I have been editing on a very old Lenova with i7 Intel CPU, 4 core that shows up as 8 cores in the Resource Monitor. It has Nvidia graphics. The laptop has 8 gigs of RAM. I use a couple portable USB Seagate hard drives for video files. Everything works fine. 2 sources for multicam works fine.
So this winter, from B&H, I bought a gaming computer on a good sale. It is Lenova, i7 - 6 cores that shows up as 12 cores in performance monitor. The graphics are: GPU 0 - Intel UHD 630, and runs at 10-14% while playing the timeline, and GPU 1 - NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1060 which is at 4% while playing the timeline. It has 16 gigs ram, SSD c drive, and a SSD d drive for extra stuff. I use the same Seagate USB drives. I can't simply watch clips on the timeline with out hickups and stutters. If I move video clips to the onboard SSD drive, they will play running the drive at 4%.
I have tested the same clips and same drives on both laptops. On the older laptop, the portable Seagate drives are operating 40% or lower while playing the clips. On the newer laptop they play and then run up to 100% and stutter and then go down to 20% and a few seconds later they are up to 100% and stutter. The CPU usage is low as are the graphics cards. So, what settings do I look at on the new laptop to read the USB drives correctly? The older laptop is Windows 7 and the new laptop is Windows 10. I have changed cache settings and there was no difference. I am stumped. There are 3 USB ports on the new laptop and moving the drives around does not seem to affect anything.
I have looked through the USB settings in device manager and can not see anything that might be slowing it down. It is, USB 3.0. Anyone have a suggestion?