Internal SSD VS External HDD RAID (Price and Speed compare)

[Tom Sefton]

Whichever way you work it, unless your projects are very short and you have quick turnaround times before dumping your project files to a long term storage device, RAIDs are cheaper and can offer faster performance dependent on your configuration. You can’t expand the internal SSD in a new Mac Pro and for what I’ve seen from some of the GRAID, LaCie or Pegasus RAIDs, they aren’t overpriced at all.

[Mitch Ives]

A couple of things:

1) your speed tests don’t mean much on the internal SSD. Remember you’ll be running the OS, the program and your video files ALL off the internal SSD. That’s like three conversations simultaneously. The speed will drop considerably when all three of those are going on at the same time.

2) A little mentioned fact: SSDs don’t have the same life as a HD. So, plan on replacing SSDs more often. This is why we’re all wondering how long an external Raid made up of SSDs will actually last?

Mitch Ives
Insight Productions Corp.

“Criticism may not be agreeable, but it is necessary. It fulfills the same function as pain in the human body. It calls attention to an unhealthy state of things.” – Winston Churchill

[Walter Soyka]

[Mitch Ives] “1) your speed tests don’t mean much on the internal SSD. Remember you’ll be running the OS, the program and your video files ALL off the internal SSD. That’s like three conversations simultaneously. The speed will drop considerably when all three of those are going on at the same time.”

SSDs don’t suffer the same performance penalty for multiple seeks to different physical areas of storage that mechanical HDDs do. Speeds should not drop noticeably for OS, application, and storage use.

[Mitch Ives] “2) A little mentioned fact: SSDs don’t have the same life as a HD. So, plan on replacing SSDs more often. This is why we’re all wondering how long an external Raid made up of SSDs will actually last?”

This isn’t really true of current solid state storage. Check out the SSD Endurance Experiment [link].

After writing 500TB of data — the equivalent of 140 GB of data every day for 10 years — the consumer-class Samsung 840 250 GB has lost the ability to write to about 1% of its usable capacity. And that’s the worst stat in test.

My SSDs will fail someday, but so too will my mechanical hard drives. I don’t expect 10 years out of any of them.

Walter Soyka
Principal & Designer at Keen Live
Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
RenderBreak Blog – What I’m thinking when my workstation’s thinking
Creative Cow Forum Host: Live & Stage Events

[Mitch Ives]

[Walter Soyka] “SSDs don’t suffer the same performance penalty for multiple seeks to different physical areas of storage that mechanical HDDs do. Speeds should not drop noticeably for OS, application, and storage use.”

That’s interesting, because it did here when I tested it…

[Walter Soyka] “This isn’t really true of current solid state storage. Check out the SSD Endurance Experiment [link].”

That is good news…

Mitch Ives
Insight Productions Corp.

“Criticism may not be agreeable, but it is necessary. It fulfills the same function as pain in the human body. It calls attention to an unhealthy state of things.” – Winston Churchill

[Walter Soyka]

[Mitch Ives] “That’s interesting, because it did here when I tested it…”

That is interesting. What’s your configuration and how did you test?

Walter Soyka
Principal & Designer at Keen Live
Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
RenderBreak Blog – What I’m thinking when my workstation’s thinking
Creative Cow Forum Host: Live & Stage Events

[Mansur Oscar]

okay then show me a device that is faster and not lower space and not overpriced with it.
this SSD https://www.storagereview.com/adata_premier_pro_sp920_sata_ssd_review is 512GB for $339 or 1TB for $530. and it has 560Mb read/500 write, now is their like that with same speed or faster?

I liked to know, if we edit videos on too slow HDD, you will fill just slow or it’s unstable to edit a HD on 5400rpm internal?

how about how much megabit enough speed for 1080p and 2160p at 60 frames?

[Walter Soyka]

[Mansur Oscar] “okay then show me a device that is faster and not lower space and not overpriced with it.”

This device does not exist. SSDs are fast, but they are expensive and small. HDDs are cheap and large, but they are slow.

You cannot meaningfully ignore capacity in this conversation.

You were talking about uncompressed video: uncompressed 10-bit 1080p60 is around 450 MB/s. Uncompressed 10-bit 4096x2160p60 is nearly 1900 MB/s. A 512 GB drive will hold less than 20 minutes of 10-bit uncompressed 1080p60 and less than 5 minutes of 4096x2160p60.

That’s why people buy RAID systems. A RAID exploits the fact that mechanical hard drives are large and cheap, and allows them to work in concert to improve their speed.

If you’re looking for technical advice on what storage to use, let’s talk about your real-world usage.

Walter Soyka
Principal & Designer at Keen Live
Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
RenderBreak Blog – What I’m thinking when my workstation’s thinking
Creative Cow Forum Host: Live & Stage Events

[Mansur Oscar]

I Thank you for the numbers, but you do mean in Megabit or MegaByte?, 450Mb/s or 450MB/s | it’s a huge different.

So if I choose uncompressed videos, then I should get at least 4TB storage. and that’s mean included 3 or 4 HDDs with a speed above 500Mb/s which would be cheaper and even faster (depends the brand)
But if we choose a lower space for HDD RAID, it would be more expensive than SSD and even losing the important speed!, so here was I said why going to a more expensive 1TB/2TB RAID, lower space and lower speed. and I looked up again that they are really more expensive and overpriced if choosing the 1TB/2TB RAID HDD.

but if I choose compressed videos, then it’s look like fine to get 512GB and above that an SSD can be fine with a USB3 or internal (internally system should be at least ~ 333Mb/sec if it’s 500Mb/sec cleanly), or I May can just grab a SATA3 SSD with connection Kit USB3, or thunderbolt if possible.

From what I understood, I should choose either a huge size more than 4TB thunderbolt, or a SSD 1TB/512GB (internal or external USB3). and both of them can handle 1080p and 4K.

uncompressed videos are better quality, but if you edit a 4K or 1080p compressed video in 500Mb/s storage, there won’t be need to optimize (uncompressing) with FCPX… right?

Well, about real-world usage. it’s difficult to say. I can say that I do everything… animation 3D, cartoon, documentary, music…etc, maybe I should say personally usage. and I have videos that are up to 6 hours.

Thanks for your informations

[Walter Soyka]

[Mansur Oscar] “I Thank you for the numbers, but you do mean in Megabit or MegaByte?, 450Mb/s or 450MB/s | it’s a huge different.”

I mind my capital Bs. I meant megabytes as I wrote.

[Mansur Oscar] “uncompressed videos are better quality, but if you edit a 4K or 1080p compressed video in 500Mb/s storage, there won’t be need to optimize (uncompressing) with FCPX… right?”

Take the ProRes Challenge ™. Look at a piece of uncompressed video and the same video, recompressed with ProRes, side-by-side. In most cases, uncompressed is not worth the overhead.

1080p60 ProRes 422 runs about 293 Mb/s. 4096x2160p60 ProRes 422 runs about 1257 Mb/s.(Since you’re talking megabits, I’ll talk megabits, too.) 500 Mb/s storage will not cut it beyond a single stream of 1080p60. If you really want to work with these high frame rates and large rasters, you need some serious storage.

Walter Soyka
Principal & Designer at Keen Live
Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
RenderBreak Blog – What I’m thinking when my workstation’s thinking
Creative Cow Forum Host: Live & Stage Events

[Mansur Oscar]

You have catch me! I really liked you answers! Dear, Walter Soyka

only I didn’t understand really this from you: (500 Mb/s storage will not cut it beyond a single stream of 1080p60)?
for the 30 frames are half the numbers Mb/s you said for the 60 frames, right?

by the way, where and what is ProRes Challenge?, I searched for this but I liked from you to give me your recommended way.

About real life (not cartoons):
The problems of 30 frames aren’t real life (look) like on 60Hz TVs (only I’m not sure about OLED TVs), but on 120Hz TVs it make the video double the 60Hz refresh rate, which makes the 30 frames look like the 60 frames which is looks real life, but later I saw the 120Hz aren’t good idea, so I have to find a solution, and you have answered my solution; it’s the serious storage! I guess it’s the SSD RAID Thunderbolt 2