Most Optimized Hard Drive Setup for Vegas Pro?

itsMohak wrote on 5/2/2017, 1:30 PM

Hi

I'm planning to build a new PC (AMD Ryzen 7 1700 CPU) with primary purpose of video editing with Vegas Pro. For that I want to know, the optimized Hard Drive Setup for maximum performance and reliability.

Should I buy 1 SSD with 1 HDD?

OR 2 SSDs with 1 HDD?

OR some other configuration?

If (chosen configuration), what should I keep in each drive, like:

All active projects, source files, programs, OS, rendered output on SSD & archive on HDD?

OR Only programs & OS on SSD and everything else on HDD?

OR programs & OS on SSD, active projects, source files, rendered output on 2nd SSD and everything else on HDD?

OR some other configuration?

Please suggest, I'm kinda confused about this. Thank you

Comments

itsMohak wrote on 5/3/2017, 5:32 AM

SSD is only needed if you cannot wait a few seconds untill OS or the program get started or if you are planning to work with uncompressed video.
For rendering it is good to work with one HDD for reading and one for writing.
The program does not need reading or writing velocity after it has been started.

For me the best always was to place OS and programs on a HDD that not will be used to render to.

Thank you, that gives me some hint to the solution of problem. With some research, I have found that generally people use SSD for having programs & OS on it. Some even prefer additionally keeping the active project files, cache, pre-rendered files, etc on SSD.

I'm not sure about Vegas Pro Benchmarks (I use Vegas Pro) but I was able to find Adobe Premiere's (https://www.pugetsystems.com/labs/articles/Adobe-Premiere-Pro-CC-2015-4-Storage-Optimization-854/#ExportingtoH_264). Atleast for me, Rendering/Exporting is the main concern. Keeping everything on SSD improves performance of export by 5% or even more in some cases, which can be significant at times while at others, not so much.

ryclark wrote on 5/3/2017, 6:16 AM

I have an SSD as my OS drive with programs on and then a second SSD as Temp storage and for rendering to. Then all media files are stored on a 1TB fast hard drive.

john_dennis wrote on 5/3/2017, 2:29 PM

I boot from a 256 GB SATA SSD, use a 400 GB intel NVMe disk as work drive for current projects and save the completed projects to a 7200 RPM 4TB ARCHIVE disk. Other assets are stored on network machines around the house. I push video to the Sony 4K TV for casual review and family watching. P8Z77 is attached locally to the TV.

A finished project folder would look something like this if I made a DVD, Blu-ray and rendered for various services like youtube, vimeo and iCloud.

Past thread of the effect of hard disks on performance.

xberk wrote on 5/3/2017, 5:09 PM

For my money, nothing yet beats the cost/benefit ratio of Western Digital Black Caviar. 7200 rpm. 5 year warranty. Yet to have one fail.

Musicvid wrote on 5/3/2017, 7:09 PM

Very few reasons to use anything fancier than xberk suggests.

john_dennis wrote on 5/3/2017, 10:26 PM

There are very few.

1) Previewing uncompressed UHD files is one of the reasons.

Uncompressed UHD from an NVMe drive:

Uncompressed UHD from a 7200 RPM drive:

2) Multi-camera edits would be another reason.

3) Needing to flaunt it because you got it is another.

Musicvid wrote on 5/3/2017, 10:57 PM

Needing to flaunt it because you got it is another.

Yeah I agree. Bragging rights rarely "trump" real needs, as we are again being reminded.

Kinvermark wrote on 5/4/2017, 12:07 PM

I would like to summarize my experience using RAID 0 4 drive setup for all work in progress media:

Simply not worth the hassle.

While I never actually lost any data, the raid card (cheap one, not something like Areca, etc.) would occasionally drop out, causing Vegas to crash.

I now use these 4 drives separately as - source media, working intermediates (plus pagefile), and renders.

The individual drives are obviously slower than the RAID setup (approx. 100 MB/s each vs 400 MB/s together), but the practical working experience is the same - except that it is more robust/reliable.

OS and program files are on a SSD.

itsMohak wrote on 5/4/2017, 4:03 PM

Thank you everyone. I now have an idea about how people use things. Keeping only OS & programs on an SSD & rest in HDD is indeed the most common. It makes sense to save myself some & go for a smaller SSD like 500gb as compared to 1TB. Ryzen 1700 is already a pretty good CPU. But still my mind is inching to 1TB, I'm not sure why! Maybe because the cost per gig of Samsung 850 evo is competitive only at 1TB. 500 gigs seems expensive.

But thanks for the overviews.

itsMohak wrote on 5/4/2017, 4:07 PM

One thing, has anyone tried an experiment with rendering the same sample project in an SSD and then the same render, but keeping source files & output in Hdd, this time?

john_dennis wrote on 5/4/2017, 5:28 PM

"...has anyone tried an experiment with rendering the same sample project in an SSD and then the same render, but keeping source files & output in Hdd, this time?"

The difference for 35 Mbps compressed source is = AFFIAWT.

Source NVMe -Target NVMe

Source 7200 RPM - Target 7200 RPM

xberk wrote on 5/4/2017, 5:50 PM

Ok John. I'll bite. What is AFFIAWT ?

NickHope wrote on 5/4/2017, 9:37 PM

I've had 2 x 4TB WD Black in an internal 8TB IRST (Intel® Rapid Storage Technology) RAID 0 (no RAID card) as my media drive for 2.5 years now and so far it's been great. Very happy with my choice. More on my system here. RAID 0 is inherently riskier than single drives or some other RAID configurations so reliable drives and regular backups are important.

itsMohak wrote on 5/5/2017, 5:33 PM

The difference for 35 Mbps compressed source is = AFFIAWT.

Source NVMe -Target NVMe

Source 7200 RPM - Target 7200 RPM

Holy Molly, there's no difference! Thanks a lot john. Basically I was concerned with whether keeping the source in SSD is gonna make a difference in Performance (mostly Rendering) because Source files can be huge & I'd need a bigger SSD. But this tells me, I don't. Screenshots clearly show that rendering is CPU limited, although I don't know the CPU being used, but it seems to be a good one. This solves my problem.

Can you also tell me What settings do you change to render faster? Like I noticed that you switched to Windows Basic Theme, while rendering as compared to Aero, normally.

john_dennis wrote on 5/5/2017, 10:05 PM

The basic theme is a residue of screen recording software. On an i7-6850, it makes no difference in rendering time.

OldSmoke wrote on 5/6/2017, 11:07 AM

What ever was suggested here may work fine for a single cam edit, multicam HD and higher and you will need faster drives and separated the source drive from the render drive. in my opinion, that is always good practice.

I am always amazed by the users and advisors on this forum that so much so want Vegas to be a professional software but want to run it on minimum hardware.