Is it viable to edit on a super fast MicroSD card?

[lflegg]

So I've bought such an incredibly modern laptop for field work that it doesn't have any normal USBs nor a SD card reader (it's a Dell XPS 9575)

It does however have a MICRO sd card slot.. It's only got 1 drive (the SSD the OS is obviously on) it got me thinking - is there any way I could potentially edit on Premiere on a MicroSD card??

This one is 150 megabytes p/s write (275mBps read)

https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B07141QN7L/?coliid=IO7WGFILAZQKT&colid=3IVSC4RG3API&psc=1&ref_=lv_ov_lig...​

Which certainly seems viable? but I wonder about latency/ lag...and write cycles/ life span... and general reliability. Could this be a viable work drive?

[Peru Bob]

Even it worked, I wouldn't trust a card as a substitute for a HDD or SSD.

[lflegg]

But why?

[Peru Bob]

Moved to the Hardware forum.

[RjL190365]

Actually, that microSD slot cannot take full advantage of any of those "super-fast" cards at all. You see, the card that you described requires a UHS-II bus to even come close to that card's advertised read speed. Unfortunately, most built-in microSD card readers (including, unfortunately, yours) only operate at up to UHS-I speed, which means that your card might not even achieve 90 MB/s in read speed (after accounting for overhead) in that laptop.

And even if your slot can operate that fast, microSD cards as a rule use the cheapest and least reliable of NAND flash chips that are NOT designed to withstand repeated rewrites. Unfortunately, video editing with the card as the media drive REQUIRES that the card get subjected to such repeated rewrites (which can be up to several thousand rewrites to the same cells per minute) - and your new card MAY get corrupted or killed off after only a couple of uses in such a manner.

And your unit should have come with (or you can purchase) a USB-C to USB-A adapter for external USB devices. That laptop has two USB-C ports. So you need an external SSD that already has a USB-C cable included. Newer Samsung external SSDs should already have come with such a cable. Furthermore, SSDs are engineered to withstand multiple random rewrites. SD cards aren't.

Now for something different:

That laptop does not come with a CUDA GPU at all, nor is available at all with one. And OpenCL support in all of the 2018 versions of Premiere Pro CC is currently broken, so you'll have to suffer with software-only rendering regardless of whether you're using the Intel graphics or the onboard AMD Radeon graphics..

[Stan Jones]

Curious: comes with 2 Thunderbolt ports. Option for external drive better or worse?

[lflegg]

I would welcome any recommendation of fast drives I could connect (via thunderbolt I assume?) ideally less than £70 per TB..

[RjL190365]

Thunderbolt drives are still expensive, mainly due to the cost of the SATA-to-TB bridge chips used in such enclosures. And even with USB, the only drives that cost that little are slow hard drives that can't sustain write speeds above 150 MB/s even on the outer tracks and plummet to less than 70 MB/s as they fill up. And if you want that performance that only an external SSD can deliver, you will have to spend closer to £300 per TB.

[lflegg]

Very helpful, thank you.

I wonder what would be a good external drive for this computer? Up to £150

I wish I could afford an external SSD with those kinda specs.. would this small convertible be able to harness that kinda speed though?   

[Bill Gehrke]

I would suggest you get this Samsung T5 500 GB.

Samsung T5 Portable SSD - 500GB - USB 3.1 External SSD (MU-PA500B/AM): Amazon.co.uk: Computers & Acc...

£141.65   + £3.66 UK Delivery

[lflegg]

Super useful, thank you Bill.

[lflegg]

Wow, that is a helpful reply.. thank you!

Although I think you might be looking at the wrong laptop? because

• It has 3 USB (type C) ports, not 2
• and the MicroSD slot is UHS-II, not UHS-I. Certainly according to this review of the i5 version. My i7 version is otherwise basically the same.

Re: CUDA - yes, I'm aware it's OpenCL (did I say somewhere I thought it was CUDA?) but that is gutting to hear that Premiere is broken re: OpenCL support and evidently has been for some time.. Thanks

[RjL190365]

If that slot is fully UHS-II, then you might get close to those advertised figures. Still, SD or microSD is less than ideal for an editing disk because such cards are simply not designed to withstand so many repeated rewrites. And that's not to mention that the fastest of those cards that are available today are still slower than a decent USB-C 3.1 external SSD.

As for the two USB-C 3.1 ports that I mentioned, I might have looked at the North American market version of that model. European or UK market versions may vary.