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Danbar97
Participant
September 13, 2021
Answered

Save Time is unusually long

  • September 13, 2021
  • 3 replies
  • 327 views

Hi there,


This is my first post to the community so please excuse any noob-ness...

 

I have recently swapped to PC (specs at the end of the post)- I used to work on an iMac Pro (2020 release). This never used to happen on the iMac but on the new PC I find that whenever I save ANY project, no matter how big or small, it takes forever!

 

I work using my External HDD. It has 2TB storage and I'm currently using up 200GB of it's storage. I save everything to here- the project file, the footage, logos, any other assets, etc.

 

I created a test project. Project items included a .mov file (100mb in size on disk), some .png logos (all together 10mb on disk) and 1 composition. I had a CC Camera Lens effects and Lumetri Color effect on some layers in the comp as from memory, these effects can increase render times, so I wanted to test it. When I go to "Collect Files", it takes up 110mb as a new folder.

 

I saved the project file to my HDD space and it took 5 mins to save! I copied the same project file to my desktop to compare the times and it took like 6 seconds to save instead.

 

This leads me to believe that it's taking an unusually long time to write to my external HDD. Has anyone else had this problem and does anyone have any suggestions on how to increase speed, or recommend a new external HDD that could speed this up!

 

Thank you all very much,

Tom

 

P.S: PC SPECS

 

Processor: AMD Ryzen 9 3950X CPU, 16 Cores / 32 Threads, 3.5 - 4.7GHz
Graphics Card: NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2080 Ti 11GB GDDR6 Graphics Card (2-Slot Design)
Motherboard: Gigabyte X570 I AORUS PRO WIFI motherboard
Memory: 32GB Corsair Vengeance LPX Black DDR4 3200MHz AMD Ryzen Tuned Memory (2 x 16GB Sticks)
OS Drive: 1TB Seagate Firecuda 520 M.2 PCIe Gen 4 Solid State Drive

 

This topic has been closed for replies.
Correct answer Rick Gerard

The first thing you should do is check your cable to the external drive. The speed difference can be huge. Run Black Magic Speed test (free and easily found) to make sure you are getting the best performance your system can deliver. A cheap or faulty USB C/Thunderbolt cable can easily increase your save time 100 to 500%.

3 replies

Mylenium
Mylenium
Legend
September 13, 2021

In addition to what the others said, also simply plug the connection to a different USB port (assuming you use that) and have a look at your device manager. Your external ports may simply run in compatibility modes with Windows standard drivers when a vendor-specific storace and device driver may need to be installed. Similarly, if you have other devices plugged in, disconnect them. Bus collisions are a thing and even seemingly trivial stuff liek connecting a mouse to the same (internal) bus as a storage device can have weird side effects. Furthermore you may also want to check your disk management snap-in. If your external device has large unampped/ unallocated memory areas it may slow down things considerably. Unlike volumes on Mac, Windows is much more sensitive to physical mapping issues. Similalrly, assigning a fixed drive letter can often already help as it changes Windows internal device enumeration and driver loading. just a few tips, of course. In order to really figure this out actual info about the storage layout and device setup would be required.

 

Mylenium

Kyle Hamrick
Community Expert
Kyle HamrickCommunity Expert
Community Expert
September 13, 2021

I agree with Rick's idea of confirming the cable isn't an issue - you might also confirm that the drive is formatted properly (though that's obviously a more troubnlesome fix if you already have files on it).

Do you need the portability of the drive, or is this just a storage concern? Would you be able to work saving your project file locally, but storing your media files on the external drive? 

R
Community Expert
Rick GerardCommunity ExpertCorrect answer
Community Expert
September 13, 2021

The first thing you should do is check your cable to the external drive. The speed difference can be huge. Run Black Magic Speed test (free and easily found) to make sure you are getting the best performance your system can deliver. A cheap or faulty USB C/Thunderbolt cable can easily increase your save time 100 to 500%.

    D
    Danbar97Author
    Participant
    September 13, 2021

    Thanks so much Rick,

     

    I can't believe I didn't think of that before posting, but it really does seem like the cable was the issue! I went and bought another and it has been saving much quicker since I plugged in the new cable.

     

    Thank you all so much for your advice as well - if I ever run into the issue again I will be sure to use what you all have taught me in the future.

     

    Thanks! 

    Tom

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