe there's a HDD that can be connected directly to the redstation?

Getting good speed is the essential thing here. God know why they don't make 2 usb3 ports on these laptops!


redstation (mini usb3):
http://www.red.com/store/products/red-station-redmag-18-mini-usb3

laptop:
http://www.asus.com/Notebooks/Superior_Mobility/ASUS_ZENBOOK_UX21E/

external HDD (usb3):
http://www.wdc.com/wdproducts/library/AAG/ENG/4178-705131.pdf

 

[Jeremy Ball]

Unfortunately your laptop is very limited. The RED Station mini is your only hope. If at all possible you should check out the HP Elitebook laptops. They have firewire, eSata, and multiple USB 3 ports. You can get some good prices on eBay. I get great performance using the RED Station eSATA then transferring to two USB 3 drives.

There are quite a few USB 3.0 hubs but I believe that since all of them use one USB 3 connection your performance will take a big hit. If the laptop had two USB 3 ports I believe each one can be used at full speed.

 

[Mike Harrington]

Remember USB 3 has theoretical bandwidth of 4.5 gbps or over 600 MB per second.....so it should be able to handle 2 drives at 100mb per second....
Also I have been using an esata to usb3 adapter for my esata red station.....it works fine 80-90 MB per second going through the USB bus to an external USB3 drive....through a single usb3 port to a hub on the laptop.......there are a few of these adapters around

Going through the esata to usb3 through the hub and then back to the USB 3 drive is basically twice the bandwidth of a single red station....and it was all limited by the speed of my usb3 drive not the USB port

 

[Brian Iannone]

USB 3.0 has a theoretical maximum speed of 600 MB/s. Although in real life, it's around 450-525 MB/s. The RED STATION can transfer at an average maximum of 275 MB/s and the hard drive you're using (because it's a single disk) will operate at around 80-110 MB/s. So, if you were to use a USB 3.0 hub, you'd have no reduction in speed at all.

The bottleneck in your setup though is going to be the drive. It's a 2.5" single disk, which is probably the slowest option you could have chose. A 3.5" hard drive drive would be slightly faster, a 2.5" SSD would be even faster and a portable RAID array would be fastest. But, I'm guessing you chose the WD My Passport because it's bus-powered. If you won't have access to a power outlet, your options become rather limited...

The disk you [will] have is 500GB. If you're looking for a bus-powered solution, a much faster solution would be to go with a 2.5" 512GB SSD in a portable enclosure. It'll cost quite a bit more ($600 minimum), but if you need speed and portability, that'd be the way to go as you'll be seeing speeds more than three times faster.

 

[emil tanem]

Well if I get the suggested 512MB external SSD in enclosure I could probably just use that for the editing as well by connecting it through usb3 to my editing station?
That sounds like an economial solution to good performance.

* I'd definitely do backups on something else in addition of course.

 

[Brian Iannone]

Well if I get the suggested 512MB external SSD in enclosure I could probably just use that for the editing as well by connecting it through usb3 to my editing station?
That sounds like an economial solution to good performance.

* I'd definitely do backups on something else in addition of course.

You could indeed do that. If you do go with the SSD + enclosure setup, I'd recommend an OWC Mercury Elite Pro Mini and an OCZ 512GB Vertex 4 SSD. While the actual drive is capable of speeds up to 535 MB/s, since you'll using USB 3.0, you should see continuous transfer rates of around 350-450 MB/s and burst speeds of up to 500 MB/s.