What are some of the most common and best performing hard drive types used by Video Editing Professionals?

Start reading Tweakers Page and subsequent articles.

What hardware / mobo do you have?

I just built a new computer, see reply 6 for my final hardware list Samsung 840 Pro SSD to become Sata6 ???

After some advice, I went with a Samsung 840 Pro for boot/software and Crucial M550 for my 3 data drives

Reliable, yes.

Costly per GB, yes.

You can forget about a 3 disk raid0 on that mobo, because you only have two SATA 6G ports on the Intel, one of which should be used for OS & programs on a single 120+ GB SSD, and two SATA 6G ports on the Marvell and they can't be mixed. Additionally, the Marvell ports are pretty slow. If you use three SATA 3G ports for a raid0, you downgrade the SSD performance by a factor 2.

In terms of preference for SSD's:

1. Samsung 850 Pro
2. Samsung 840 Pro
3. Corsair M550

For conventional HDD's, look at enterprise disks, designed for 24/7 operation and with a large cache from HGST (Ultrastar), Seagate (Constellation ES) or WD (RE4).

Next step: Upgrade memory to 32 GB and forget about a SB audio card. Use on-board sound.

If you want a really fast disk setup, consider this:

AnandTech | Samsung SSD 850 Pro (128GB, 256GB & 1TB) Review: Enter the 3D Era

The problem is that the X79 chipset only supports 2 SATA 6G ports. All additional SATA 6G ports use a different controller, not part of the chipset. For the SATA 6G ports internally, 3 and 4, a Marvell controller is used. For the eSATA 6G ports, 5 and 6, again another controller is used. These ports can not be used for raid configurations where multiple controllers are used. Only configurations where all the ports are on the same controller.

The Samsung 850 Pro is a new generation which is designed for longer life.

While you may have have four SATA 6Gb/s ports they are not on the same controller chip so they cannot be used to create a RAID array

Tweakers Page - What video card to use?

Take a look at Harm's pages

.....HELLO !!!....HELLO!!!....haven't you read that the NEW Intel Haswell E chip is out !!! Right here on this forum Eric Bowen has posted test results comparing it to the previous CPUs, and it blows them away !! The new X99 chipset provides TEN on board SATA III 6gbits/sec ports for making a very fast RAID setup of SSDs !!

Crucial M550 series SSDs are cheaper than the slightly better Samsung 850 Pro series......and these SSDs are WAY more reliable than any spinning mechanical hard drive !  FORGET AMD video cards.....NVidia ONLY provides the CUDA acceleration used by PPro in their "Mercury Playback Engine" A new NVidia card is coming out...the 980, ( originally was going to be the 880), which may have 8GB of video memory. A 770 with 4GB memory would not be a bad place to start. Read more about ALL the components of an editing PC,...esp. the POWER SUPPLY and COOLING. Concerning those SSDs that were suggested, they are currently the ONLY ones you would want to consider....other cheaper Sandforce controlled SSDs are NOT recommended !!

Tweakers Page - Is Haswell-E ready for prime time?

with X99 mobo, does the chip set no longer bottleneck at 1.5Gb/s like the X79?  Wouldn't 3 ASUS ROG RAZR 240GB PCIe SSDs get you faster RAID 0?

I would never consider an ASUS SSD, especially not with a Sandforce controller.

Better look at Ultrastar SN100 Series PCIe SSD | HGST Storage . Better capacity and much faster.

Did you look at Tweakers Page - Exporting Style

There the situations where the GPU kicks in are explained.

I sure do not understand the GTX 980.  Here are the important characteristics that I see for MPE GPU Hardware Acceleration for the GTX 980 and the GTX 780

GTX 980, 2048 CUDA cores, 224 GB/second memory bandwidth

GTX 780, 2304 CUDA cores, 288 GB/second memory bandwidth

Why would anyone buy one except for 1GB more video RAM on the standard designs?

Check out AnandTech | The NVIDIA GeForce GTX 980 Review: Maxwell Mark 2 and you will see that, even though memory bandwidth decreased, the 3rd generation color compression, the increase in ROP ratio from 8:1 to 16:1, the increase to 64 ROPs, the increase to 2 MB L2 cache and the significantly higher GPU clock speed all lead to a significant performance gain, but practical benchmarks must tell us if that also applies to PR.

Yes, that is what cc_merchant is referring to.  Adobe uses Pr in the desktop icon but I do not know of any help on this forum's common abbreviations.

Incidentally, I did dig out one major advantage for the GTX 980, power.  The new Maxwell based GTX 980 uses only 165 watts while its predecessor the GTX 780 uses 250 watts!

.....if you would like to spend BIG MONEY.......I can sell you my " state of the art" Quantum Bigfoot hard drive, ( as pictured below )  It only weighs about TWO POUNDS, and takes up a MINISCULE amount of real estate because its ONLY FIVE AND A QUARTER INCHES WIDE !!! We're now talking SERIOUS performance here !!!!.....just because it needs ITS OWN POWER SUPPLY doesn't mean it can't BLAZE through data with the BEST of them !!!! Make me an offer " I can't refuse" and this baby COULD BE YOURS !!!

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I would like to believe that the GTX 980 will work better with Premiere MPE hardware acceleration than the GTX 780.  Fortunately Eric from ADK will shortly be receiving his first shipment. and promises to let the forum know.