Best hard drives configuration for video editing.

[ayaseshinomia]

Hi, as I'm going to do a clean install of windows soon, I wanted to ask what is the best configuration of drives for me.

There are 4 things I'm thinking about;

where to install:

- Premiere Pro & After Effects

- Cache

- OS

- Footage

I have 3 drives;

- 250Gb SATA III MLC SSD

- 1TB SATA III TLC SSD

- 1TB HDD

Should it be like:

- OS, FOOTAGE, SOFTWARE on 1TB SSD

and Cache on 250GB SSD + HDD as Archive

or different?

Maybe this isn't the most important question but this is the thing I was thinking a lot lately.

Thank you for answers!

[Peru Bob]

ayaseshinomia  wrote

Maybe this isn't the most important question

Actually, it is important.

What brand and model drives are the SSDs?

[ayaseshinomia]

Hi, the 1tb one is Samsung 860 EVO and the 250GB is a local brand, but performance is close to Samsung one.

They aren't beasts, but always better than HDD's.

Crystalmark of 250:

[Peru Bob]

I would go with what you had in your original post and see how it works for you.

[ayaseshinomia]

Thanks!

[Diddy82]

I would put the O/S and applications on the 256gb ssd drive and put the media, cache, scratch and other project files on the 1tb SSD.  I dont know how much of a difference that would make versus what you proposed but that’s what Puget Systems recommends.  https://www.pugetsystems.com/labs/articles/Adobe-Premiere-Pro-CC-2015-4-Storage-Optimization-854/

[Peru Bob]

250 GB may be too small for the OS drive.

[t.j.e18892971]

I've had my OS/software on a 250GB ssd for the last 5 years and it's been fine. Only, sucks if you use the same machine for gaming.

[alexlikeshardware]

By looking that the different types of SSDs that you have I'll have to agree with Diddy82. The 256GB is an MLC SSD which technology wise is "faster" than the the 1TB TLC. Don't worry about the size of the OS 256GB is plenty as of room for it. The 1TB SSD will be a great cahe, scratch, imediate project files and the HDD should be what it is "cold storage,"  which translates to files/projects that you are not using frequently.

On another note, you should check out some of the new SSD PCIe drives that are coming out. The prices are coming down thus becoming affordable and there is a nice boost in performance.

[ayaseshinomia]

Hi, thank you for an answer. This configuration is looking good, but one thing worries me: that 1tb is TLC which wears out way faster, and if this will be used to cache, then well...

But on the other side, it can be considered as just a working tool wearing out.

[farhanOfficer]

Hate to pop out of nowhere, but I'm looking for hardware recommendations and this really helped sort out the storage concept. Can you please tell me what other specs are you running and how's the performance? Thanks

[ayaseshinomia]

Hi, my spec is very casual and pretty old i7 3770k/20 DDR3/GTX 970. I will be upgrading Q1 2019.

So, I'm not very experienced as I'm mostly editing typical corporate videos or youtube videos, but I need to say that moving footage to SSD (if you are using something on the heavy side) helps a lot. Still, my CPU is chocking on 4k editing, but it's doable. But this is not spec which will protect your sanity (crashes and not responding).

I will be probably going for 9700k/32 DDR4/2080 since I don't have the quite budget for 9900k and After Effects seems to benefit more on core speed (I might be wrong).

[farhanOfficer]

You're right about AE benefitting more from clock speed than number of cores. At least thats what the forums say.

I was considering the the same 9900k/32 DDR4. Because it's the best available for AE and among the top 5 for PR according to Puget Systems. 9700k is pretty close so you'll be fine, I think.

Good luck with your build and thanks for the response!

[ayaseshinomia]

Now you might be better off waiting for CES because AMD might show something great (or at least there are rumors about that)