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Optimum basic 3 HDD set-up
So, I have probably quite a common set-up. It’s not the most basic but it’s certainly not a money-no-object professional set-up either…
1. A PC (Sony VAIO laptop) containing a 5400rpm 500GB drive
2. An external 128GB Solid State drive connected with eSATA
3. A large 1.5TB USB-connected drive.Relevant to my question, the drives currently contain…
Drive 1: Windows 7 64bit O/S plus many progs/files for daily use;
Drive 2: Sony Vegas 9e program and Project media (post-Cineform conversion)
Drive 3: Backups of original files from camera, Backups of project media (as per disk 2) and backups of veg files etc.So, the question is this.
Ignoring back-ups and disk 3 (because I’m sure I’m doing the right thing there, and accepting that I want to keep the O/S on Drive 1, how should I split the following between disks 1 and 2?
a) Vegas Pro 9e program;
b) veg (project) files;
c) project media files.Also bear in mind that I attach more importance to performance (e.g. preview) during editing than to reducing render times.
I’d also be really grateful to hear the reasoning behind the answer.
Cheers,
Fred
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6 Replies
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I would use C for your OS only,#2 for your media and #3 for backup of the media and .veg files, incase #2 dies. Safe way to edit. Danny Hays
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Thanks, but which for Vegas Pro itself?
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IMO, all programs belong on your OS drive (drive C) and nowhere else.
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I have been running Vegas successfully on the SSD though. I figured it’d be good to keep THAT away from the O/S. But if it will truly be better the other way I’ll do it. But so far I’m getting opinions (which I’m grateful for) rather than the reasons behind them.
Maybe I should run some tests both ways and feed back here? I was hoping someone would have a definitive answer and reason though.
Cheers,
Fred
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I have my system on a 60GB SSD, including all programs, swap file, temp files, etc. I put my ‘documents’ and assorted ‘libraries’ on another drive (too big) The Vegas temp files and undo files are on the SSD. I don’t even remember what system lag time is about. (read sweet!).
Put all of your Project media (assets) on a fast drive, make your output to the slower drive. You will not have a bottleneck. Figure it this way: When you copy a two gig file from a fast to a slow drive and it takes 5 minutes, on the day that Vegas renders the same file in less time, then you will have performance issue. I don’t think Vegas is going to out pace an external drive just yet.
Just my two-cents,
Jeff
http://www.narrowroadmedia.com
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I love the idea of an SSD… lower power, no effective fragmentation, zero seek time, fast reads (writes can actually be slower than HDDs, aside from the seek-time component), etc. But they’re just too small.
I was cleaning out my “Windows.old” directory… mostly just wasted space, from my old XP system after a Windows 7 upgrade over a year ago. I had many times that 60GB there, including 42GB of Microsoft “Application Data”, 30GB of “Program Files”, and tons of other stuff. Not even counting the “Documents” and “Music” directories, which I don’t really use anyway (most of that stuff goes straight to my RAID). You really have to be able to keep things in much different places than Windows wants by default, for this to work well and not run out of memory.. at least if you’re as “ambitious” in your PC use as I am (my C: drive is a 1.5TB SATA).
In Linux, it would be fairly trivial to use an SSD and put less critical stuff in other places, but use symlinks to make those extra directories show up where you needed them. Or, as an alternative, set up that large hard drive as C:, but use symlinks to local critical system and other apps on a separate Flash drive. Not sure how this would work out on Windows (they did add symlinks to Windows in Vista).
The big issue with SSDs, other than size, is the very limited erase/write cycle life of the drives. If you’re running Windows 7, this is less of a problem, because it detects SSDs and automatically stops defragging and other functions that will have a noticeable effect on drive life. Vista and earlier need special tweaks to prevent these things.
I’m also not comfortable with the swapfile on the flash drive. Yes, modern SSD controllers do wonders with wear leveling, it does make swap much faster, etc. If you have enough RAM, you rarely use the swap file anyway.. but then, no need to make it that fast. If you don’t, you will definitely lower the effective life of that SSD… particularly if your drive uses MLC (Multi-Level Cell) flash, rather than SLC Flash. MLC has about 1/10th (or worse) the write-cycle life of SLC.
-Dave
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