SSD and NVMe are only good for a limited number of write cycles before the cells break down and the drive becomes unreliable. The TBW numbers of modern drives are very high these days. But at the same time, video files are also ridiculously large these days, creating much more write activity than an average user would put on their system.
While raw performance may be a tie between internal and external SSD/NVMe, the write limit would be my bigger concern and my bigger reason to avoid doing video work directly on the internal drive. Let an external drive wear out since it’s easy to replace. A failed internal drive might mean taking the computer apart to replace it and then doing an OS reinstallation. For Windows, that also means hoping your license key will work on the new drive.
Specific things that can protect the internal drive are:
- Store proxies in the project folder on an external drive.
- Transfer the contents of camera cards directly to an external drive.
- Render to the external drive.
If you haven’t seen the Project Management topic already, it will be invaluable to you, especially the section on Absolute vs Relative Filenames.