whats the speed of your drives in external? I have 2 segates that run with no issues I think they are both 7200rpm. I use usb2 for the pc as I have no firewire either running on my hp. Now with PC there are specific ports that are usb 2 you might want to check that normally the closest one to the mouse pad. I only use firewire on mac just brought an external enclosure to go to 400 or 800 on MAC so I will buy a 1tb and see if it speeds up on mac because I don't see the diffrence between my pc and my mac and the mac is on firewire. But as I understand it usb2 speeds are better than 400 or really damn close.Hope that help in some way...btw you were wrong on posting that video link...shit was funny though.

thanks...freaking western digital I assumed they were all 7200 i think they are 5400 cause the box doesn't even metion 7200....bastards!!!!!

well i have a my book that I thought was 7200 wrong answer but its a 750 so i stored most of my vobs on it. I willing to bet that not all your ports are USB2 normally with windows will tell you when you insert the drive that it can make it run faster if you put on a usb2 port, yet if your like me then you click stuff to close and get to want you want and never see it. When I have time I will try using my 5400 mybook and see if I get slowed down any and I will get back at you.

JUst found out my HD is 7200 rpm, and still lag

Does this happen in every usb port. Also is there software that you can use to test your drive. The drive could be bad.

yes all ports and al my hds stutter

from what i've read, going firewire is better for video.

I have both firewire and usb2 cant tell if it makes a diffrence. I am going to buy a 1tb and use the 800 firewire and see if it improves anything. Eye do you have anyone that has SLV to allow you to try your drive on their laptop? If so try that like I said above you might want to download something from Western Digital to check the drive. There is hope trust me as I have a pc laptop too and mine works fine on usb2 as i broke the firewire base on it. As a matter of fact the first mix I posted was on usb2,,,no slow loading or anything www.i-20riders2.com. Now a problem I do have is that some stuff doesnt load fast sometimes like the drive went to sleep or something but it didn't cause I just loaded a song,,,,, and that's on mac and pc on two diffrent drives.

funky do u have xp or vista I have vista but I am gonna check updates for my HD and that is an idea if all else fails I am gonna try on another laptop.....

is e-sata not a good option with video?

I use Vista and to top it off i dont turn off bluetooth or wireless. It has 4 gig of ram but as you know it will only see 3gig. Another thing you might want to try if you have not is to go into set up on hardwire tab ans mess with usb buffer settings. Also there are some hard drive settings you might want to look at when you right mouse on top of them. Make sure it's not compressing thats one thing I recall. Go to msconfig and see if anything eles is running that you dont want as well as look at some of the services and disable them. Other than that it's hard to pin down.

My specs HP 2.4 4gig (vga/s-vid/hdmi) 2 250gig hardrives running Vista Same for the mac except only one drive that is 350 and DV no HDMI persay.

Dj Vmb E-sata is not on most laptops which means we would have to add a card or something like it to be able to you use it.

I use e-sata on my exeternal HDD and a card on my PC and it's much faster than both usb2 and firewire800

Humm if this is true I might go out and buy one www.satasite.com ,,,for my HP. The Segate external I got came with two adaptors one with sata and usb2 the other with two firewire 400 slots. I tried my 800 about an hour ago and there is a big diffrence as i had no lag on loading any videos. on 400 it would pause sometimes while loading a video.

Say Eye did you fix your problem....?

nope.....I believe it has something to do with my laptop and the usb port, it's wierd cause with virtualdj I have no problem with external but with serato stuttering etc..., I am gonna try now that I have updated to 1.9 beta 2 and see what happens

I guess my next question is how are you encoding them for slv as it is very picky on what will and will not play. Oh my GOD I won't say anything but damn life is much better for my PC.

you already know my solution with external drive problems.

again, if you use externals and have never had a problem with them, you haven't used them long enough.

Damn Switft your like GOD your everywhere.

you cant escape swift. seriously. im everywhere.

my videos are fine, and work flawless on my internal hdd w VSL, it is the external that has problems and yes the videos that are on the external use to be on the laptop hhd then I swithc it tto the external as I need room for newer videos, so they work well on internal hdd but not on external,

Do you any other option on your hardrive other than usb2. I mean if you have sata option then buy sata card for laptop thats even faster than firewire. Did you ever run test on the drive.

Is the only drive you have, if so go to best buy or who ever and buy a drive take it home move video on it and see if that is your issue take it back within an hour or two after you delete the files or keep it if it works. Also did you fiddle with the usb settings in setup?

hey vmb
yes e-sata might be the best way for video.

the transfer rate is huge compared to everything else.

I have used externals with Serato Audio for over three years and with video the past 8 months...no problems yet.

Machines will differ from each other based on it's architecture. Some will have problems and others will not, even with USB. The best advice is to use the express slot or PCMCIA slot on the side with a card. Preferably eSATA 3GB express card. But only if your external drive supports eSATA. If it does NOT, then go with a Firewire 400 card for the external.