Looking for advice on Premiere install drive

[ah_photo]

Hi all,

Well I am building a PC for the first time (with some help thankfully). I've loved Macs but hey, budgets are a real thing and I'd rather not spend $3k for dated hardware. So in this build I will be having a 256GB SSD (M.2 at 8Gb/s) and a 1TB HDD (both WD Black drives).

My theory here was I was going to use the SSD for Windows and my core, everyday applications: web browser, anti-virus, etc. The HDD would however house Premiere, as well as all media content (raw, render/temp files, projects, etc.) The reasoning is I thought (and have had this thought reinforced by a friend) that having the media on the same drive as the program is quicker, since there's less cross talk between drives as Premiere tries to communicate with the media.

What do people think about this? Is it worth keeping Premiere with the media, would it be faster if the program was on the SSD, or would it not really matter either way? I know, ideally I would have 2 SSDs but you know how it is haha.

Just looking to hear more feedback and thoughts from users who are in a similar situation and have done something roughly equivalent.

Also on a completely unrelated sidenote: Our machines at work started to get the 2017 builds of Premiere installed (up from 2015.1)...is there any way to get rid of the expanded borders on the panels? I looked around but couldn't find anything. The lost screen space is driving me nuts! haha

Thank you!

[Moderator note: moved to best forum]

[shooternz]

Example setup

ONLY - Applications and Programs on Boot Drive C:

Media on Drive D:

Project Files on E:

Exports on F:

Use additional drive(s) for other assets eg Audio/Music/Graphics... or more Video Media

......

.is there any way to get rid of the expanded borders on the panels? I looked around but couldn't find anything. The lost screen space is driving me nuts! haha

There was a thread on this in the last ten days.  Premiere and it's wasted screen space  

[ah_photo]

Hi shooternz​

Thanks for the response. I can see the benefit of having all of those drives in a way, especially if they were all SSD however like I said budget is a part of that restriction.

Is there no (noticeable) increased latency from having the program on a drive separate from the media? I know this may be less of a issue than say networked drives or removable storage (USB, XDCAM, P2, etc.) but I wonder if the same still applies or if it is negligible.

If not, then per the ideal setup, then maybe It would make sense for me to install the program on the boot drive, and keep media, projects, temp on the data HDD.

[ah_photo]

Also thank you for the link to the screen space post, but I'm not sure if that is referring specifically to the screen space lost due to panel borders added in an update somewhere between 2015.1 and 2017 (not sure which but I'd assume 2017).

The discussion there seems more on how people arrange their work-spaces efficiently or not in their monitor.

[Bill_Gehrke]

Do not waste an M.2 PCIe Gen 3 X4 SSD on the OS/Applications.  Get a small SATA III SSD for them and put your OS/Applications on it and on the M.2 drive put your all your project files while you are editing and when that project is finished move it to your hard disk drives for archiving and backup.

[ah_photo]

All good advice everyone, A lot to consider, especially weighing in my budget and how much work I'll actually do at home vs at work.

Thank you all!

[JFPhoton]

Bill has given you the correct answer. You need to familiarize yourself more with the way Premier Pro works with hardware and how the newest M.2 PCI NVMe SSDs have completely revolutionized the storage setup to achieve good performance.

   These new drives, like the Samsung 960 Pro, are capable of reading at over 3 GB/sec and writing at over 2GB/sec. That's not all !

   The SATA interface is " half duplex", meaning a traditional spinning hard drive,or, traditional SSD can only read OR write...they cannot do BOTH at the same time.

    These new PCI SSDs CAN read and write simultaneously to lessen any latency even futher !

It is now possible, by using an NVMe  PCI SSD, to only have ONE DRIVE for EVERYTHING without a perceptible loss in performance. Bill has tested this. So, ONE large capacity Samsung 960 Evo or Pro M.2 PCI NVMe SSD can do EVERYTHING, while other drives would serve as backup drives and archives. Bill still prefers to use a SATA III SSD as a " boot drive" to hold the OS, all programs , and Windows page file. All else on the NVMe drive produces fastest possible performance. However, his own tests show that just EVERYTHING can go on one drive. Bill's method preserves more space on the NVMe drive ! The 256 GB NVMe drives do not perform as fast as the 512GB and higher drives do.

       Only a few years ago, to reach the data transfer speed provided by the current NVMe drives, you had to have an expensive Areca add in card plus MANY enterprise level spinning hard drives in a RAID 3 array !!! Now, the solution is MUCH cheaper and less risky and troublesome.

[ah_photo]

JFPhoton  wrote

Bill has given you the correct answer. You need to familiarize yourself more with the way Premier Pro works with hardware and how the newest M.2 PCI NVMe SSDs have completely revolutionized the storage setup to achieve good performance.

   These new drives, like the Samsung 960 Pro, are capable of reading at over 3 GB/sec and writing at over 2GB/sec. That's not all !

   The SATA interface is " half duplex", meaning a traditional spinning hard drive,or, traditional SSD can only read OR write...they cannot do BOTH at the same time.

    These new PCI SSDs CAN read and write simultaneously to lessen any latency even futher !

It is now possible, by using an NVMe  PCI SSD, to only have ONE DRIVE for EVERYTHING without a perceptible loss in performance. Bill has tested this. So, ONE large capacity Samsung 960 Evo or Pro M.2 PCI NVMe SSD can do EVERYTHING, while other drives would serve as backup drives and archives. Bill still prefers to use a SATA III SSD as a " boot drive" to hold the OS, all programs , and Windows page file. All else on the NVMe drive produces fastest possible performance. However, his own tests show that just EVERYTHING can go on one drive. Bill's method preserves more space on the NVMe drive ! The 256 GB NVMe drives do not perform as fast as the 512GB and higher drives do.

       Only a few years ago, to reach the data transfer speed provided by the current NVMe drives, you had to have an expensive Areca add in card plus MANY enterprise level spinning hard drives in a RAID 3 array !!! Now, the solution is MUCH cheaper and less risky and troublesome.

100%. I definitely don't disagree with anything many of you including Bill have said. I do appreciate the info. Like I said, I'm completely green with PC building and some of the newer storage formats (hence why I am here!).

At the risk of sounding unappreciative (I promise I'm not!) , the solutions (while clearly superior) do start leading a conversation from "What is the best way to utilize what I have set in my budget" to "What are the best options available outright". While I'd love to be in the second group, there are a lot of ways when assessing a PC build where you can go "for only a little bit more, I can get even better". Problem is that happens a lot throughout the process and it adds up haha.

At least one large PCIe SSD definitely is the way to go, but considering their higher costs and the fact that SSDs ultimately do need replacement (situationally, sometimes even more than HDDs), it may not be something I do *now*.

That said thank you for debunking the myth I had on App needing to be on same drive as media, I will definitely put Premiere with the other apps. Now if anything I just need to consider if it's worth switching the roles (and sizes) of the PCIe and SATA (which I may now do SSD instead over HDD at a smaller size) at increased cost.

I would, but I do have some concerns about burning through potentially expensive storage media using the pricer PCIe SSDs for media, especially for something like caches and render files where data keeps getting re-written to the drive more frequently than say: simply the program would. I know the SSDs are getting longer lifespans and all, but hey you can never be too cautious.

Good considerations all around.

[RoninEdits]

ssd endurance and lifespans have increased over the years. if you have an idea of how much data/media will be written, it can help you decide on which ssd might be worth the cost and fit your needs. the duration of the warranty and TBW (terabytes written) are usually listed on the mfg's website. samsung also has a good reputation for lasting past their warranty. the "pro" versions of the samsung ssd's have a longer warranty and larger TBW vs the "evo" models. the TBW will usually increase with the drive size and also decrease with the drive sizes. if you are thinking about using a small ssd just for the os/apps, the samsung 850 pro 256gb is a good choice for endurance at $130 with a 10 year/150tbw warranty, vs the $110 WD black 256gb m.2 at 5 year/80tbw warranty.

if you need less than 1tb of space for active projects and want to go all ssd, a single 500gb or 1tb samsung 960 m.2 can cost similar to multiple sata ssd's otherwise needed to split up the workload. the samsung 960's have between 200-800 tbw, depending on size and pro/evo. once you get above 1tb of space needed for media, multiple sata ssd's can be more cost effective, and if needed multiple sata ssd's can be used in raid-0 as the media drive for faster speeds. if you want to stick with a hdd for media, a hdd can work for simple timelines with medium to low bitrate media. raid-0 could also be used with multiple hdd's to get faster speeds, but could also cost as much as some small to medium size ssd's. with any raid you will want the system to be on a UPS and to have backups of any data on the raid, but those are standard practices even without raid.

[ah_photo]

RoninEdits​

Thanks for the advice.

Well, I did a handful of breakdowns of different configs, I wanted to report back with what I think I will do for any last minute feedback.

I think I'm going to combine the advice of Bill Gehrke​ and Ronin here. By switching the role of the NVMe drive, but finding opportunities to be budget mindful where possible:

OS/Apps Drive: Samsung 850 Pro SATA3 SSD. 256GB for $130

Data/Edit Drive: WD Black NVMe SSD. 512GB for $200

Yeah, I know Ronin the Samsung NVMe s are higher performance and I could get them NOW (which I really want to) but I'm not sure if I can justify the $130 extra for the Pro (and eve $90 extra for the Evo). I think getting a larger NVMe to make it serve the edit/data role, rather than for the OS and apps is a good chance thanks to everyones advice, and being mindful of the cost of the NVMe, I'm only about $150 over my initial configuration of the NVMe/HDD combo.

Considering I'll be backing up critical data both to a NAS drive as well as an external HDD, I should be more than ok for when the drives fail. Although hearing they have gotten better makes my wallet feel a bit better haha - and I imagine when they DO fail, prices should have dropped a bit.

[Bill_Gehrke]

awhurley11  wrote

Considering I'll be backing up critical data both to a NAS drive as well as an external HDD, I should be more than ok for when the drives fail. Although hearing they have gotten better makes my wallet feel a bit better haha - and I imagine when they DO fail, prices should have dropped a bit.

Let me give you some facts and figures on SSD reliability.  I bought an open box Laptop in January 2014 and the first thing I did was to clone the hard disk (1 TB 5400rpm) to a Samsung 840 Pro 128 GB drive.  Here slightly over three years later is the CrystalDiskInfo data on that laptop which is used daily generally several hours per day. 

Notice the Total Host Writes = 4.6 TBW with three years usage on a five year warranty and a enterprise rating of 73 TBW .  Also notice that Power On Hours is 4806 or about 1600 hours per year.

I use this laptop for all my editing and when the editing is done I go to my desktop and export to the final media format, either files or discs.  I could do the final export on the laptop but it is much faster with my 8-cores @ 4.5 GHz desktop.  This laptop handles my newer FDR-AX100 4K XAVC-S media beautifully and I have quite few edits with it plus two additional HD cameras.  Now days I do not even use the second internal SSD for my projects I just plug in my Samsung T1 or T3 Portable USB3 SSD's and since all the necessary files for a project are on it, it just unplug it and walk it over to the desktop and "bingo" It is up and running

I really believe that this very early SSD will outlast any rotating disk drive and newer ones are even better.

Notice that my E: drive is running only at 29 degrees probably because it is not being used.  With tools like this you can easily check your SSD conditions

[RoninEdits]

the samsung 960 evo 500gb is only $60 more on amazon, currently at $260. it also have 25% larger tbw, which would make up for $50 dollars of the extra cost, leaving the last $10 as faster performance. os/apps don't take much space, so if you can fit everything on one drive switching to a single samsung 960 500gb will actually be cheaper at $260 vs $330($130+200). if you want to stick with the 850 pro and wd black m.2 it should still work fine.

[R Neil Haugen]

Bill Gehrke​ is the total Guru of real-world practical test results of the Adobe video projects. His recent tests show that although the disc layout shown by shooternz (and used by many of us, especially from Bill's previous results and recommendations was the best way to do things, times are changing.

PrPro 2017 seems optimized for SSD media storage.

Yes, your system drive should be as you thought, but of course ... use that for system/OS, programs, and system cache.

Using additional new style SSDs for the main parts of the rest of the process gives better results by far with playback/renders for 4k media than spinning disks or even large RAID 0 arrays.

The Samsung EVO's for example, can give outrageous sustained read/write speeds. Such that where before we've built rigs with (like mine) a pair of SSD's in RAID 0 for system, and 6 big fast spinners for parting out the other parts of PrPro's workload, now ... a system on an NVMe or m.2 drive, and a second drive of similar nature for media, project files, and exports ... can handle 4k workloads just fine.

I'm currently rebuilding my system with a number of SSD's for main work, and will keep a few of my newer, larger spinning drives for longterm mass storage. Although ... SSD prices are falling so using a few more SSD's to get the same storage isn't so much more expensive any more.

Neil

[ah_photo]

Neil,

Thank you for your response. Yeah, I think I have to agree that, eventually, I'll have additional SSDs for media content and other parts of the Pr process.

If anything I won't be doing as MUCH editing as I do at work (which is usually off NAS / playout servers which make me want to cry speed-wise) so in the long run it probably won't be the end of the world either way. It's just nice to see what people are doing now and as you mention, see what the latest theory changes are behind evolving tech.

So to be clear, are you suggesting that I should go and put Premiere on the SSD, instead of putting it on the HDD simply to let it co-exist with the media? Then maybe over time, put the media and other workflow locations onto new SSD units as I make those purchases

Thanks again for your time

[RoninEdits · Accepted solution]

if you are getting the WD black m.2 drive, don't bother, send it back or cancel the order. for a little bit more money you can get a samsung 960 evo that will run circles around the WD black m.2. placing the premiere installation folder/files on the same drive as the media drive doesn't help premiere access media files. there is no cross-talk happening on a hardware level as you might be imagining. the work is done by the cpu and its the speed of the storage drive(s) that will impact performance of data transfer to the cpu.

if you get a m.2 like the samsung 960 evo, and its large enough to hold your media, you can run everything on one drive and use the hdd for backups and archived projects.

samsung 960 evo - os/apps/cache/projects/media

hdd - backups/archives

if you get something slower like the WD m.2 or sata ssd, you might want to split things up more

ssd - os/apps/cache

hdd - projects/media/backups

or

ssd 1 - os/apps

ssd 2 - cache/projects/media

hdd - backup/archive