The Truth About Lacie Rugged Hard Drives

Firstly a bit about me. I’ve been in Film & TV for over 20 years primarily as a DIT and post-production. Prior I worked in IT for 4 years after graduating from the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology (RMIT). Bear in mind this is an opinion piece and specifically with regards to my storage use case which is on-set high volume data wrangling.

Every now and then I come across a baffling hardware or software solution that has become an industry standard in media production. Lacie Rugged hard drives are one such solution. Any DIT worth their salt will be dying inside when production hands them over, but also probably rubbing their hands together knowing how much overtime they’re going to need to charge just to get through the rushes. Lacie Rugged hard drives as a technology are quite old and it could be seen as unfair to dunk on them given their current competition, but in my opinion Lacie Rugged’s were never a good solution even 20 years ago, and I’ll explain why below.

Common Misconceptions

People think they’re durable

I think the biggest selling point of the Lacie Rugged drives is the orange rubber shroud seen as a level of protection for precious rushes. Yes the rubberising does what’s written on the tin. If you drop a Lacie Rugged drive it’s far less likely to break compared with a non-ruggedised drive. However the downside of this I’ve seen time and time again is that people are far less likely to take care with them because of their perceived durability. I’ve often been handed a bunch of drives loosely stored with nothing but a tote bag for protection. I find non-ruggedised drives by default get handled with an appropriate level of care. I’ve had more Lacie Rugged drives fail on me than any other drive, and I believe the carefree way they’re handled is often the cause.

People think they're Reliable

Sometimes I’ve challenged a production on their purchase decision and been pointed to online statistics showing the failure rate of hard drives by brand and model, and there were zero instances of any Lacie drives on the lists. They must be pretty reliable right?

What many don’t know is Lacie doesn't actually manufacture hard drives, nor do other popular brands like G-Tech. When I first started in IT there were half a dozen or so major hard drive manufacturers, and over time they have merged to basically two. Hitachi and Sandisk merged with Western Digital, and Lacie are a now a subsidiary of Seagate. Lacie Rugged drives are just Seagate drives in a Lacie enclosure, and on those drive failure lists there are just as many Seagate model drives as any other brand.

People think they're fast

This is my biggest bugbear. Let's break it down to two components, Drive Speed and Interface Speed.

Drive Speed: Hard drives store data magnetically on physical spinning platters accessed mechanically much like a vinyl record. The faster those platters spin, the faster data can be written. In consumer electronics there are two main speed standards measured in rpm (revolutions per minute): 5400rpm, and 7200rpm.

5400rpm drives are typically 'bus powered drives' which are powered exclusively from the USB port. 7200rpm drives require external power, so a general rule of thumb is a bus powered drive will be 5400rpm, and one that plugs into the wall (often referred to as a desktop drive) will be 7200rpm. All Lacie Rugged drives 5400rpm and have in my experience a top write speed of 120MB/s (Megabytes per second). I say top speed because a number of factors impact that. How fast and busy a computers CPU is, or how full a drive is can impact transfer speeds. Because hard drives store data on spinning platters, the data tracks towards the outside edge of the disk spin faster relative to the tracks closer to the axle. Operating systems are designed to write to the outside tracks first and work their way inwards. The result is write speed gets slower the more a disk gets full. This occurs on all hard drives, not just Lacie. It's just worthwhile noting if packaging advertises a write speed, it's talking about the top speed, so shouldn’t be used when calculating rushes transfer times. 7200rpm externally powered drives can have a top speed of around 250MB/s depending on the model.

Interface Speed: The interface is the connection between the computer and the drive. A commonplace dishonest practice in drive speed advertising (many brands do this, not just Lacie) is to advertise the speed of the interface instead of the speed of the drive. To further confuse consumers, interface speeds are usually measured in Mb/s (megabits per second) as opposed to MB/s (Megabytes per second) and yes the capital B makes a big difference. So here’s a quick cheat sheet for typical modern drive interface top speeds)

USB 3.0 - 5 Gigabits per second (625 Megabytes per second)
USB 3.1 / 3.2x1 - 10 Gigabits per second (1250 Megabytes per second)
USB 3.2x2 - 20 Gigabits per second (2500 Megabytes per second)
Thunderbolt 1 - 10 Gigabits per second (1250 Megabytes per second)
Thunderbolt 2 - 20 Gigabits per second (2500 Megabytes per second)
Thunderbolt 3&4 - 40 Gigabits per second (5000 Megabytes per second)

A good metaphor is to think of your Drive Speed as your car's top speed, and the Interface Speed as a road's speed limit. Driving on a road with a very high speed limit doesn't magically make your car able to drive faster than its top speed. And having a faster interface does not magically enable a drive to write data any faster.

Lacie have introduced new and more expensive drive models which incorporate faster interfaces such as Thunderbolt, but the drive inside has not changed much. There is no hard drive I’m aware of (both 5400rpm and 7200rpm) which will saturate USB 3.0 and require a faster interface to run at its top speed.

There are other benefits beyond speed which newer interfaces offer, like being more CPU independent meaning CPU load doesn’t affect transfer speeds, and the ability to daisy chain devices when using Thunderbolt. But daisy chaining only works on drives which have more than one Thunderbolt port, and Lacie Rugged drives only have one. Paying a premium for a Thunderbolt Lacie Rugged over a USB 3.0 variant in my opinion is a waste of money which is very unlikely to have any impact on performance.
Lacie also have a range of drives marketed as being faster because they use USB-C ports instead of USB-A ports. Yes, the faster transfer speeds possible with USB 3.1 and higher require USB-C cables to achieve their top speeds, but again, Lacie drives don’t even come close to saturating the bandwidth of USB 3.0, so enabling them to use a more advanced interface with a USB-C cable is a moot point. Increasing the speed limit doesn’t make your slow car drive any faster.

People think they’re designed for the film & TV industries

Certainly from an aesthetic standpoint their unique colour and design have become synonymous with the creative industries. But for my use case (on-set high volume data wrangling) I find them not fit for purpose.

Due to the speed and physical platter design outlined above, transferring large volumes of data to Lacie Rugged drives is very time consuming. In unscripted TV, typical camera media sizes can be 160GB, and in scripted productions camera media can be as large as 1TB with Codex drives. Transferring that amount of data to a spinning metal platter in one go generates a lot of heat. Hard drive manufacturers have designed what they call Enterprise Drives for 24/7 use in servers and surveillance systems. They have the huge amount of heat they generate incorporated into their design. The hard drives inside Lacie Rugged enclosures are just off the shelf consumer laptop drives. They are not designed for being written to for hours at a time and as a result will often overheat and fail.

Electronics of this kind are typically categorised into two classes: ‘Passively Cooled’ and ‘Actively Cooled’. Passive cooling relies on being constructed with a heat conductive material such as aluminium acting as a heatsink. Active cooling does the same but also employs a fan or number of fans to assist in dissipating heat. Lacie Rugged drives are passively cooled, but their rubber ruggedisation impedes the metal’s ability to dissipate heat. Again, I’ve had more Lacie Rugged drives fail on me than any other drive and I believe the reason is often due to overheating. The first thing I do before writing large amounts of data to a Lacie Rugged drive is remove the rubber housing to prevent it from overheating, which ironically also removes the perceived safety measure people often purchase it for.

So why have they been widely adopted even on big budget productions?

Unfortunately, due the above misconceptions, Lacie Rugged drives are often the only supported devices with production insurance companies. They won’t insure other models of drives because they are considered a risk. Also, I think there is an element of fashion in play. Their unique design makes them easily recognisable and they have a badge of approval as a result.

So what should you buy?

20 years ago when solid state technology was prohibitively expensive, I still wouldn’t have recommended Lacie Rugged drives. The best solution in my opinion would be an externally powered actively cooled desktop drive enclosure housing a 7200rpm enterprise drive. All data wrangling stations should incorporate a UPS backup battery to protect against on-set power loss so I don’t see being externally powered as a risk.

These drives are not going to be drop-proof like the Lacie Rugged drives, but in my opinion that ensures people will take more care transporting them and they should be transported with adequate protective casing. There were and are a number of desktop drives which meet the above criteria from companies such as G-RAID, and interestingly I have found most desktop drives marketed for gaming consoles also meet the above criteria. My go to choice are the Western Digital D10 range which come in 8 and 12TB and are cheaper than G-RAID and just as quick.

In run and gun situations where drives need to be bus powered since the laptop is functioning as the UPS, then any drive that is either actively cooled or has robust passive cooling would be what I’d go for. Lacie made a series of very good passively cooled aluminium bus powered drives which didn’t have rubber shrouds. (I’m not anti-Lacie, just anti-Lacie Rugged)

Nowadays, it’s hard to look past solid state drives (SSDs) for high volume data wrangling as they now come in large capacities and are always getting more affordable. SSDs are very different to hard drives in that they have no moving parts. They are just a block of silicone. Think of them like very fast high capacity thumb drives. Since they have no moving parts they are very difficult to break, although most likely due to the popularity of Lacie Rugged drives, there are now SSD models which have rubber ruggedisation which in my opinion is completely unnecessary and a waste of money given they are often at a premium price.

SSDs depending on the model can run at speeds which very much saturate USB 3.0 so can benefit from more advanced interfaces. And thankfully most manufacturers tend to advertise their SSD speeds now in megabytes per second instead of megabits. Also SSDs do not get slower as they fill up the way hard drives do.

However, not all SSDs are the same. There are a huge amount of products available using inferior parts which will try to trick you with dishonest advertising. For example, some SSDs have very high read speeds but woeful write speeds, but they only advertise the read speed. Also drives are often advertised on the speed of their cache, not the main drive (see below about cache)
Unlike hard drives however, SSDs have a finite amount of times they can be written to before they die. (They include software to tell you how much life they have left) It’s normally a very high number but in the film industry where we are often writing multiple terabytes of data per day, those drives can wear out quicker than expected. Different models will have a different amount of total terabytes that can be written over the life of the drive.

SSD brands can also get bad press due product recalls. For example Sandisk for a long time were considered one of the most reputable SSD brands, but after a bad batch of drives they are now not considered trustworthy by many DITs. Personally I think that has now been rectified and am happy to use Sandisk. But the fan favourite with most DITs for speed and reliability is the Samsung T series. T5, T7, and T9. The numbers relate to the iteration and also the speed of the silicon and interface used. The higher the number, the faster the drive.

The New Lacie Rugged Pro SSDs

One of the things that prompted me to write this opinion piece was seeing the new Lacie Rugged Pro SSD advertised. (It’s blue now instead of orange!) It’s advertised as being crush proof, splash proof etc, which I’m sure will be great for some use cases like wildlife documentary crews etc. But to me the ruggedisation again just makes me think people won’t take care with it, and SSDs don’t need the same level of protection as hard drives. Also its write speeds are advertised as 5300MB/s! Wow, that’s fast right? Until you read the fine print which explains 5300MB/s refers to its cache speed.

Cache

Modern hard drives and SSDs all have write cache. Cache is a very fast solid state chip within the device which is always written to first. This means the first chunk of data you write transfers very quickly, and when the cache fills up it starts writing to the main drive. When the drive is no longer being written to, the data in the cache is transferred to the main drive freeing up the cache for the next write. If you only occasionally write small amounts of data to a drive, it will appear to be very fast as it is always writing to the cache. The cache size varies from model to model but is always a small fraction of a drive's total capacity. It’s not helpful when you’re transferring large volumes of data if only the first 1% of the transfer is accelerated.

The new Lacie Rugged Pro SSDs have 50GB of cache, but if you have a terabyte of data to transfer it’s still only 5% of your transfer that will be accelerated. What irks me is that these drives are advertised as having a top write speed of 5300MB/s, but that speed is only for the first 50GB you write, after which it drops to a top write speed of 1800MB/s. It’s this sort of creative marketing which makes me feel like Lacie are up to their old tricks.

The markedly cheaper Samsung T9 has 75GB of cache and advertises a sustained top write speed of 2000MB/s. Sustained meaning it won’t slow down due to filling up or running out of cache. Though I haven’t used one yet myself, I can only recommend them based on feedback from my colleagues.

Wrap up

I hope this has been informative, and well done if you made it through all of this. If you would like to discuss any DIT or post-production needs, feel free to reach out to me on this platform. I’m on it every day. And disclaimer, I have no connection to any drive manufacturer and have not been paid by anyone for this article.

Know your cables and connections - data wrangling fundamentals

Firstly a bit about me. I’ve been in Film & TV for over 20 years primarily as a DIT and in post-production. Prior I worked in IT for 4 years after graduating from the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology (RMIT).

This is a follow-up article to a previous piece about understanding hard drives and solid state drives: https://www.thetalentmanager.com/hub/post/33969

In this new article I will go into depth about the cables and connections these drives use, and how to ensure you have configured your data wrangling cabling for maximum efficiency.


Introduction

Please note that laptops can behave differently running on battery or mains power. In an effort to save power some computers will cripple or even disable certain ports on your computer, so I highly recommend always data wrangling using mains power, ideally on a UPS. If you must run off the battery, know what the implications will be for your specific computer. Try and do a dummy run with your data wrangling setup before working with actual rushes to prevent catastrophe.

The best cable to use for any drive is the cable it came with at purchase, even if a different cable might be technologically superior. Unfortunately though drives and cables often get separated. There is a lot more to cables than just the type of connectors they have at each end and just because a plug fits, it doesn’t mean it’s correct.

In my previous article I used a highway analogy to convey the difference between ‘drive speed’ and ‘interface speed’. In this analogy the ‘drive’ (hard drive or SSD) is represented by a car, and like cars all drives have different top speeds. The ‘interface’ (USB 3.0, Thunderbolt etc) is represented by a speed limit sign. If the speed limit is faster than the top speed of a car, it doesn’t mean the car can magically drive faster. However, if the speed limit is slower than the top speed of a car, then the car is not able to drive at its top speed. So the interface you use is important to facilitate the top speed of a drive, but a faster interface won’t improve a drive’s top speed.

In this analogy cables would be represented as roads. Driving on a bumpy road will reduce the top speed of your car and also prevent it from driving at the speed limit. But having a pristine road doesn’t improve a car's engine, nor increase the legal speed limit. Using the wrong cable can prevent a drive from running at its top speed, lower an interface's potential speed limit, or even prevent a drive from running at all.

Below is a cheat sheet which outlines commonly used interfaces (speed limit signs) and their theoretical maximum speeds. There are too many to list individually so I have grouped them by transfer speed which is the only metric we are interested in. Interface speed is usually measured in megabits per second rather than megabytes per second which is very different. So I’ve standardised all measurements in this article to megabytes per second to avoid confusion.

USB 3.0 / USB 3.1 Gen 1 - 625 Megabytes per second
USB 3.1 Gen 2 / USB 3.2 Gen 1 - 1250 Megabytes per second
USB 3.2x2 (also referred to as USB 3.2 Gen 2) - 2500 Megabytes per second
USB4 - 5000 Megabytes per second
Thunderbolt 1 - 1250 Megabytes per second
Thunderbolt 2 - 2500 Megabytes per second
Thunderbolt 3/ Thunderbolt 4 - 5000 Megabytes per second

In order for a drive to run at full speed:
- The device (in our case a hard drive or SSD) must be compatible with the interface
- The cable must be compatible with the interface
- The port on the computer the cable is plugged into must be compatible with the interface

Compatible is an important word here, since this isn’t just a matter of having the device, cable, and computer port all match in terms of interface.

For example, you can have a USB 3.0 device, using a USB 3.0 cable, plugged into a Thunderbolt port on a computer, because Thunderbolt ports are compatible with USB 3.0. You don’t need to specifically use a USB 3.0 port for a USB 3.0 drive to work at full speed. I will explain in more detail which interfaces are compatible with each other in detail below.


USB

USB stands for Universal Serial Bus, which is ironic given how many different types of USB there are. The different flavours are determined by a number suffix and a letter suffix. The number refers to the generation of USB (2.0, 3.0 etc) and the letter refers to the shape of the connector. The generation determines its speed, not the connector. So looking at the above chart, all the cables designated as USB 2.0 are far too slow for data wrangling. Be aware, some USB 2.0 cables may have the same connector as a USB 3.0 cable, so using one will limit you to USB 2.0 speeds which are much slower.


Colour Coding

You can see on the above chart all of the USB 3.0 connectors are Blue which is the standard for USB 3.0. However this colour coding is not mandatory for hardware manufacturers. Some cables are rated for USB 3.0 but are black or even orange. Many USB 3.0 cables are black but have blue plastic only inside the metal shroud of the connector. The colour coding for the different flavours of USB 3.1 and 3.2 are supposed to be Teal and Red, but again not always. In short, colour coding does not guarantee the rating of a cable but it can be a good place to start when selecting something from a box of spaghetti’d cables.

The same can be said for ports on a computer. Some will be colour coded or have the interface type written next to the port. Neither should be trusted at face value, test everything you can in advance.


USB 3.0 (USB 3.1 Gen 1 is the same speed so we will refer to both as just USB 3.0 for simplicity)

USB 3.0 is the standard interface for hard drives and older generation SSDs because its bandwidth is more than adequate for those drive’s top speeds. The USB 3.0 Type B and USB 3.0 Micro Type B connectors in the above chart are exclusive to USB 3.0. So if your storage device uses those, any cable with that connector should work fine. Be weary of USB 2.0 Type B connectors (often used for printers and scanners) which do fit in a USB 3.0 Type B socket but are still a different shape. If you use one of those the drive will be limited to USB 2.0 speeds.


USB 3.1 Gen 2 and USB 3.2x2

USB 3.1 Gen 2 and 3.2x2 are more modern and faster iterations of USB which benefit recent generations of solid state drives (SSDs) and card readers which are faster than the top speed of USB 3.0 (625MB/s).

USB 3.1 Gen 2 and 3.2x2 do not require specialised cables, however I’ve only ever seen them with USB Type A or Type C connectors. Any USB 3.0 Type A or C cable should be capable of maintaining the increased bandwidths of 3.1 Gen 2 and USB 3.2x2.


USB-C

USB-C is not linked to any particular generation of USB. It was supposed to be a standard which unified cables, however in reality there are a myriad of cables with different uses and speed ratings using USB-C connectors. It’s often misunderstood as being faster than USB-A, it is not. It’s just uncommon to see newer generations of USB with a Type A connector but they do exist. USB-C is also associated with interfaces like USB 4 and Thunderbolt 3&4 which are very fast, but not because of the USB-C connector. Be aware which interfaces your computer supports so you can develop a data wrangling plan to maximise bandwidth.

One of the biggest issues with USB-C is it’s also used for battery charging, so many USB-C cables are designed only for charging and have no capacity for transferring data. If you use a USB-C charging cable with a hard drive or SSD, it may power up but it will likely not mount. Also sometimes a USB-C charging cable has data transfer capabilities but is limited to USB 2.0.

USB-C doesn’t have widely used colour coding or insignia to label what a cable is rated for, so without cutting them open to see what’s inside the only way to know if they’re appropriate for your device is to try them out.


USB-C PD

The PD in USB-C PD stands for Power Delivery. It has no impact on transfer speed and references the amount of power output (usually 100W) a USB-C PD port on a computer has for charging devices. These ports sometimes have an icon next to them which look similar to a Thunderbolt icon which can trick you into thinking a computer is Thunderbolt capable when it isn’t.


Thunderbolt

Thunderbolt 1 and Thunderbolt 2 utilise a connector called ‘Mini-Displayport’. However not all Mini-Displayport cables are compatible with Thunderbolt even if they have the exact same plug. All generations of Thunderbolt usually have the Thunderbolt icon printed on each end of the cable, often with a number next to it specifying the generation of Thunderbolt. There are also Thunderbolt 2 to Thunderbolt 3 adaptors which allow you to plug a Thunderbolt 3 device into a Thunderbolt 2 port or vice versa. This is absolutely fine to do since Thunderbolt 2 is plenty fast for any drive on the market. However some card readers will saturate the bandwidth of Thunderbolt 2.

Both Thunderbolt 3 and Thunderbolt 4 utilise a USB-C connector. Thunderbolt 4 does not offer an advantage over Thunderbolt 3 for data wrangling so we can refer to them interchangeably and use either generation of cable or port with no impact. In most cases a Thunderbolt device will only work with a Thunderbolt cable

Thunderbolt 3 & 4 ports are ‘backwards compatible’ meaning you can plug a USB device of any generation into a Thunderbolt port and it will run at top speed. But (with the exception of USB4) you can’t do the opposite and plug a Thunderbolt device into a USB port of any generation, it won’t recognise it at all.

One of the benefits of Thunderbolt is ‘daisy chaining’. Many Thunderbolt devices have two Thunderbolt ports, meaning one port will be plugged into your computer and the second port can be used to plug in another device. This allows up to six devices to be chained together to a single Thunderbolt port. If you have a Thunderbolt drive with only one port it can be included but must be the last device in the chain. You can also include a USB device but again it must be the last device in the chain. In rare cases you might saturate the bandwidth of a Thunderbolt port by daisy chaining too many drives. Simply add up the total write speed of all the drives in a chain which you’d like to write to simultaneously, and then compare that with the bandwidth of the version of Thunderbolt you’re using. In some cases it may be better to perform some backups in a separate batch, especially if your card reader is one of the devices in the chain.


USB4

USB4 is backwards compatible with all flavours of USB as well as Thunderbolt 3&4. USB 4 and Thunderbolt 4 are often referred to interchangeably even though they’re different. For our use case there is no benefit of one over the other.


Adaptors

There are many adaptors on the market which convert a USB-C connector to a USB-A connector and vice versa. Be aware many dishonest aftermarket manufacturers will advertise an adaptor as being USB 3.1 Gen 2 or 3.2x2 compliant because most people won’t notice the difference. Make sure you test an adaptor to ensure it’s hitting advertised speeds. Personally I recommend the brand Graugear to be sure you’re getting what’s written on the tin. Just like with cables some adaptors are only designed for charging batteries and will not mount drives.


Fussiness

Over the years I’ve encountered drives which are just plain fussy about the cable you use. It’s not because the cables are faulty, and honestly I don’t know what is the cause sometimes. But having a cable of the correct interface and connector doesn’t guarantee a drive will play nice with it. If a seemingly correct cable doesn’t work, try other cables before assuming a drive is dead.


Drives

I go into this in a lot more detail in my previous article but in summary, USB 3.0 is more than adequate for all external hard drives and older SSDs. Some newer SSDs will benefit from the higher bandwidth of USB 3.1 Gen 2, USB 3.2x2, and Thunderbolt. As a rule of thumb you don’t need anything faster than USB 3.0 unless your drive speed is over 625MB/s. This should be advertised on the drive’s packaging or Google your model number.

For example a Samsung T5 runs at 540MB/s so will not benefit from an interface faster than USB 3.0. However the Samsung T7 runs at 1000MB/s so you will need at least a USB 3.1 Gen 2 port to run at full speed. And a Samsung T9 runs at 2000MB/s so you will need at least a USB 3.2x2 port to run it at full speed.

Remember Thunderbolt 3&4 and USB 4 include compatibility with all previous USB interfaces, so don’t be worried if your computer has a Thunderbolt port but not a USB 3.2x2 port for example.


Card Readers

Generally speaking camera media are much faster than hard drives and SSDs. Sometimes card readers are exclusively Thunderbolt meaning you will need a Thunderbolt or USB4 port on your computer. If you don’t yet have your own card readers they are often supplied by the camera department so it’s a good idea to determine their model ahead of time to be sure your computer can accommodate them. Sometimes a reader will support multiple interfaces. Always prioritise giving the card reader one of your fastest ports because they need to have maximum bandwidth for Simultaneous Writing.


Simultaneous Writing

The most efficient way to data wrangle is to offload camera media to multiple backup drives simultaneously whilst maintaining each drives maximum write speed.

For example, if a camera is recording to a Sandisk Extreme Pro CF Express Type B card (1700MB/s Read) and you have a Thunderbolt 3 card reader:

Using Samsung T5 SSDs (540MB/s Write) you could theoretically offload to three T5 drives simultaneously and all three drives would be writing at their top speed. (3x 540MB/s = 1620MB/s = less than 1700MB/s). This setup would require a computer with at least one Thunderbolt 3 port and 3x USB 3.0 compatible ports.

Using Samsung T7 SSDs (1000MB/s Write) you won’t be able to write to two simultaneously without a drop in write speed. (2x 1000MB/s = more than 1700MB/s) However simultaneous writing would still be faster than offloading to one drive at a time in this case. This setup would require a computer with at least one Thunderbolt 3 port and two USB 3.1 Gen 2 compatible ports.

If you don’t have enough ports on your computer for the setup required, a hub can be used to provide additional ports. However this can introduce new issues if not configured correctly.


Hubs

Be very careful to check the rating of all the ports on a hub, some might only be rated for USB 2.0. Also some Thunderbolt hubs have additional USB-C ports which are actually just USB 3.0 Type C ports rather than Thunderbolt. Unfortunately some less honest brands will advertise ports incorrectly so test everything.

Another big consideration is power delivery. Desktop hard drives are powered from a wall outlet, however many hard drives and SSDs are what is called ‘bus powered’ meaning they are powered by the USB or Thunderbolt port itself. Some hubs use USB-C PD to provide sufficient power to all their ports, however some hubs are just bus powered themselves meaning every drive which is plugged into the hub will be drawing power from a single port on the computer. In many cases a single port is not able to power multiple drives. SSDs require relatively low power compared with hard drives but I wouldn’t recommend attaching more than two to a bus powered hub even if it has more ports. You can use multiple hubs provided they’re plugged into separate ports on the computer. If you have mains power available to you on set, it’s a good idea to use a mains powered hub like something from CalDigit. These will give you a number of new ports to use without power delivery concerns.

Using a hub can also introduce bandwidth limitations. Each port on a computer has its own maximum bandwidth, so adding a hub requires multiple devices to share that bandwidth. For example if you plug two T5 SSDs into a USB 3.0 hub which is plugged into a USB 3.0 port, they will each get half of that ports bandwidth (625MB/s /2 = 312.5MB/s) which is much slower than a T5’s write speed. (540MB/s)
Be aware that some computers are constructed with internal hubs that you can’t see. So if you aren’t getting the speeds you expect whilst using multiple ports simultaneously this could be the cause. For example many MacBook Pro’s have four Thunderbolt ports, but they only have two Thunderbolt interfaces inside, so each set of two ports are sharing a single Thunderbolt interface.


How to check if a setup is working correctly

There is very little risk in using the wrong cable to test a drive. In some rare cases a drive can fail if it’s not getting enough power. This usually indicates a drive which was probably going to fail soon anyway. In any case it’s best practice to test a cable and drive combination before it has any important data on it.

The first test is the mounting test. This is to see if a drive shows up in Disk Utility (MacOS) or Disk Management (Windows). If the drive doesn’t show up, it’s either not plugged in to a compatible port, or the cable is likely not compatible or faulty. Sometimes a drive will repeatedly connect and then disconnect, this also indicates a faulty or incompatible cable.

Be aware though of File System Formatting. For example if a drive was previously formatted on a Mac, the volume might not be accessible on a Windows PC. In this case you will either need some specialised software to read it or you’ll need to reformat the drive prior to use. This will erase all the data on it so be sure to check with production before formatting any drives.

Once you have a drive mounted it’s then important to test its speed. There are many programs available but an industry standard is ‘Blackmagic Disk Speed Test’. It’s free and available on both Windows and Mac. It’s not 100% accurate but it will give you a good idea of how a drive is performing. Note both read and write speeds, though write speeds are most important. It’s best to test a drive with no other applications running, and certainly don’t test a drive while you’re transferring data to or from it.

Be aware that speed test programs will test one drive at a time, so it won’t tell you if there are potential bottlenecks in your system which only occur during simultaneous writing. The best way to truly test a setup is to do a dummy run using your offload software and look at the numbers. If you’re doing a test from a card reader, you’ll need to make sure the reader also has the correct cable and port. If the card reader is running slowly, then the drives will appear slow even if they have the right cable and port.
Don’t be concerned if a drive is not quite reaching the speed it’s advertised to run at, those numbers are best case scenario and rarely reached in real world practice. But it will be evident in the numbers if a drive is severely underperforming. Refer to my previous article for information about the types of speeds you can expect for different types of drives. If you’re getting anything under 40MB/s then your drive or card reader is most likely running at USB 2.0.


Write Caching

I go into depth about write caching in my previous article, but in short you want to have it enabled as it will improve your offload times. It’s already enabled by default in MacOS, but will need to be enabled manually for each drive in Windows. It’s easy to find how to do it with a Google Search.


Transcoding

Another common responsibility of data wranglers is rushes transcoding. This can severely slow down your rushes offload speed if you’re transcoding at the same time. Personally I use two separate computers when data wrangling to circumvent this, one for offloading, one for transcoding. If this is not possible for you there are other things you can do to mitigate bottlenecks.

Don’t write your proxy files to the same drive you’re reading them from. If you read files from one drive and write them to another, transcoding will be much faster as it’s sharing the load between two drives. The process of transcoding is typically reading very large video files and then writing much smaller ones, so the demands on read speed will be much higher than write speed. If one of the drives in your setup has faster read speeds, use that drive to read from and a slower drive to write to.

The best option if you have access to mains power and are not running and gunning is to have a high speed raid at your disposal which is fast enough to handle transcoding reads and writes and offloading all at the same time.

In cases when you’ve already offloaded camera media, you can even use the camera media itself as a read source for transcoding since the read speeds are very high. This is sometimes frowned upon but perfectly safe in my opinion if the rushes have already been backed up. Keep in mind transcoding uses a lot of processing power, and depending on how fast your computer is can slow down offloading just because your computer is maxed out. Always prioritise offloading over transcoding. If transcoding is getting in the way of offloading, pause the transcoding and tell production you may need more time.


Wrap

I’ve listed my drive recommendations in my previous article, though keep in mind this is an ever changing landscape and recommendations quickly become obsolete. I’ve also decided not to include any specific computer recommendations in this article since that is a very lengthy topic and something best saved for a future article.

Well done if you made it all the way through, I hope this information has been helpful. Feel free to reach out to me here if you have any questions, I visit this site every day. And disclaimer, I am not affiliated with any hardware or software manufacturer and have not been paid by anyone to write this article.