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385 Mb/s SSD or 635 Mb/s HDD for Disk Cache?
Hi.
I’m relatively new to After Effects but have been learning it for work. My company gave me a LaCie 256Gb SSD to use for my AE disk cache, but the problem is both it and my old Apple CinemaHD monitor need my Thunderbolt port.
I’ve since moved my SSD to a USB 3.0 port since supposedly it should get roughly the same 385 Mb/s transfer rate as it did through Thunderbolt, but that leads me to the following question:
Is transfer rate the key consideration when setting up a dedicated drive for a disk cache? If so, wouldn’t this 1Tb HDD that boasts 635 Mb/s speeds be a much better option? (It also would allow me to daisy-chain my monitor to its second Thunderbolt port.) Everywhere I’ve read (including Adobe itself) suggests an SSD for the disk cache, but I’m not entirely sure why that is, or why my current SSD would be better than the HDD I linked.
I’m trying to increase the speed at which I can render projects in AE for RAM Previews, in order to finish projects much quicker.
Thank you for your advice!
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2 Replies
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Note the following:
“Shocking SATA III SSD speeds up to 635MB/s”
The 635 MB/s configuration includes two SSDs and costs $700. The transfer rate for the 1TB HDD option is listed as “up to 190MB/s.” You can get a 960GB SSD or any one of several 1TB+ HDDs that achieve similar performance for equivalent prices, but without the added complexity and risk of RAID 0.
[Ryan Hannebaum] “Everywhere I’ve read (including Adobe itself) suggests an SSD for the disk cache, but I’m not entirely sure why that is, or why my current SSD would be better than the HDD I linked.”
SSDs have lower latency and higher throughput. The figures most often quoted for HDD performance relate to sequential reads/writes of large files. HDD throughput is much slower with small files.
[Ryan Hannebaum] “I’m trying to increase the speed at which I can render projects in AE for RAM Previews, in order to finish projects much quicker.”
The most common hardware constraints during rendering are the CPU and RAM. A good quality SSD connected via SATA, eSATA or USB3 should meet your needs for a disk cache.
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OK, well, I’ll stick with my USB 3.0-connected LaCie SSD then. Thank you for the response.
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