I assume you're asking this because you have a laptop? Or have a very small PC case with no room for more hard drives?

If you have an external RAID with USB3 connectivity, that would be an interesting approach. Mind you, I wouldn't push uncompressed video off USB3, but DVCProHD, XDCAMEX and DSLR footage are light enough for a couple of simultaneous streams on a single USB3 disk. But try to have as many disks as you can. Although most motherboards typically have two USB3 ports, you could use USB2 for less critical stuff.

Here's an example of a setup:

• USB3 #1: Media and project
• USB3 #1: Cache and previews
• USB2: export drive

Ahhh, I see where your going with this.

I'd want to make sure this thumb drive is fast enough though. So check the read AND write speeds of the models your shopping around for. But keep in mind, most big capacity thumb drives are usually slower then a conventional HDD external drive. Also, unless you work with small footprint DSLR footage, you're always going to fight for space.

If you have the budget, my preference would be to go with an SSD drive in an external USB powered 2.5" enclosure (small, compact enough, and no need for a power brick). Get, as an example, a Corsair Force GT 120GB SSD. It has excellent read and write speeds, and will be a good match to USB3's fast interface.

hey Eric,

I'd like to get a bit more details from you about your response.

What I'd like to know is that will USB 3.0 external drive be capable of handling 1080P DSLR footage for editing? I wish to use a USB 3 external drive instead of esata, reason being, if I can get away with it, because usb 3 is far more popular nowadays. Along with an nVidia gpu pushing the mercury engine. Would like to edit content of short duration, nothing more than maybe 30 to 40 mins, would just like smooth scrolling on the timelines.

Thanks in advance.

I have three WD My Book USB3 externals.  With my old Q9550 system I was happy to use one of them as the project drive sometimes because I had to render the timeline to view it anyway.  But I love them because they work so well. 

This is how Crystal Disk Mark rated a fairly full 1Tb USB3 external:

That's a good bit better than a single WD 1Tb Black I tested at the same time (about half full at the time of the test).

But when moving large data blocks between one of my 1Tb and a 2Tb USB3 external I have seen 140Mb/s in the little advice window that Windows opens when you move/copy data.  I have three of them on the back of my desk behind the monitor, and they barely get warm, make hardly any noise, and they have their own power supplies.