Video media and OS on same SSD?

[Gary Huff]

[Dave Gage] “It will interesting to compare the speed difference between media on OS SSD vs. on separate spinning HD.”

Hey Dave, you won’t see the kind of speeds I am seeing with my 2013 MacBook Pro 15″, but switching from the LaCie Rugged Thunderbolt drive to the internal SSD saw a drop in render time from 40-ish minutes per clip (Sony F55 4K raw to ProRes HQ in DaVinci Resolve 12) to less than 10. Yes, just from switching the destination drive to the internal SSD.

Now, with SATA connections (instead of using a PCIe lane like the new MacBooks do), you’re going to see about half that speed, but it’s still respectable.

Unfortunately, I am still waiting for sizes to increase and be cheap enough to consider. My current “work drive” is a Backup Plus Fast 4TB from Seagate because it is RAID 0 (which means I backup often) and gives me a bit less than a 1/4 of the speed of my internal SSD, but much better than a single drive. I do miss the 17″ with the internal drive as I am now tethered all the time, but I do like the breathing room that 4TB gives me. My last project was 1.1TB of material which clearly would not have worked with an internal SSD!

[Dave Gage]

Gary,

[Gary Huff] “Hey Dave, you won’t see the kind of speeds I am seeing with my 2013 MacBook Pro 15″, but switching from the LaCie Rugged Thunderbolt drive to the internal SSD saw a drop in render time from 40-ish minutes per clip (Sony F55 4K raw to ProRes HQ in DaVinci Resolve 12) to less than 10. Yes, just from switching the destination drive to the internal SSD.”

That’s very cool! I take it that your “2013 MacBook Pro 15” only has one drive in it so your OS and media are on the same SSD.

[Gary Huff] “you’re going to see about half that speed, but it’s still respectable.”
Yeah I’ll take it. As I said, I’m still just working with 1080p clips in a 720p timeline, so it should be great for my needs.

My next purchase after replacing the internal drives with SSDs with be to pick up a Thunderbolt drive dock to speed up the backups, but one thing at a time.

Thanks,
Dave