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Media Drive Suggestions
Due to a rapid turnaround and crummy H264/AVCHD files shot with low end cameras, I must make a workable media drive decision shortly.
First. Advice to convert to pro res before editing is a non starter. (Don’t get me wrong, I dearly love pro-res)
There is over 12 hours of raw footage per week, .mts, each angle divided up with 7 files per camera times 10 cameras. Conversion of any kind is not viable simply due to time. (Editing begins Thu night and continues through Sat, airtime is Sat Night).
Currently, I use the SSD internal drive on the iMac for everything. I’ve tried single drives through USB3 and TB2 and they cannot keep up. So for every week there is a lot of digital housekeeping to keep the system drive running smoothly. I am aware that much stress is being placed on the system SSD, and I want to fix that.I have ideas, and would be open for more.
1. A multi drive array, at least 8TB. (suggestions of brand and striping very welcome)
2. External SSD. Would this be fast enough given the USB3 and TB2 throughput options?
3. I have priced a second internal SSD drive and a 1TB add would be $800!! And the 2 TB add was even more ludicrous.Thanks and good luck with the 1.6 Billion dollar lottery!!
John Watts
Premiere Pro Version 12.1.2 Build 69
2017 iMac (Retina 5K 27 inch) 1TB SSD
4GHZ Intel Core i7
32GB 1867 MHz DDR3
Graphics AMD Radeon R9 M395X 4096 MB
macOS High Sierra Version 10.13.6 -
18 Replies
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Promise Pegasus 24TB as RAID 5.
There are smaller versions, 12 TB and 18TB , but at 12 hours a week, that will fill up quickly.
Then use Chronosync to manage your scheduled backups.
Vince Becquiot
San Francisco Bay Area
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I’ve been looking at the Promise drives. A 12 TB would be fine. I don’t have to save all raw content for very long.
Frustrating fact is that my computer is TB2 or USB3. I have doubts about whether any array will work due to throughput speed. TB2 is 1/2 speed of TB3. Curious if that is fast enough.
Don’t really want to spend the funds and find out it won’t work.
But, an array seems like the most cost effective method.John Watts
Premiere Pro Version 12.1.2 Build 69
2017 iMac (Retina 5K 27 inch) 1TB SSD
4GHZ Intel Core i7
32GB 1867 MHz DDR3
Graphics AMD Radeon R9 M395X 4096 MB
macOS High Sierra Version 10.13.6 -
T2 is 20 Gbps/2500 MB/s. That’s about 4 times the array speed on our R6s so you should be fine 🙂
Vince Becquiot
San Francisco Bay Area
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[Vince Becquiot] “T2 is 20 Gbps/2500 MB/s. That’s about 4 times the array speed on our R6s so you should be fine :-)”
I was gonna say, since when is TB2 too slow for HD/4K footage especially in a RAID array.
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Hi John.
I’ve been editing on external SSD’s and love the speed. I also back everything to a Glyph stack.
E
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Jumping off of Vince’s thread: backup. . . .
My encouragement would be to budget with this in mind. For example, buying a RAID and setting it up as a 1 or 5 isn’t backing up, it just means you can keep going while you replace a drive. So if you opt for a 12 TB RAID, you probably should buy two–or at least be comfortable putting a bunch of smaller drives together to add up to 12–again, as backup.
But, backing up in such a tight turnaround does take time, like transcoding. So definitely a risk assessment all things considered. A proxy workflow, however, might buy you some time by gaining speed on current equipment, but again, at the risk of time. Editing native has its own pitfalls as you’re finding out. But getting off your internal drive and on to a RAID will be a big step in the right direction with such a large amount of footage each week.
— Joby.
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Another option, OWC Thunderbays. OWC makes a a great product at a great price. I’d suggest though that you build the raid yourself. Buy the Thunderbay case from OWC and then purchase four matching drives from Newegg. A 12 terabyte Thunderbay 2 can be built for around $700.
OWC now makes Thunderbay 3 raids but keep in mind that you won’t see any speed improvement from TB2 to TB3 unless you purchase SSD drives for the raid which is a significantly higher cost.
I’d also discourage the use of Raid 5. There’s extensive info on the web indicating that Raid5 is problematic and should be abandoned. Since Raids are relatively cheap, I’d simply buy two, use raid 0 and mirror them.
Windows 10 Pro | i7-5820k CPU | 64 gigs RAM | NvidiaGeForceGTX970 | Blackmagic Decklink 4k Mini Monitor |
Adobe CC 2018 12.1.2 | Renders/cache: Samsung SSD 950 Pro x2 in Raid 0 | Media: Samsung SSD 960 PRO PCIe NVMe M.2 2280 x 2 | Media: OWC Thunderbay 4 x 2 Raid 0 mirrored with Resilio -
[greg janza] “I’d also discourage the use of Raid 5. There’s extensive info on the web indicating that Raid5 is problematic and should be abandoned. Since Raids are relatively cheap, I’d simply buy two, use raid 0 and mirror them.”
I have to disagree there. RAID 5 is perfectly fine at a 6 drive level, and most likely at 4 drives as well, unless you’re editing uncompressed 4K and absolutely need the speed. In that case, I imagine you can afford SSDs.
Unless you have an hourly spotless backup, RAID 0 is a ticking time bomb. Any of the drives failing will destroy the entire array. And I’ve seen my share of drive failures. The advantage is pretty clear, it allows one drive to fail, and trust me, they fail.
BTW, I’ve seen people crap on RAID 5 a few times. I’ve been editing on RAID 5 for 10+ years. It just works and saved me at least 3 times.
I’ll list the downside since it’s only fair. You lose the capacity of 1 drive and your write performance will be diminished, which doesn’t matter that much in editing.
Vince Becquiot
San Francisco Bay Area
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I know it sounds like heresy since Raid5 has been a default setup on many raids used by video professionals but there’s definitely a vocal group of engineers who believe if you’re going to use a raid option, Raid 10 should be the standard and not Raid 5. I use Raid 0 because my system is continually backing up.
Here’s just one article of many out there explaining why Raid5 is so problematic:
https://www.askdbmgt.com/why-raid5-should-be-avoided-at-all-costs.html
Windows 10 Pro | i7-5820k CPU | 64 gigs RAM | NvidiaGeForceGTX970 | Blackmagic Decklink 4k Mini Monitor |
Adobe CC 2018 12.1.2 | Renders/cache: Samsung SSD 950 Pro x2 in Raid 0 | Media: Samsung SSD 960 PRO PCIe NVMe M.2 2280 x 2 | Media: OWC Thunderbay 4 x 2 Raid 0 mirrored with Resilio -
RAID 10 is fine as well, and even faster on the read side. But your storage takes a much bigger hit, so I would keep that in mind, especially on a 4 drive setup. (You lose 50% storage).
Vince Becquiot
San Francisco Bay Area
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