Editing and Hard Drives

Back to post

Comments

videoITguy wrote on 3/19/2014, 4:06 PM
Yes, VidMus completely missed the point of the thread. He needs to re-read the entire thread very carefully to understand where this is going. AFAIK, john-dennis has confirmed the industry standard for NLE editing - which is that as you go up the compression ladder on source and destination - the drive data transfer rate is less important to NLE performance overall.
So most users on this forum will in fact not be affected by NLE drive configurations.
On the other hand, those pros who need to evaluate time is money, are working at a business of NLE, and want the performance maxed will have to evaluate their type of workflows, the number of NLE streams, and the desired output channel. So as I stated much earlier separate black drives with uncompressed streams is a target that I must use in my business.

Now Vidmus does raise yet a different issue with workstation performance which is about file to file transfer. This does not usually have a direct bearing on NLE but rather what else are you doing at the workstation. For example you want to archive daily working sets of files - so you need file transfer to something (maybe over network) and to some off-site media perhaps. That is just yet a different area of concern for what you employ your harddrive transfer rates to do.
ReceptorDeceptor wrote on 3/19/2014, 10:19 PM
Hi there,

I've found the best solution (at least in my case) to be that: 1) you run your OS (=Win7) + video editing software (=Sony Vegas Pro) from a system drive that's on a SSD (I use Intel's SSD's myself) and 2) keep your source and destination files on different drives.

As for large video file storage, I use double-HDD RAID enclosures. For large project & video file storage, I personally went for Buffalo's Drivestation Duo -HDD's that I use over USB3.0 and run them in RAID1 (=file mirroring) mode. This has been the fastest solution I've come up with external drives if you count out the SSD option. I used to have eSATA drives (different enclosures, WD's MyBook double-HDD in RAID1 and so forth), but after seriously reviewing the transfer rates for each of my external edit drives with HD Tune Pro, I came to the conclusion that my eSATA PCI-E adapter was either crap or the external drives that used USB3.0 (a.k.a. SuperSpeed USB) were light years ahead of eSATA in their data transfer architecture altogether. I read a bunch of articles explaining this, it could be that the I/O is are just handled better with USB3 and has little to do with your USB3 or eSATA controller.

In fact, when I migrated my previous edit drives to the new ones, I was astounded how fast everything suddenly was. No more lagging! I would never go back to any of my USB2.0 or Firewire 600 drives. Not even to those double-HDD RAID1 enclosures from various manufacturers. They just suck.

As for the workflow itself: I always try to render from one (source) drive to another (destination) drive. My advice would probably be to store all "long-term" & crucial data on standard RAID1 2xHDD enclosures and use SDD to SDD when rendering. The drives are usually the bottleneck unless you're doing serious FX. Checking out every part of your overall workflow can show some interesting results and it's not hard to find solutions to speed up your rendering times and overall aspects of the process, including preview & rendering.

john_dennis wrote on 3/20/2014, 1:32 AM

"... HDD's that I use over USB3.0..."

I’ve used USB and eSATA for mobility but have not focused on USB3 mostly because I haven’t had a real need. I have an under-utilized Hitachi Touro 1 TB USB 3 drive that I carry with me.

I ran the same uncompressed render test from various sources and this time I only focused on the time it took the render to complete. All the different source drives supplied three uncompressed media streams and the render target was the local SSD in each case.

Samsung 840 SSD over the network from another system ........................... 162 Sec.

Disk HGST____Touro_Mobile_Pro USB 3 ......................... .......................... 173 Sec.*

Video 0 Hitachi HDS723020BLA642 on local Intel SATA Contoller .............. 208 Sec.

Seagate ST2000VN000-1H3164 in eSATA enclosure ................................... 264 Sec.

Video 1 Hitachi HDS723020BLA642 on local Intel SATA controller .............. 274 Sec.

* The Touro is almost empty and is “long-stroking” while the other spinning disks are almost full.

Conclusion

SSD to SSD wins even over a network.

USB 3 works well if the drive is fast. The Touro Pro is 2.5" with a higher areal density than the older 2 TB Hitachi 3.5" disks.

videoITguy wrote on 3/20/2014, 5:44 PM
for john-dennis - thanks for your investigation on anecdotal experience -this always proves interesting. Your point that SSD to SSD transfer can be fast well noted. Industry experience also bears out that an SSD RAID config also is a very fast bunch of drives.

However, the NLE world of which we have been previously discussing still has a variety of issues with what SSD config contributes. I also note that some have experienced that only very large SSD capacities actually work well in an NLE for a variety of technical reasons. So the conclusion is that dollar for dollar, you have to put far more into an SSD investment to make it purposeful.

NOT that I endorse the following - but this comment was lifted from a supposed knowledgable source of SSD drive usage in an NLE.
and I quote "The only time you will access the speed of a SSD when using it as a NLE media source disk, is when you have different videoclips on the same SSD in multiple video/audio tracks at the same timecode..." I am not sure what that means - but it could possibly point to an even different parameter than what I have been previously referring to as the need to source drives on separate spindles for multi-stream tests.
VidMus wrote on 3/20/2014, 7:25 PM
Not all SSD's are created equal. Some are fast and some are faster. Some read and write at the same speeds and some do not.

I have two Samsung 840 EVO's. A 500GB and a 250GB on my editing system. Spinners are for project backups and archives only via USB 3. Put the system on sleep and wake it up for editing in 2 seconds. Sleep on a desktop is not vulnerable to a power loss. Hibernate on a notebook is the same.

The 250GB is the system boot and also the render to drive. The 500GB is the project drive.

For my needs and note, my needs, this setup significantly speeds up my workflow. This is what I understand.