Video Editing Storage Optimization Help

[Guest]

Hi, im currently building a new video editing rig next week with minimal gaming on the side haha. This is my first pc build since 2002 i think. I got used to laptops mainly because of sde jobs etc.,. I need some help on the best way to optimize drive usage for my editing needs in Premiere Pro.

Here are the specs:

MOBO:  Asus ROG Crosshair 6 Hero (AM4) X370

PROC:   AMD Ryzen 7 1700

RAM:     G.Skill Flare X 16gb(dual) 3200 DDR4 CL14

VCRD:   Palit GTX 1080 Super Jetstream 8Gb DDR5

CASE:   Phanteks Entoo Pro M Tempered Glass

PSU:     Seasonic M12II-750 EVO 750Watts 80Plus Bronze Full Modular

COLR:   BeQuiet Dark Rock Pro 3

For the storage drives im leaning to:

SSD:  Samsung 960 Evo M.2 PCIE 3.0x4 SSD 256GB  

SSD:  Samsung 850 Evo 500GB                                      

HDD:  Seagate 3TB Barracuda                                             

Which is better?

SSD:  Samsung 960 Evo M.2 PCIE 3.0x4 SSD 256GB     (FOR OS AND PROGRAMS)

SSD:  Samsung 850 Evo 500GB                                        (FOR PROJECT FILES AND SOURCE MEDIA)

HDD:  Seagate 3TB Barracuda                                          (FOR MEDIA CACHE AND SCRATCH DISK AND ARCHIVING)

or

SSD:  Samsung 850 Evo 500GB                                        (FOR OS AND PROGRAMS)

SSD:  Samsung 960 Evo M.2 PCIE 3.0x4 SSD 256GB     (FOR PROJECT FILES AND SOURCE MEDIA)

HDD:  Seagate 3TB Barracuda                                          (FOR MEDIA CACHE AND SCRATCH DISK AND ARCHIVING)

Is an HDD ok for media cache and scratch disk or should i get another ssd for it? And also is it better if i just get 2 500gb 850 evo than 1 500gb 850 and 1 250gb 960 for more storage?

[Jim_Simon]

Here's what I recommend as a starting point.

C: Windows and Programs

D: Project files, audio files, still images

E: Cache and Scratch

F: Camera media only

G: Exports

Plus some kind of backup and archive solution.  (I prefer externals for the task.)

Get sizes appropriate for your needs.

I think C, D and E can be SSDs, but it can be quite expensive to use SSDs for F and G, as they typically need to be the largest drives.  (I just bought an 8TB for F, and already need more room.)

(The reason I recommend a large drive for G is that I prefer to encode my videos using x264, which produces superior results over the MainConcept encoder Adobe uses, so I export out a lossless file for that final encoding.  Those lossless files are big.)

[Guest]

Thanks for the recommendation.

I think the most i can afford right now is this:

C: Samsung 850 Evo 500GB   [OS AND PROGRAMS]

D: Samsung 850 Evo 500GB   [MEDIA CACHE AND SCRATCH DISKS] 

E: Samsung 960 Evo M.2 PCIE 3.0x4 SSD 256GB  [PROJECT FILES AND SOURCE MEDIA]

F: Seagate 3TB Barracuda HDD   [EXPORTS, ARCHIVES]  

Or should i put the source media on my F? Does it make a big difference in performance if i placed the source media(raw files) on the hdd rather than ssd?

Or will it be better to split 1 of the 850 evo to the 256 gb version to have 4 ssd's which will look like this

C: Samsung 850 Evo 250GB  [OS AND PROGRAMS]

D: Samsung 850 Evo 250GB  [MEDIA CACHE AND SCRATCH DISKS]

E: Samsung 850 Evo 500GB  [SOURCE MEDIA]

F: Samsung 960 Evo M.2 PCIE 3.0x4 SSD 256GB  [PROJECT FILES]  

G: Seagate 3TB Barracuda HDD [EXPORTS, ARCHIVES]

Im thinking about while working on current projects all my source media are on E then after the project transfer them on G for the time being until i purchase additional external drives for archives.

Should i interchange C and F and install OS and Programs on the 960 EVO M2? Or should the source media be on the 960 evo m2? Im not yet that big of an editor meaning projects i work on as of now are not yet that big so im still good with the 250-500gb capacity.

Thanks again!

[RjL190365]

No for the OS and programs being on any m.2 drive: The high sequential read and write speeds of such a drive go completely to waste there. These uses require high random read and write performance but don't need all that much sequential read and write performance. Unfortunately, current m.2 PCIe SSDs perform no faster than conventional SATA III SSDs in random reads or writes.

[Bill_Gehrke]

Like Randall I do not put the OS/Applications on the real high speed SSD's.  Your OS and Applications run out of memory.  I like this slightly modified version.

C: Samsung 850 Evo 256GB   [OS AND PROGRAMS]

D: Samsung 850 Evo 256GB   [MEDIA CACHE AND SCRATCH DISKS] 

E: Samsung 960 Evo M.2 PCIE 3.0x4 SSD 500GB  [PROJECT FILES, SOURCE MEDIA, EXPORTS]

F: Seagate 3TB Barracuda HDD   [, ARCHIVES]

If you do not have long feature length videos you can actually combine C and D.