spreading files over 2 drives

steveq wrote on 1/2/2015, 10:18 AM

Hi everyone,
I've just acquired a spare 1Tb external HDD.
Can anyone advise me as to the most efficient way (for speed, especially rendering) to organise the program/workfiles that Vegas uses between the internal & external drives?
Am I in fact likely to see any improvement by doing this?
Currently running windows 7 on a i5 at 3GHz, 8Gb RAM with 2Tb internal HDD.
Sony Movie Studio Platinum Suite Version 12.
Many thanks for any advice.
Steve.

Comments

Chienworks wrote on 1/2/2015, 10:38 AM

About the best you can do is to keep source files on one drive and render output to the other. This may save you a few seconds while rendering.

About the only other speed benefit you might see is if you are working with multiple uncompressed video streams, in which case keeping half of them on one drive and half on the other may speed up preview frame rates, slightly.

Far more important than either of these, since in the end neither one helps much, is to use them in whatever way is convenient or sensible to you and allows you to work more easily. This is the greatest benefit you can get.

DocSatori wrote on 1/2/2015, 5:47 PM

Your computer specs put it right on the line. I used a similar set-up with a 2 TB external drive(s). And I am so sorry I was using it. The program crashed, couldn't find files, but worse; it slowed to a snail's pace while rendering and sometimes retrieving files, independent of media size or types.

While there are lots of add-ons of hardware and stuff I could suggest, in general, work with media on your system drive or a drive at least directly attached to your motherboard and then save/back-up your files to the external drives for storage.

I had anywhere between 30 to 200 times better performance this way, depending how you measure 'performance.'

I hated using firewire connections, but had better luck with USB 3.0 ports for my external dirves. I suggest against applying RAID (other than 0) if your external drives have more than one disk!

Maybe you don't want to hear it, but given your set-up, I'd consider adding the largest solid-state, SSD, drive I could afford for either Movie Studio or media files or both and work on that and back-up to the external storage.

All of this assumes, you're not using the external storage to detach it and transport it to another work-station somewhere.

HTH

steveq wrote on 1/3/2015, 9:57 AM

Thanks Chienworks & DocSatori.
From what both of you say there is nothing to be gained performance-wise by spreading the files over the 2 drives, but it may be sensible to put back-up files on the external (which is USB 2 by-the-way).
To be honest, I can't justify getting SSD as my render times are acceptable to me - I just thought maybe I could speed it up a bit.
Thanks to you both for taking the time to clarify things for me.
Happy New Year,
Steve.

Chienworks wrote on 1/3/2015, 11:17 AM

Switching to SSD is unlikely to speed up render times much at all. Except for rare cases like DV in->DV out with no effects so that smart rendering can occur, the bottleneck is almost entirely CPU power. The drives are mostly idle while rendering.

DocSatori wrote on 1/3/2015, 12:28 PM

Yes, this is true. Render times will not be improved. I hope it didn't seem like I suggested that. But there are less troubles opening and accessing files. I also find the preview window responds faster, the program opens faster...stuff like that. USB 2.0 was better than other connections for backing-up and accessing files; but, I saw a bigger effect with USB 3.0. Anyhow, good luck with your editing.