Best Hard Drives setup for Premiere Pro CC

[Tim Jones]

Alex,

If you really want performance, you’ll need to look into a true SAS solution rather than an eSATA or USB solution. Even though you’ve moved to multiple spindles, you’re still hampered in that you are moving the data over a single channel connection. By using true SAS connectivity (I prefer ATTO’s ExpressSAS family), you get the throughput over multiple channels. With a four drive array, this can mean the difference between 243MB/sec and 540MB/sec. A good barometer of your setup is Black Magic Design’s Disk Speed Test (available from the App Store for free)

One of my successful Adobe CC configurations consists of a Mac Pro 4,1 (16GB, 2GB Nvidia Quadro 4800), ATTO ExpressSAS H680, Sans Digital TRX4 SAS, 4 Seagate Constellation ES.3 2TB disks in RAID-0 (stripe) mode. I’ve installed my Adobe apps onto the RAID as well as assigned the cache and projects to the same volume. This configuration has been very stable and fast for both PP and AE for quite a while.

I invite you to check out my Blog discussion on disks and RAID if you haven’t already:

Disk I/O Speeds, RAID levels and Spindle Count

Tim
—
Tim Jones
CTO – TOLIS Group, Inc.
https://www.productionbackup.com
BRU … because it’s the RESTORE that matters!

[Alex Ojeda]

Hi, Tim,

Many thanks for your response, info and suggestions. I will definitely check out your blog. I think most probably I will move up to a SAS solution early next year. I do have Black Magics disk speed test. I will do as you suggest.

I had assigned my RAID 5 – 8TB volume as a source video volume, an internal 2 TB HD as a scratch disk for cache, previews, etc, and have my Adobe apps in a different MAC internal 2 TB HD. And last an internal 2TB HD assigned as an output video volume. I guess I´ll try moving cache and output to the same RAID 5 volume and see how that goes.

Many thanks again, I really appreciate your help.

Alex

Alex Ojeda
http://www.alexojeda.com

[Alex Ojeda]

Hi, Tim, again,

I had a 6TB RAID drive through USB 3, as I have mentioned in prior post, and thought that would be good till maybe next year. Its almost full now, so I’m looking to buy a SAS system now, as you mentioned.

I’m a bit confused here, whats the difference between SAS and mini SAS? I see the card and enclosure you recommend are both mini SAS.

I don’t see the exact same models now in the macsales page, but I found this:

https://eshop.macsales.com/item/ATTO/ESASR680000/

I also found this enclosure, which is same one I have, but instead of USB 3, etc, it’s mini SAS:

https://eshop.macsales.com/item/Other%20World%20Computing/RPMSS4B12.0T/

They don’t have that exact same Sans digital model you suggested, instead they have this one:

https://eshop.macsales.com/item/Sans%20Digital/TR4XBNC/

Do you think this systems above would make the cut? Is there anything else I might be missing?

Many thanks! I appreciate your help.

Cheers!

Alex Ojeda
http://www.alexojeda.com

[Tim Jones]

Hi Alex,

SAS and Mini-SAS are just two names for the same interface type – SAS is the proper name, while mini-SAS describes the SFF-8088 connector used by most external devices.

There are multiple methods for connecting SAS devices. For the externally connected types, most vendors have agreed to use the SFF-8088 mini-SAS connector type for compatibility. The SFF-8088 connector can handle 1 or 4 channels and the number of channels relates to the performance of the devices attached. Generally, when you buy an SFF-8088 to SFF-8088 cable, you are getting a cable with all 4 SAS channels included at both ends. This is the type of cable and connector that you will need to connect Disk arrays.

One other thing that you need to be aware of in deciding which RAID chassis to buy is how the drives in the array are propagated back to the Host. Some lower cost chassis use a point to point configuration. This means that each drive is attached to a separate channel and an single ATTO R680 can only support up to 8 drives (4 channels per port). The other method is by providing a SAS Expander backplane within the chassis. These types of RAID chassis will cost much more than a P2P setup, but it will allow you to connect up to 128 physical drives to a single port (4 channels) on the ATTO R680. Theoretically, you could connect 256 physical disk drives to a single host with an ATTO R680.

As an example, our ArGest RackMOD units use a SAS Expander backplane and you can daisy chain up to 7 of the 2RU chassis on one port of an ATTO R680.

On the other hand, the lower cost chassis that you mention are P2P and will limit your expansion to 8 drives on a single ATTO R680.

Hope that helps you in choosing.

Tim
—
Tim Jones
CTO – TOLIS Group, Inc.
https://www.productionbackup.com
BRU … because it’s the RESTORE that matters!

[Alex Ojeda]

Hi, Tim,

Many thanks for your response and thorough explanation. I really appreciate it. It’s been very very helpful.

Cheers!

Alex

Alex Ojeda
http://www.alexojeda.com