Best setup for hard drives on new 11900 system?

xberk wrote on 9/19/2021, 4:49 PM

My new 11900 system arrives next week.  Thinking about hard drives.  Is it still true that regular HDD 7200rpm drives work about as well as anything for holding Vegas Project files?  But I might benefit from rendering to a separate internal SSD?  Any opinions on the best setup for Vegas Playback and rendering?  
  

Paul B .. PCI Express Video Card: EVGA VCX 10G-P5-3885-KL GeForce RTX 3080 XC3 ULTRA ,,  Intel Core i9-11900K Desktop Processor ,,  MSI Z590-A PRO Desktop Motherboard LGA-1200 ,, 64GB (2X32GB) XPG GAMMIX D45 DDR4 3200MHz 288-Pin SDRAM PC4-25600 Memory .. Seasonic Power Supply SSR-1000FX Focus Plus 1000W ,, Arctic Liquid Freezer II – 360MM .. Fractal Design case ,, Samsung Solid State Drive MZ-V8P1T0B/AM 980 PRO 1TB PCI Express 4 NVMe M.2 ,, Wundiws 10 .. Vegas Pro 19 Edit

Comments

fr0sty wrote on 9/19/2021, 4:55 PM

For multiple streams of high bitrate video, you'll benefit from having it stored on faster drives, but as far as rendering goes, you aren't going to render faster than the drive can write, so I don't see that helping much.

I have 7200rpm media storage drives. When editing, the clips I'm working on get moved to a M.2 PCIe NVME drive, and then the final ProRes master render gets archived back to the 7200's until it can be backed up on something more permanent (Blu-Ray, etc) or sent to the client for them to archive.

Systems:

Desktop

AMD Ryzen 7 1800x 8 core 16 thread at stock speed

64GB 3000mhz DDR4

Geforce RTX 3090

Windows 10

Laptop:

ASUS Zenbook Pro Duo 32GB (9980HK CPU, RTX 2060 GPU, dual 4K touch screens, main one OLED HDR)

xberk wrote on 9/19/2021, 5:26 PM

I could do that .. I have 3 slots for M.2 on the motherboard. Using one for the main drive .. but I could use M.2_2 for a SAMSUNG 970 EVO 2TB - M.2 NVMe .. But if I use M.2_2 that knocks out SATA2 .. Just have to remember for future should I want to plug something into SATA2 and it's dead.

Last changed by xberk on 9/19/2021, 5:29 PM, changed a total of 1 times.

Paul B .. PCI Express Video Card: EVGA VCX 10G-P5-3885-KL GeForce RTX 3080 XC3 ULTRA ,,  Intel Core i9-11900K Desktop Processor ,,  MSI Z590-A PRO Desktop Motherboard LGA-1200 ,, 64GB (2X32GB) XPG GAMMIX D45 DDR4 3200MHz 288-Pin SDRAM PC4-25600 Memory .. Seasonic Power Supply SSR-1000FX Focus Plus 1000W ,, Arctic Liquid Freezer II – 360MM .. Fractal Design case ,, Samsung Solid State Drive MZ-V8P1T0B/AM 980 PRO 1TB PCI Express 4 NVMe M.2 ,, Wundiws 10 .. Vegas Pro 19 Edit

fr0sty wrote on 9/19/2021, 5:31 PM

Don't bother with the SATA M.2 cards, you might as well just plug in a SATA SSD, they are limited to the same speeds. You want PCI-Express M.2, the speeds are far superior. The Samsung is PCI-E, just make sure the port on your motherboard is as well. If not, you can buy M.2 PCI-E interface cards to add up to 4 more NVME PCI-E drives (which can be set up in a striped RAID config for even faster speeds).

Also, PCI-E 4.0 drives are twice as fast as their 3.0 counterparts, so factor that in too if your system is 4.0 capable.

Last changed by fr0sty on 9/19/2021, 5:36 PM, changed a total of 7 times.

Systems:

Desktop

AMD Ryzen 7 1800x 8 core 16 thread at stock speed

64GB 3000mhz DDR4

Geforce RTX 3090

Windows 10

Laptop:

ASUS Zenbook Pro Duo 32GB (9980HK CPU, RTX 2060 GPU, dual 4K touch screens, main one OLED HDR)

xberk wrote on 9/19/2021, 5:44 PM

I believe the Samsung 970 is PCIe Gen 3.0 x4, NVMe 1.3 .. My motherboard is MSI Z590-A which says it supports up to PCIe 3.0x4 on M2_2 and PCIe 4.0x4 on M2_1 ... wouldn't the Samsung 970 be the right drive to plug into M2_2 slot? . I'm easily confused.

Paul B .. PCI Express Video Card: EVGA VCX 10G-P5-3885-KL GeForce RTX 3080 XC3 ULTRA ,,  Intel Core i9-11900K Desktop Processor ,,  MSI Z590-A PRO Desktop Motherboard LGA-1200 ,, 64GB (2X32GB) XPG GAMMIX D45 DDR4 3200MHz 288-Pin SDRAM PC4-25600 Memory .. Seasonic Power Supply SSR-1000FX Focus Plus 1000W ,, Arctic Liquid Freezer II – 360MM .. Fractal Design case ,, Samsung Solid State Drive MZ-V8P1T0B/AM 980 PRO 1TB PCI Express 4 NVMe M.2 ,, Wundiws 10 .. Vegas Pro 19 Edit

fr0sty wrote on 9/19/2021, 5:51 PM

Yes, that would be the right way to do it, and if you get a PCI-E 4 drive, it would go in the M2_2 slot.

Systems:

Desktop

AMD Ryzen 7 1800x 8 core 16 thread at stock speed

64GB 3000mhz DDR4

Geforce RTX 3090

Windows 10

Laptop:

ASUS Zenbook Pro Duo 32GB (9980HK CPU, RTX 2060 GPU, dual 4K touch screens, main one OLED HDR)

john_dennis wrote on 9/19/2021, 5:52 PM

After you've spent all that money on your new system, there is no reason not to do all your editing on NVMe disks.

I edit all my new projects on a 400GB NVMe boot disk and a 1TB NVMe Work disk. My render target is on the Desktop where I can find it. It resides on the 400GB disk.

Notice the access time when playing the timeline.

I have a hard disk switch that allows me to power down spinning disks and optical disks for the hours and hours that I don't need them. This saves energy, wear and tear of the drives and, I don't have to listen to them. Lately, I've been scanning film negatives all day, every day and I seldom need them except at the end of a roll of film when I save to the ARCHIVE.

At that point, I power on the disk that I need and save. The disks must be set up as removeable in BIOS. No big deal.

I bought my last 1TB NVMe disk at Best Buy for ~$119. The 400 GB Intel 750 was part of my original build five years ago and was very expensive.

Howard-Vigorita wrote on 9/19/2021, 6:14 PM

I have a pair of Samsung 980 m.2 on my 11900k system compared to 970 on my 9900k... both are Asus motherboards. The 980's report dramatically higher disk i/o benches compared to the 970. But Vegas doesn't seem to be as sensitive to m.2 performance differences as you might think. Big differences copying projects and media but not so much rendering, for instance, to sata-ssd media or even usbc t5 ssd's which are msata behind the usbc interface.

Just be careful which m.2 slots you use. Read you mobo docs and pay particular attention to shared bandwidth between certain slots like pcie graphics and sata disk controller connections. My mobos have 4 m.2 slots but 2 of them share bandwidth if used so I don't.

xberk wrote on 9/19/2021, 7:13 PM

I have a pair of Samsung 980 m.2 on my 11900k system compared to 970 on my 9900k... both are Asus motherboards. The 980's report dramatically higher disk i/o benches compared to the 970. But Vegas doesn't seem to be as sensitive to m.2 performance differences as you might think. Big differences copying projects and media but not so much rendering, for instance, to sata-ssd media or even usbc t5 ssd's which are msata behind the usbc interface.

Just be careful which m.2 slots you use. Read you mobo docs and pay particular attention to shared bandwidth between certain slots like pcie graphics and sata disk controller connections. My mobos have 4 m.2 slots but 2 of them share bandwidth if used so I don't.


My motherboard only supports one M.2 slot for Gen 4 PCIe .. I'll have a Samsung 980 in that slot for the boot drive. My plan is to go with Samsung 970 in the second M.2 slot (M2_2). That slot is limited to Gen3 PCIe so why spend the money on another 980 ?

 

Paul B .. PCI Express Video Card: EVGA VCX 10G-P5-3885-KL GeForce RTX 3080 XC3 ULTRA ,,  Intel Core i9-11900K Desktop Processor ,,  MSI Z590-A PRO Desktop Motherboard LGA-1200 ,, 64GB (2X32GB) XPG GAMMIX D45 DDR4 3200MHz 288-Pin SDRAM PC4-25600 Memory .. Seasonic Power Supply SSR-1000FX Focus Plus 1000W ,, Arctic Liquid Freezer II – 360MM .. Fractal Design case ,, Samsung Solid State Drive MZ-V8P1T0B/AM 980 PRO 1TB PCI Express 4 NVMe M.2 ,, Wundiws 10 .. Vegas Pro 19 Edit

TheRhino wrote on 9/20/2021, 9:25 PM

...Big differences copying projects and media but not so much rendering...

I need fast storage because I copy a LOT of large 4K intermediates across my 10G network so I can edit on my 9900K system, render on my 11700K & send backups to my QNAP NAS, etc. For source video I have (4) 2TB M.2 setup as 8TB software RAID0 & for target video I have (6) 8TB SATAs connected to (used) LSI Hardware x8 PCIe controller cards. This allows me to keep editing unhindered as files transfer at blazing speeds....

My motherboard is a MSI Z590-A...

Although very reliable & affordable (thus why system builders like it...), the entry-level MSI Z590-A only has (1) x16 PCIe slot & (2) x1 slots available after adding the GPU, so upgrade options via PCIe add-on cards are very limited...

In comparison, the (open box) $200 ASUS Z390 WS board I got for my 9900K has (4) x16 PCIe and (1) x4 PCIe filled with my GPU, 10G network card, RAID controller, Blackmagic Decklink capture card, and M.2 adapter to hold my 4th M.2...

My 11700K's $200 (on sale) ASRock W480 motherboard already came with onboard 10G networking and (2) Thunderbolt 3 connectors, so I could get by with it just having (3) x16 PCIe slots which are populated with my GPU, RAID Controller, and M.2 adapter. I also use one of the x1 slots for a Firewire card to import legacy MiniDV tapes, etc...

IMO for Content Creation systems it is essential that you have enough larger PCIe slots to handle worthwhile add-ons and/or keep upgrades affordable... For instance, it's $280 cheaper for me to have (4) $180 2TB M.2 than (2) $500 4TB M.2 but I need an extra PCIe slot to handle the 4th M.2...

Workstation C with $600 USD of upgrades in April, 2021
--$360 11700K @ 5.0ghz
--$200 ASRock W480 Creator (onboard 10G net, TB3, etc.)
Borrowed from my 9900K until prices drop:
--32GB of G.Skill DDR4 3200 ($100 on Black Friday...)
Reused from same Tower Case that housed the Xeon:
--Used VEGA 56 GPU ($200 on eBay before mining craze...)
--Noctua Cooler, 750W PSU, OS SSD, LSI RAID Controller, SATAs, etc.

Performs VERY close to my overclocked 9900K (below), but at stock settings with no tweaking...

Workstation D with $1,350 USD of upgrades in April, 2019
--$500 9900K @ 5.0ghz
--$140 Corsair H150i liquid cooling with 360mm radiator (3 fans)
--$200 open box Asus Z390 WS (PLX chip manages 4/5 PCIe slots)
--$160 32GB of G.Skill DDR4 3000 (added another 32GB later...)
--$350 refurbished, but like-new Radeon Vega 64 LQ (liquid cooled)

Renders Vegas11 "Red Car Test" (AMD VCE) in 13s when clocked at 4.9 ghz
(note: BOTH onboard Intel & Vega64 show utilization during QSV & VCE renders...)

Source Video1 = 4TB RAID0--(2) 2TB M.2 on motherboard in RAID0
Source Video2 = 4TB RAID0--(2) 2TB M.2 (1) via U.2 adapter & (1) on separate PCIe card
Target Video1 = 32TB RAID0--(4) 8TB SATA hot-swap drives on PCIe RAID card with backups elsewhere

10G Network using used $30 Mellanox2 Adapters & Qnap QSW-M408-2C 10G Switch
Copy of Work Files, Source & Output Video, OS Images on QNAP 653b NAS with (6) 14TB WD RED
Blackmagic Decklink PCie card for capturing from tape, etc.
(2) internal BR Burners connected via USB 3.0 to SATA adapters
Old Cooler Master CM Stacker ATX case with (13) 5.25" front drive-bays holds & cools everything.

Workstations A & B are the 2 remaining 6-core 4.0ghz Xeon 5660 or I7 980x on Asus P6T6 motherboards.

$999 Walmart Evoo 17 Laptop with I7-9750H 6-core CPU, RTX 2060, (2) M.2 bays & (1) SSD bay...

fr0sty wrote on 9/20/2021, 9:39 PM

Keep in mind that the 11900 has 20 PCI lanes, that's one GPU running at x16, and one NVME running at x4, and you're out of lanes. This is one reason the AMD chips are better (Threadripper 3990x has 64)... once the AMD chips start integrating their own GPUs here soon, Intel will be running out of reasons to choose them in VEGAS builds (they'll still hold the advantage in formats that can be decoded via the iGPU for a while, though).

I wish CPU manufacturers would make media production versions of their chips that come loaded to the teeth with hardware support for all the popular delivery and intermediate formats, kinda like the apple afterburner cards do. I'd pay good money to have a CPU that could do that, I don't need it to run video games or ray tracing in C4D. I have a solid GPU for that.

Last changed by fr0sty on 9/20/2021, 9:43 PM, changed a total of 3 times.

Systems:

Desktop

AMD Ryzen 7 1800x 8 core 16 thread at stock speed

64GB 3000mhz DDR4

Geforce RTX 3090

Windows 10

Laptop:

ASUS Zenbook Pro Duo 32GB (9980HK CPU, RTX 2060 GPU, dual 4K touch screens, main one OLED HDR)

Howard-Vigorita wrote on 9/20/2021, 9:39 PM

@xberk Just fished out some of the general purpose Novabench benches I ran when testing my 11900k system as I shuffled video boards. Threw results into a google sheet here:

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1OFpMJyeuvpE9YP68suvWSB7hvx2dbZVk/edit?usp=sharing&ouid=111569170347968723497&rtpof=true&sd=true

I didn't try the 980 m.2 in any other system so I can't say if its performance gain depends on pcie4 or what. I suspect not because they're reported to have a much larger cache size. In the event, they seem to be going for less than the 970 PRO's on US Amazon where I got mine.

EDIT: added CrystalDrive benches to chart to document C: and D: drive performance which are different because C: is pcie4 and D: is pcie3.

xberk wrote on 9/20/2021, 9:47 PM

@TheRhino .. Thanks . My setup will be simple compared to yours. But compared to my 8 year old system, this new 11900 system will be a wonder to me. Can't wait. I'm ready.

Paul B .. PCI Express Video Card: EVGA VCX 10G-P5-3885-KL GeForce RTX 3080 XC3 ULTRA ,,  Intel Core i9-11900K Desktop Processor ,,  MSI Z590-A PRO Desktop Motherboard LGA-1200 ,, 64GB (2X32GB) XPG GAMMIX D45 DDR4 3200MHz 288-Pin SDRAM PC4-25600 Memory .. Seasonic Power Supply SSR-1000FX Focus Plus 1000W ,, Arctic Liquid Freezer II – 360MM .. Fractal Design case ,, Samsung Solid State Drive MZ-V8P1T0B/AM 980 PRO 1TB PCI Express 4 NVMe M.2 ,, Wundiws 10 .. Vegas Pro 19 Edit

Howard-Vigorita wrote on 9/20/2021, 11:23 PM

Keep in mind that the 11900 has 20 PCI lanes, that's one GPU running at x16, and one NVME running at x4, and you're out of lanes.

@fr0sty That's a valid consideration but only if you're talking about pcie4 lanes because although the 11900k cpu has only 20 of them, and they're usually devoted to a GPU in pci slot #1 or #2, the z590 motherboard chipset has 24 more pcie lanes. Only catch is they're all pcie3. My docs indicate 2 of my 4 m.2 slots are pcie4 and tap the cpu lanes without stealing any from the gpu. So they must only be using 4 lanes between the 2 of them. The other 2 m.2 slots are doc'd as pcie3 and run off chipset lanes. If I throw more stuff in other motherboard pci slots, they'd all have to use chipset pcie3 lanes too and there's further warning they will knock out some of the sata connectors which also use pcie3 lanes. Asus docs also advise that if a 2nd video board is installed into pcie slot #2 that slots #1 and #2 automaticaly become 8-lane slots. I expect that the specifics of how pcie lanes are divided up and spread about is different for each mobo manufacturer's design and implementation... but I've only worked with Asus boards and only since Intel stopped making their own. As an aside, I did some testing on one of my older Asus systems by forcing its video board into x8 operation using the motherboard bios and saw no Vegas performance change. This emboldened me to put 2 video boards into that system causing them both to run at x8 while netted me a Vegas performance increase. Thanks to being able to assign decoding to the 2nd board and splitting the processing load.

... once the AMD chips start integrating their own GPUs here soon, Intel will be running out of reasons to choose them in VEGAS builds (they'll still hold the advantage in formats that can be decoded via the iGPU for a while, though).

They already do... they're Ryzen's with a G after their number. Amd has historically reserved production to board makers but that's changed recently. The Ryzen 7 5700g has been available on Amazon for a while now. It apparently incorporates a Vega onboard igpu which I believe might be the same VegaM that Intel once built into the i7-8809g. If it's anything like that, it would blow the doors off the Intel igpu's I have. Just make sure it's on your board's cpu support list and compatible with its socket.

fr0sty wrote on 9/20/2021, 11:47 PM

Yes, but there are some formats the intel chip can decode that vce cannot, so for now, intel still holds the advantage.

Systems:

Desktop

AMD Ryzen 7 1800x 8 core 16 thread at stock speed

64GB 3000mhz DDR4

Geforce RTX 3090

Windows 10

Laptop:

ASUS Zenbook Pro Duo 32GB (9980HK CPU, RTX 2060 GPU, dual 4K touch screens, main one OLED HDR)

Howard-Vigorita wrote on 9/21/2021, 9:35 AM

I didn't try the 980 m.2 in any other system so I can't say if its performance gain depends on pcie4 or what. I suspect not because they're reported to have a much larger cache size. In the event, they seem to be going for less than the 970 PRO's on US Amazon where I got mine.

Let me revise that... in going over my install notes I see that in an abundance of caution I decided to sidestep any possible impact on the video board (thinking along the lines of what @fr0sty mentioned) by putting my 2nd m.2 (2TB 980 work drive) into m.2 socket #3 which is pcie3 off of the mobo chipset lanes. I just need to round up a different disk i/o bench to evaluate the 980 pcie3 performance for that drive. Because I think Novabench only looks at the boot drive. If there can be only one pcie4 m.2 without compromising the video slot, I agree that the boot drive would be the best choice. Maybe I'll find out for sure about possible video impact some day by throwing another 980 into m.2 socket #2. Maybe if I crack the case open again for a new video board.

xberk wrote on 9/21/2021, 1:10 PM

Anyone using hard drive docking stations?

Paul B .. PCI Express Video Card: EVGA VCX 10G-P5-3885-KL GeForce RTX 3080 XC3 ULTRA ,,  Intel Core i9-11900K Desktop Processor ,,  MSI Z590-A PRO Desktop Motherboard LGA-1200 ,, 64GB (2X32GB) XPG GAMMIX D45 DDR4 3200MHz 288-Pin SDRAM PC4-25600 Memory .. Seasonic Power Supply SSR-1000FX Focus Plus 1000W ,, Arctic Liquid Freezer II – 360MM .. Fractal Design case ,, Samsung Solid State Drive MZ-V8P1T0B/AM 980 PRO 1TB PCI Express 4 NVMe M.2 ,, Wundiws 10 .. Vegas Pro 19 Edit

Grazie wrote on 9/21/2021, 1:21 PM

Anyone using hard drive docking stations?

@xberk - Me! HotSwap bay, but only for Backups and Media Layoffs to external Drives. Not for Editing. It takes HDDs and SSDs.

 

john_dennis wrote on 9/21/2021, 1:27 PM

@xberk

I use these for external archive disks that I keep in containers and mount periodically.

http://www.kingwin.com/kf-256-bk/

I have one in all three of my desktop machines. I never edit or do any other processing from them.

Reyfox wrote on 9/21/2021, 1:42 PM

I'm using a USB3 dock for SSD swapping and a mechanical for storage.

Newbie😁

Vegas Pro 22 (VP18-21 also installed)

Win 11 Pro always updated

AMD Ryzen 9 5950X 16 cores / 32 threads

32GB DDR4 3200

Sapphire RX6700XT 12GB Driver: 22.5.1, testing 24.7.1

Gigabyte X570 Elite Motherboard

xberk wrote on 9/21/2021, 2:47 PM

On my laptop, I've worked off a Samsung T5 (2tb) which is an external SSD using USB 3.1 ..

Paul B .. PCI Express Video Card: EVGA VCX 10G-P5-3885-KL GeForce RTX 3080 XC3 ULTRA ,,  Intel Core i9-11900K Desktop Processor ,,  MSI Z590-A PRO Desktop Motherboard LGA-1200 ,, 64GB (2X32GB) XPG GAMMIX D45 DDR4 3200MHz 288-Pin SDRAM PC4-25600 Memory .. Seasonic Power Supply SSR-1000FX Focus Plus 1000W ,, Arctic Liquid Freezer II – 360MM .. Fractal Design case ,, Samsung Solid State Drive MZ-V8P1T0B/AM 980 PRO 1TB PCI Express 4 NVMe M.2 ,, Wundiws 10 .. Vegas Pro 19 Edit

TheRhino wrote on 9/21/2021, 7:37 PM

Asus docs also advise that if a 2nd video board is installed into pcie slot #2 that slots #1 and #2 automatically become 8-lane slots... I did some testing on one of my older Asus systems by forcing its video board into x8 operation using the motherboard bios and saw no Vegas performance change....

Maybe we'll see a change with Windows 11, future GPUs and/or future Vegas releases but currently Win10, Vegas & most other Apps (except a few games...) do not notice a difference between running a GPU at x8 electronically vs. x16 or even between PCIe 3.0 vs. PCIe 4.0 for that matter...

My 9900K's ASUS Z390 WS workstation-class motherboard has an uncommon PLX chip that balances the throughput of the (4) x16 PCIe slots running off of the direct CPU lanes... This allows all (4) to operate as x8 electronically even though there are technically only 20 lanes going direct to the CPU... What I notice is that large file transfers across my 10G network do not slow down or act erratic when I am using PCIe throughput for editing & rendering...

The NEW Intel Z690 LGA1700 motherboards with 8 BIG / 8 small CORE CPUs (24 threads), like the upcoming 12900K, are probably worth the wait at this point... They come with PCIe 5.0, DDR 5, DMI 4.0, etc. AND Windows 11 is supposed to come with an improved scheduler that's particularly optimized for Alder Lake... Some 3rd party tests show the 12900K performing up to 40% faster than an AMD 5950X and if that is truly the case, I'll give my recent 11700K upgrade parts to one of my kids & make that system my main editing rig with the faster Alder Lake components...

Workstation C with $600 USD of upgrades in April, 2021
--$360 11700K @ 5.0ghz
--$200 ASRock W480 Creator (onboard 10G net, TB3, etc.)
Borrowed from my 9900K until prices drop:
--32GB of G.Skill DDR4 3200 ($100 on Black Friday...)
Reused from same Tower Case that housed the Xeon:
--Used VEGA 56 GPU ($200 on eBay before mining craze...)
--Noctua Cooler, 750W PSU, OS SSD, LSI RAID Controller, SATAs, etc.

Performs VERY close to my overclocked 9900K (below), but at stock settings with no tweaking...

Workstation D with $1,350 USD of upgrades in April, 2019
--$500 9900K @ 5.0ghz
--$140 Corsair H150i liquid cooling with 360mm radiator (3 fans)
--$200 open box Asus Z390 WS (PLX chip manages 4/5 PCIe slots)
--$160 32GB of G.Skill DDR4 3000 (added another 32GB later...)
--$350 refurbished, but like-new Radeon Vega 64 LQ (liquid cooled)

Renders Vegas11 "Red Car Test" (AMD VCE) in 13s when clocked at 4.9 ghz
(note: BOTH onboard Intel & Vega64 show utilization during QSV & VCE renders...)

Source Video1 = 4TB RAID0--(2) 2TB M.2 on motherboard in RAID0
Source Video2 = 4TB RAID0--(2) 2TB M.2 (1) via U.2 adapter & (1) on separate PCIe card
Target Video1 = 32TB RAID0--(4) 8TB SATA hot-swap drives on PCIe RAID card with backups elsewhere

10G Network using used $30 Mellanox2 Adapters & Qnap QSW-M408-2C 10G Switch
Copy of Work Files, Source & Output Video, OS Images on QNAP 653b NAS with (6) 14TB WD RED
Blackmagic Decklink PCie card for capturing from tape, etc.
(2) internal BR Burners connected via USB 3.0 to SATA adapters
Old Cooler Master CM Stacker ATX case with (13) 5.25" front drive-bays holds & cools everything.

Workstations A & B are the 2 remaining 6-core 4.0ghz Xeon 5660 or I7 980x on Asus P6T6 motherboards.

$999 Walmart Evoo 17 Laptop with I7-9750H 6-core CPU, RTX 2060, (2) M.2 bays & (1) SSD bay...

walter-i. wrote on 9/22/2021, 7:47 AM

Anyone using hard drive docking stations?

 

@xberk

I use these for external archive disks that I keep in containers and mount periodically.

http://www.kingwin.com/kf-256-bk/

Me too - I have two of them in my PC (already taken over from the previous PC) and only use them for backup work (I have every hard disk I have installed in the PC in duplicate in a container).
The devices have their own switches so they only use power when they are in use - I wouldn't want to miss them.

Dexcon wrote on 9/22/2021, 8:06 AM

Anyone using hard drive docking stations?

Yes, Like others, internal HDDs (mostly WD 4GB Blues) are used in the docker just for backups and are stored elsewhere. And the double docker I use enables cloning as well which has once or twice proved useful. I also have two external HDDs so effectively I have at least 3 backups. The only downside is that none are kept off site in case of a disaster - and we did have a widespread magnitude 5.9 earthquake this morning - no damage here and most places thankfully.

The backups not only save all the project media and associates files and presets, but also the .veg files, the latter of which also go to OneDrive.

Last changed by Dexcon on 9/22/2021, 6:42 PM, changed a total of 1 times.

Cameras: Sony FDR-AX100E; GoPro Hero 11 Black Creator Edition

Installed: Vegas Pro 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21 & 22, HitFilm Pro 2021.3, DaVinci Resolve Studio 19.0.3, BCC 2025, Mocha Pro 2024.5, NBFX TotalFX 7, Neat NR, DVD Architect 6.0, MAGIX Travel Maps, Sound Forge Pro 16, SpectraLayers Pro 11, iZotope RX10 Advanced and many other iZ plugins, Vegasaur 4.0

Windows 11

Dell Alienware Aurora 11:

10th Gen Intel i9 10900KF - 10 cores (20 threads) - 3.7 to 5.3 GHz

NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2080 SUPER 8GB GDDR6 - liquid cooled

64GB RAM - Dual Channel HyperX FURY DDR4 XMP at 3200MHz

C drive: 2TB Samsung 990 PCIe 4.0 NVMe M.2 PCIe SSD

D: drive: 4TB Samsung 870 SATA SSD (used for media for editing current projects)

E: drive: 2TB Samsung 870 SATA SSD

F: drive: 6TB WD 7200 rpm Black HDD 3.5"

Dell Ultrasharp 32" 4K Color Calibrated Monitor

 

LAPTOP:

Dell Inspiron 5310 EVO 13.3"

i5-11320H CPU

C Drive: 1TB Corsair Gen4 NVMe M.2 2230 SSD (upgraded from the original 500 GB SSD)

Monitor is 2560 x 1600 @ 60 Hz

TheRhino wrote on 9/22/2021, 4:50 PM

The only downside is that none are kept off site in case of a disaster...

I edit a LOT of footage for my clients so I've been getting the 14TB & 8TB WD Easystore USB 3.0 external drives on sale at Best Buy, "shucking" the new RED drives out of them & using them internally in my 6-bay QNap NAS & hardware RAID hot-swap bays within my Cooler Master CM Stacker cases. I then stick my 10+ year-old 1-2TB drives in the Easystore cases & leave them at various relative houses as offsite backups... If I run out of cases, I just store the bare drive & use an external SATA dock... (I probably have about (50) 1-2TB drives...) So locally I have all of my irreplaceable footage on at least (2) workstations plus my NAS for fast retrieval across my 10G network in case of hardware failure. Then I have offsite backups about 30 miles away... We are NOT in a flood, hurricane, tsunami, earthquake zone...

That's the best I can do without investing in massive Cloud storage & charging clients extra for an annual storage plan... Currently I only guarantee my client work for 1 full year... They have the choice to buy all of my source footage for an additional fee & I remind them to make their own backups & also keep their own copies offsite... However, as much as possible I do not erase old projects until I run out of space... A couple times this year I had clients request stuff from about 5 years ago and I still had the source files & final VEG's... I'm compassionate if people lose stuff do to fire, theft, etc. but these were BIG companies that just had internal management problems. The price they paid me to replace all of their content paid for my NAS & all of its drives, so it was win/win...

My OS drives are just 2.5" SATAs so I can save my M.2 storage for fast source drives... These are also in 2.5" hot swap bays so I can make fast clones. I keep the clone nearby in case a driver, Windows update, etc. interferes with my workflow...

Last changed by TheRhino on 9/22/2021, 4:55 PM, changed a total of 3 times.

Workstation C with $600 USD of upgrades in April, 2021
--$360 11700K @ 5.0ghz
--$200 ASRock W480 Creator (onboard 10G net, TB3, etc.)
Borrowed from my 9900K until prices drop:
--32GB of G.Skill DDR4 3200 ($100 on Black Friday...)
Reused from same Tower Case that housed the Xeon:
--Used VEGA 56 GPU ($200 on eBay before mining craze...)
--Noctua Cooler, 750W PSU, OS SSD, LSI RAID Controller, SATAs, etc.

Performs VERY close to my overclocked 9900K (below), but at stock settings with no tweaking...

Workstation D with $1,350 USD of upgrades in April, 2019
--$500 9900K @ 5.0ghz
--$140 Corsair H150i liquid cooling with 360mm radiator (3 fans)
--$200 open box Asus Z390 WS (PLX chip manages 4/5 PCIe slots)
--$160 32GB of G.Skill DDR4 3000 (added another 32GB later...)
--$350 refurbished, but like-new Radeon Vega 64 LQ (liquid cooled)

Renders Vegas11 "Red Car Test" (AMD VCE) in 13s when clocked at 4.9 ghz
(note: BOTH onboard Intel & Vega64 show utilization during QSV & VCE renders...)

Source Video1 = 4TB RAID0--(2) 2TB M.2 on motherboard in RAID0
Source Video2 = 4TB RAID0--(2) 2TB M.2 (1) via U.2 adapter & (1) on separate PCIe card
Target Video1 = 32TB RAID0--(4) 8TB SATA hot-swap drives on PCIe RAID card with backups elsewhere

10G Network using used $30 Mellanox2 Adapters & Qnap QSW-M408-2C 10G Switch
Copy of Work Files, Source & Output Video, OS Images on QNAP 653b NAS with (6) 14TB WD RED
Blackmagic Decklink PCie card for capturing from tape, etc.
(2) internal BR Burners connected via USB 3.0 to SATA adapters
Old Cooler Master CM Stacker ATX case with (13) 5.25" front drive-bays holds & cools everything.

Workstations A & B are the 2 remaining 6-core 4.0ghz Xeon 5660 or I7 980x on Asus P6T6 motherboards.

$999 Walmart Evoo 17 Laptop with I7-9750H 6-core CPU, RTX 2060, (2) M.2 bays & (1) SSD bay...