Optimal Hard Drive Configuration

[Chris Borjis]

files/cache/previews should all be on your fastest volume.

I have all of those set to my Raid5.

Once, someone had accidentally set the preview/cache to the
system drive. I was pulling my hair out trying to figure
out why renders where taking so much longer. It was being
on the much slower sata drive instead of the Fiber Raid.

[Petros Kolyvas]

[Chris Borjis] “files/cache/previews should all be on your fastest volume.”

I would qualify that just a little bit by adding: your fastest non-shared volume.

For example, the fastest volume on our highest-end workstation is a RAID-5 volume, but it’s shared amongst the other stations and contains primary footage (which requires massively more space than previews or caches). So media cache goes onto a local, unshared spinning-disk RAID-0 volume, and preview files onto another local, unshared RAID-0 SSD volume.

But yeah, the OS-disk slowdown is surprising and I loathe (seriously loathe) that Premiere defaults to a user directory on the system disk. We should be able to set a default. But I loathe filling out the wishform even more (Adobe needs user profiles ASAP so we can help them without wasting our time).

—
There is no intuitive interface, not even the nipple. It’s all learned. – Bruce Ediger

[Jonny Webb]

Thanks guys.
So i’ll put my projects & cache on my fastest (unshared) volume.

I think i’ll have to benchmark it myself whether to use the 2nd partition of my raid-0, or use p1 of a seperate harddrive…

Other useful notes…
– do not enable SSC (spectrum spread clocking) (older drives!)
– do not enable PHY (turns a 3Gb/s into a 1.5Gb/s) (older drives!)
– leave 10GB (or20%) unallocated space at end of drive. Most hardrives will benefit if there is an unpartitioned bit of space at the end for ‘provisioning’. This is especially true for SSDs. It seems to stop preformance degragation over time.
I’m still searching for more info on this…

[Alex Gerulaitis]

[Jonny Webb] “I dont trust the Adobe forums anymore, not because there are so many forum squatters with such fragile egos, but because many of the regulars talk outside their field. They may be experts on specific products, but their IT knowledge is often flawed to the point of dangerous. Numerous times i’ve checked there for a hardware question, only to receive an incorrect answer.”

I hope I am not one of them. 🙂 (Trying my best to keep to my field.)

That said, it’s my impression as well. Advice is often given unequivocally and with no regard to workflow requirements.

Highly questionable and also unequivocal opinions such as “ECC is slow and expensive” (compared to non-ECC), “Quadro is a waste of money”, “Xeons are a waste of money unless you edit 4K” and so on – are all over the place, and often come from forum “heavyweights” – people praised for their knowledge.

It kinda is dangerous.

Alex Gerulaitis
Systems Engineer
DV411 – Los Angeles, CA

[Alex Gerulaitis]

[John Young] “1)-https://forums.adobe.com/thread/662972 This should answer your question, at least it did for me.”

John,

I personally believe some of Harm’s recommendations to be flawed. The discussion on the merits of more than two volumes can be found here, and you will see that the consensus is not in Harm’s favor.

Harm is a moderator of the forum and someone with a (generally well deserved) reputation for his knowledge. It does not help here, given that his advice often resides in locked topics as if it’s Adobe’s official position.

[Jonny Webb]

Thanks again guys.
I’ve now set up my pc to be either…
a sata3 with 2 paritions, or,
2xSata2 in raid0 with 2volumes (1parition on each).

So far i’ve not seen any difference. But i guess time will tell. Next on my to-do list is some benchmarking as well as REAL projects.

And thanks for sharing (comments & links) about Adobe forums. I thought i was the only one who thought uneqivocal and unsubstantiated opinions unhelpful at best…

I’m forever amazed Adobe doesnt spell it out. Eg: Minimum optimum setup for PPro is 2xsata2 in raid configured as… with cache here and whatever there… etc…

[Alex Gerulaitis]

Very useful discussion, thanks Jonny and everyone.

[Jonny Webb] “I’m forever amazed Adobe doesnt spell it out. Eg: Minimum optimum setup for PPro is 2xsata2 in raid configured as… with cache here and whatever there… etc…”

I was surprised too but then figured they can’t possibly cover all bases. For someone adding titles to a 25Mbs DV video, nearly any computer will work, even with a single and old drive. For someone with multiple uncompressed 4K streams… nearly nothing… 🙂

Alex Gerulaitis
Systems Engineer
DV411 – Los Angeles, CA

[Michael West]

I’ve taken older smaller RAID 0 work pairs and made them into system RAID 0 C and D partitions (use D only for static storage) with good satisfaction for budget system. Also we bought some new Seagate Barracuda 3 terrabyte drives recently and they are testing very fast for work RAID 0.

[David Patterson]

I hope this is an appropriate thread to ask this:

I want to buy, or build, a 4 disk RAID 5 for Premiere Pro, and would like to know if anyone can recommend a reliable brand to look at.

I was considering OWC or G-Technology branded enclosures or their pre-configured RAIDs, but I’ve read rants by recent users about quality problems and failing 4 drive systems. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

[Alex Gerulaitis]

External, correct?

What interface do you need it to have? USB 3.0, eSATA, FW800 are the usual suspects.

Speed requirements?

Probability of failure / data loss: RAID5 sets do fail, especially with high capacity desktop drive due to the infamous “URE on rebuild” problem but they’re in general more reliable than RAID0 sets. What I am trying to say is that it’s reasonable to expect nearly any RAID5 set to lose at least some data over its lifetime, when using high capacity desktop drives. So use it with caution and back up your data.

That said, ProAvio EB400CR has a good reputation and support.

Alex Gerulaitis
Systems Engineer
DV411 – Los Angeles, CA