still driving me nuts

[David Roth weiss]

[Jeremy Garchow] “If you had a 16TB PCIe SSD boot drive, you are saying you wouldn’t use it? Why?”

Jeremy,

I’m confused now!

Initially it seemed you were simply discussing put the cache on the SSD boot drive.

But, others here seemed to imply that you were actually suggesting that ALL files, media, apps, cache, etc. should reside, or could reside, on the SSD if there was an SSD drive large enough, without any need for any other hard drive or RAID array.

Now, your single line above also appears to be suggesting a one giant SSD single drive solution. Which is it?

David Roth Weiss
Director/Editor/Colorist
David Weiss Productions

David is a Creative COW contributing editor and a forum host of the Apple Final Cut Pro forum.

[Jeremy Garchow]

[David Roth Weiss] “Which is it?”

Why can’t it be both?

The reason I suggested cache only to the specific case mentioned above (the one where he said he couldn’t fit all the media on the internal drive) was because of the limited capacity of SSDs. Let’s face it, with the 1TB available on Macs today, you aren’t going to have enough space to store it all. Besides the obvious of shared storage, or needing to physically move a set of media to another machine in a different location, what good and technical reason is there not to use a drive that is working at 800-900MB/sec?

[David Roth weiss]

[Jeremy Garchow] “Besides the obvious of shared storage, or needing to physically move a set of media to another machine in a different location, what good and technical reason is there not to use a drive that is working at 800-900MB/sec?”

Easy! The answer is file security.

Yes, from a strictly performance standpoint, today it is possible that a single large SSD could “probably” deliver enough throughput to handle all performance requirements for most editing purposes, for most users. However, whenever selecting/building a hard drive subsystem, “best practices” should dictate that both performance and file security are of equal importance, and both should be considered at all times.

If you recall, there have been innumerable discussions over the years on the FCP Legacy Forum about whether to store FCP project files on the boot/system drive vs the media drive(s). That discussion revolved around the best solution in case of a catastrophic failure – what’s more important, storing the project files alongside your OS and applications; or, alongside your media files. Of course, a RAID may or may not be configured with RAID 5 or RAID 6 protection, and that has some bearing on that discussion.

Meanwhile, back to the present, your single SSD scenario seems to have no built-in file security… If that SSD drive fails, you would lose everything, and it could happen is an instant. That being said, since we often find that many Cow members don’t have any file security measures in place, i.e. no backups, no boot drive clones, no protected RAID, etc., any discussion of best practices often falls on deaf ears of those who think file security is only for big facilities and wealthy people.

BTW, if you said you were thinking about adding a second SSD drive in a RAID 1 mirrored configuration, that might be a valid option, possibly with both enough performance, and complete system security for the single SSD drive scenario. However, if my brain is working properly, would’t that get us back to a 2-drive scenario?

David Roth Weiss
Director/Editor/Colorist
David Weiss Productions

David is a Creative COW contributing editor and a forum host of the Apple Final Cut Pro forum.

[Walter Soyka]

[David Roth Weiss] “Easy! The answer is file security.”

I flatly disagree. Cue Michael Buffer.

[David Roth Weiss] “However, whenever selecting/building a hard drive subsystem, “best practices” should dictate that both performance and file security are of equal importance, and both should be considered at all times. If you recall, there have been innumerable discussions over the years on the FCP Legacy Forum about whether to store FCP project files on the boot/system drive vs the media drive(s). That discussion revolved around the best solution in case of a catastrophic failure – what’s more important, storing the project files alongside your OS and applications; or, alongside your media files. Of course, a RAID may or may not be configured with RAID 5 or RAID 6 protection, and that has some bearing on that discussion.”

The answer to file security and catastrophic failure is BACKUP.

We all agree that RAID is not backup, right? And that the disk redundancy of RAID is at least partially if not wholly offset by the geometric increase in likelihood of failure as you add drives to a RAID set? And that disk redundancy only protects the user against a single failure mode?

I think that word “redundancy” gives a lot of people a false sense of security with their data on RAIDs. “Hey, I can lose a drive and it’s no big deal!” But what if you lose a second drive while the RAID is rebuilding? (It happens!) Or what if the controller fails? (It happens!) Or what if you accidentally delete files that you need? (This NEVER happens!) How does RAID help you?

Or worse, in the case of your original post, how does a “separate media drive” help you?

For true protection against multiple failure modes, an actual backup strategy is required. And once you are executing an actual backup strategy, you are free to embrace the sock-rocking performance of PCIe-attached solid state storage, even if it’s your system disk.

(Is that enough carnage for you, Tim?)

Walter Soyka
Designer & Mad Scientist at Keen Live [link]
Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
@keenlive   |   RenderBreak [blog]   |   Profile [LinkedIn]

[Craig Alan]

Ok, first I have older Macs and don’t own one using SD drives so I lack experience here. But I’ve used Macs that use them and yes the SD drives are very fast.

BUT I did a simple test when this thread began and selected a relatively small clip on a timeline, applied a color correction, and then went the finder to see what happened as a result in the cache/render folder. It added a render file of over 1 gig. It was clear to me that render files are not small little files, they could quickly add up.

Second, other than when I am importing media using a usb 2 P2 card reader, I don’t find my system particularly slow. I guess if the SD drive speeds things up enough you could simple always delete your render files and have them repopulate when you need to edit a particular project. I just don’t understand the need to go down this road until SD drives are many TBs not 1.

Mac Pro, macbook pro, Imacs (i7); Canon 5D Mark III/70D, Panasonic AG-HPX170/AG-HPX250P, Canon HV40, Sony Z7U/VX2000/PD170; FCP 6 certified; FCP X write professionally for a variety of media; teach video production in L.A.

[David Roth weiss]

[Walter Soyka] “The answer to file security and catastrophic failure is BACKUP. “

Of course, that’s fundamental Walter, and it goes without saying.

However, in the single huge SSD drive scenario, should your giant SSD fail, you lose everything on that NLE that was changed after the last backup, and your machine is now 100% dead in the water until you restore the working system drive, with everything onboard, all media, project files, cache, etc. Recovery time will be not be fast unless you happen to have a bootable clone of that huge SSD standing by with all of the same files onboard.

So, any way you slice it or dice it, a second drive is necessary for something in any scenario you can envision that has good file security.

At least in a 2-drive scenario, you’re either going to lose the system drive or the media drive, but hardly ever both at the same time. The probability of a total system failure and restore is cut in half, and getting back to work should be guaranteed to be faster.

David Roth Weiss
Director/Editor/Colorist
David Weiss Productions

David is a Creative COW contributing editor and a forum host of the Apple Final Cut Pro forum.

[David Roth weiss]

[Craig Alan] “I just don’t understand the need to go down this road until SD drives are many TBs not 1.
“

You’re correct Craig…

The only reason to go further down this road at this point is to continue the otherwise stalled debate that started this thread… We must drive mouse clicks here so Tim can continue to live in the style to which he’s become accustomed. 🙂 🙂 🙂

David Roth Weiss
Director/Editor/Colorist
David Weiss Productions

David is a Creative COW contributing editor and a forum host of the Apple Final Cut Pro forum.

[David Lawrence]

[Jeremy Garchow] “These aren’t nests, though, they are Auditions and they work completely different than nests. “

Aha, thank you. I read your post too quickly and didn’t catch that.

I haven’t used Auditions in FCPX but I have used them in Logic Pro, where they work basically the same way. Logic Pro has a timeline of course, but typically with music and DAW software, there’s a single timeline per “project”.

If I understand your argument correctly, perhaps a better analogy is that FCPX treats timelines like projects the same way music or DAW software treats timelines like projects?

I think that’s an interesting way to think about the use of the term. In that light, it makes a lot of sense actually.

I still think industry standards matter and they would have been better off with standard terminology. Especially now that the library organization structure is more standard. But based on how things were organized when they launched, I can see how it might have made sense at the time.

Thanks Jeremy!

_______________________
David Lawrence
art~media~design~research
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[Walter Soyka]

[David Roth Weiss] “At least in a 2-drive scenario, you’re either going to lose the system drive or the media drive, but hardly ever both at the same time. The probability of a total system failure and restore is cut in half, and getting back to work should be guaranteed to be faster.”

I get it. It seems like I’m preaching that you should put all your eggs in one basket. I’m not (more below), but think about what splitting critical elements across devices does: it creates multiple independent points of failure.

The probability of a total system failure is actually increased, not decreased, because now you don’t just have to worry about one drive failing; either of two drives independently failing will ruin your day. Losing either your system/project drive or your media drive stops you from working.

If you have backups, which you should, you can safely work on your highest-performance disk, and that just might be your system disk. If you don’t have backups, including bootable system clones, project files and media, stop right now and make some, because keeping your media on a single separate disk or RAID only offers the illusion of protection. You are actually more vulnerable from a total system perspective.

It’s not put all your eggs in one basket. It’s not put some of your eggs in one basket and some in another. Our eggs are digital and non-rival. We can put all our eggs in several baskets at the same time.

Also, please don’t misconstrue this line of reasoning as anti-RAID. There’s a time and place. I still use an awful lot of spinning rust. I’m just saying to rethink your disk use, because the assumptions that supported the all-RAID-all-the-time argument just a couple of years ago are no longer true.

Walter Soyka
Designer & Mad Scientist at Keen Live [link]
Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
@keenlive   |   RenderBreak [blog]   |   Profile [LinkedIn]

[Michael Gissing]

Just a plea from the poor guy trying to grade your edit in a shared workflow. I don’t care where you put your files whilst editing but make sure you have a system for getting all the media onto an external USB3 drive without leaving lots of annoying little jpegs etc on your system drive.