HDD setup for best performance

[emil tanem]

I´ll be reconfiguring my HDD setup and so I´m looking for advice.

This is the setup I have in mind:

SSD system drive with premiere, AE, etc (Using windows 7 btw)
Internal HDD for storing material and scratch files (should these be on two different drives?)
Internal HDD for exports
External HDD for archive/backup



* No SSDs/RAID, etc for editing for economical reasons.

[Cory Petkovsek]

Here is my setup:

4x256GB SSD RAID 5 - OS/Program files, Project files, media for smaller projects, and exports
500GB SATA - Temp files (%TEMP%, %TMP% are set here), Adobe Media Cache files
7.5TB SATA RAID 5 - RED Media
Other drives for backup

I separated it like this based on testing of optimal performance for my setup and workflows. You will need to do the same to get the optimal.

A lot of media conformation works by reading from a media drive, writing a file to the temp folder, then moving it to the media cache. I would not bother with a dedicated drive for exports. Exporting is processor and disk-read bound, not write bound; its writing is the slowest process.

I would do this:

SSD - OS/Program files, TEMP and TMP environment variables (default)
INT HDD1 (larger) Active projects and media
INT HDD2 (smaller) Less active projects and media, and all adobe apps media cache.
EXT HDD Inactive projects and media, backup

You could experiment with moving TEMP/TMP and media cache all to the SSD or all to HDD2 by clearing the cache and temp files and observing the behavior and time of conforming the media for a large project. Exporting will probably be the same across the board.

I arranged mine as such because conforming red footage caused such a high disk queue on my raid that it was giving my raid controller problems. Moving TEMP/TMP and media cache to its own drive alleviated this.

Cory

[Kwan Khan]

Edit 08/08

My Mobile Setup;
Power User MBP (Retina) with RR (in Sonnet EEP) + Cine-X 16 + CS6 + Resolve (Euphonix MC Color)
-500GB SSD for OS and project files

-For Cache, Stripped set with (2) OCZ 512GB and Seagate GoFlex Thunder Bolt Adapter (Pro - Bus-Powered) (con - single TB port)
******** Note: To take full advantage of CS6, buy Cache HD/SSD as fastest as you can, Specially for AE Disk Cache
******** In CS6 When you quite project, all your RAM cache (Green) wil be save in your Disk Cache (Blue)

For MEDIA , OWC Mercury Rack Pro with Hitachi 4TB Deskstar (Raid, 0)
Note: Will replace OWC Mercury Rack Pro with HighPoint Dual SATA 6G Thunderbolt Dock (Raid, 0) (will test soon)

For All Pre RENDERs in Cache Drive for now (Will wait for TB hub or 1TB SSD which ever come first)

For Backup, OWC Mercury Rack Pro with Hitachi 4TB Deskstar (Raid, 5)
Note: Will replace OWC Mercury Rack Pro with HighPoint Dual SATA 6G Thunderbolt Dock (Raid, 1) (will test soon)

[emil tanem]

Would I have most to gain on using a SSD for cache files?
Maybe in combination with a fast HDD where the source material is?
Any recomendations on specific disk for the non-SSD disk?

[Cory Petkovsek]

Never buy regular, non-ssd drives that are slower than 7200rpm, except for archival purposes. A 3TB 5400RPM drive is fine for backup/archival use only, but too slow for daily use. Most laptop harddrives are slower than 7200rpm because the MFGs can get away with it. Pay the premium and demand a 7200rpm or an SSD. Any drives for your desktop make sure they are at least 7200rpm or ssd. Otherwise your whole system will be slow and you'll under utilize the rest of your hardware.

Now for your question, let's qualify "most to gain". There are several processes:

- Booting up the system and programs
- Loading a project file and conforming footage
- Working on the loaded system - editing, graphics, color, keying
- Rendering the exported project to a codec

Booting - An SSD is very helpful here in getting the system up to an operational state. Also by default your temp files are created on the boot drive, which is also used in conjunction with conformation. Your pagefile also defaults here. This drive is constantly accessed through normal operation. Your system and boot drive on an SSD will give you a lot to gain.

Loading - The project files are small so can be anywhere. The media files are huge. Scrubbing through the timeline, conforming footage for use in PPro/AE, reading the data for rendering; this all requires reading massive amounts of data. The conformation will create the cache files and since the pipeline is already quite full from all the reading of the data, having a separate drive to write the cache files to will gain a lot.

Working - Once the file is conformed, you'll constantly be accessing the cache. But the whole file isn't cached, and as you work with the project, you'll continually be reading from the media storage and reading from and writing to the cache. Again you have a lot to gain by separating media storage and cache.

Rendering - I already explained this process is cpu and disk-read bound. Writing the computed results is the slowest part. Think of a funnel with a ton data and calculation going in and a trickle coming out. You have nothing to gain with a dedicated SSD here; just use whichever drive the project files are on.

The conclusions we reach are, separating out at least system, media storage, and cache will give you the most gain. An SSD is faster than 7200rpm drives; less than 7200rpm is not worth buying. Buy SSDs for all three if you can; but you'll have a better bang for your buck with a 7200rpm or 10krpm disk RAID for media storage. If you had only one SSD, I'd put the system on it. Then as I said before, I'd experiment with the system conforming and using the cache. Put the cache on the system SSD drive and then move it to its own drive and compare stats and feel.

Cory

[Kwan Khan]

Agreed with Cory, very well put together

Faster CPU will make transcoding/ Render faster and yes, an SSD will make your Mac/PC respond a bit faster.
GPU-accelerated and SSD will help w/RT performance

[emil tanem]

Thank you for the info and help.

My setup will be:

SSD for windows and programs
3TB, 7200RPM drive for media (http://discountechnology.com/Product...mpaign=product)
256GB or larger SSD for cache
External RAID5 for exports and archive (trimmed projects)
And of course backup disks to be stores in a separate physical location.

Actually the only change to my system is the addition of a SSD disk for cache files. But once again, thank you!