Participant

Question

Hard drive configuration with NVME/SSDs

Forum|Forum|6 years ago
March 13, 2019
7 replies
15278 views

I have a system with a 1TB NVME M.2 Samsung Evo 960 and a 500GB SSD Samsung Evo 850. My understanding is that the best configuration would be:

1TB NVME M.2: OS, Apps, Disk Cache

500GB SSD: Project Files / Source Files-footage-images-etc.

I typically archive my projects to a local NAS + Cloud storage, so 500GB works fine as a project file folder. I don't mind swapping them though and having my disk cache on the SSD if the performance difference isn't that great. My machine also has a second NVME, and I do have the option of the following...

1TB NVME M.2: OS, Apps

500GB SSD: Project Files / Source Files

500GB NVME M.2 (partition from another drive): Disk Cache

I'd rather not partition my other NVME drive, but I'm willing to if there is enough of a performance difference by having 3 drives. Which configuration would be the fastest for After Effects? Also, with either configuration, should I be rendering to the same folder as the project file or the disk cache for optimal performance? Or does that even matter?

Thank you for any advice. Sorry if I missed this topic before. I haven't found many threads regarding system performance of NVME mixed with SSDs.

This topic has been closed for replies.

N

Neofilm

Inspiring

Hello all, I would love some advice in respect to this discussion and my new build.

I just built a new system and currently it only has two m.2 drives.

D: Drive is a new 1 TB NVME Samsung Pro. I'm going to use this for video projects and video assets (do you guys think it's good to put the project and assets on the same drive?)

C: Drive, the other m.2, is an older 500 Gb NVME Samsung Pro. I pulled it from an older computer that was using it on a PCIe card. It's for my OS. Is it a good idea to use the OS drive for video project cache?

I have room for another m.2 but I'll probably use this for 360 photo work.

I have room for a few SSD drives and/or mechanical drives. I'll probably get one SSD for active project backups and one more drive for archives.

It would be awesome if some true, honest, objective authority could give us the best option for a typical computer setup. I imagine most are like me, just trying to setup a few drives, no RAID, just one drive for OS, one for projects, do I need a third drive for cache and if so what's the best?

Lastly, recently someone suggested I consider using RAM for Cache. I understood him to suggest allocating a certain amount of RAM for cache because it would be the fastest way for cache to work and it's completely nonvolatile. What are your thoughts on using RAM for cache?

If you're wondering, my system is:

i9 9900K, 64 Gb 3600 mhz RAM, 2080 ti video card, Gigabyte Aorus Master mobo.

Martin_Ritter

Legend

For the objective authority, follow the Puget-Systems recommendation - link is above in one of the posts.

From my experience, project files and assets on one drive are just fine.

When it comes to the OS and Cache combo, there is no clear advice. Read about the pros and cons in the posts above.

Creating a RAM-Drive for cache is not very useful in this case. First, AE will need all of the memory and can even fail during rendering, if there is to less RAM left. Second, transfer speeds to cache are kind of low, so you don't benefit from RAM drive speeds (see the post above, there was a screenshot with cache typical speeds). SSD is fine, NVMe more then enough.

*Martin

RockyIVAuthor

Participant

Thanks so much for the information everyone. Didn't expect so many in depth responses.

Most of my storage information is actually form a Puget article here: https://www.pugetsystems.com/recommended/Recommended-Systems-for-Adobe-After-Effects-CC-144/Hardware-Recommendations

Basically, the article says...

SSD for OS/Apps

SSD/NVME for Project Files

NVME/SSD for Disk Cache, in which they write for a disk cache drive "Upgrading to an even faster NVMe drive can give some performance gains, most notably allowing the disk cache to be written on average around 20% faster."

I can't for the life of me find this post, but I had read an Adobe rep's response to a HDD configuration regarding two drives. They had said it's okay to use OS/Apps/Disk Cache on a fast disk 1, with project files on disk 2. The reasoning was that once the OS is running and apps are opened, not much reading/writing is going on with that drive. A fast third drive wouldn't have much benefit over using just two drives. This is why I was wondering if anyone had experience with just using two drives. If there is little benefit to using a third drive, I'd rather just stick with two.

I am just an After Effects user. I jump into all the other programs when needed (PS, ILL, PREM, C4D, etc) but 90% of my time is in AE.

Martin_Ritter

Legend

I prefer to put the cache on it's own drive - as said.

The reason is, that the OS drive does write or read data, even if this is not much. Also, OS swaps the RAM to this disk and than maybe there is a security scanner, which randomly checks the files. All those operations - even if not much in summery - interfering the cache read/write process. And if I can, I want to make this process as ideal as possible.

Also, cache drive get's worn out faster. It will took a long time until it dies, but I want to assure that I only have to replace an non critical SSD/NVME when it happens.

In addition, there is the space aspect. When I can have 500GB or 1TB for cache, why share it with OS and software? Those drives are not that expensive, especially SSDs.

RockyIVAuthor

Participant

The OS and apps don't take up too much space, so sharing them with the disc cache on a 1TB NVME would be nice. Especially if there's very little performance hit. SSDs might not be expensive, but they do take up SATA ports. 2 NVME drives use up 3 SATA ports alone. Using a single NVME for OS/Apps/disk cache would save ports, money, and is possibly faster than using a separate SSD for disk cache (the big mystery).

Good point on wear. I'd definitely be curious if it poses an issue with an NVME Samsung Pro. Especially if it's being shared with the OS.

Once I have a break from work and can put my new system together I'll definitely try out these configurations and see if there's any noticeable difference.

Kyle Hamrick

Community Expert

This article that just came out might be helpful:
https://www.schoolofmotion.com/tutorials/after-effects-computer?ref_id=ae-comp-tw

Szalam

Community Expert

I was just about to share that!

Peru Bob

Community Expert

I'm moving this to the Hardware forum where the hardware experts hang out.

Martin_Ritter

Legend

I would put OS and Software on the SSD. It is fast enough and you are not spending the whole day opening software or rebooting the computer. So you hardly benefit from the speed of an M.2.

I always put the cache on it's one drive, M.2 in my case currently.

If readings from Windows are correct, AE only transfer data with less than 100MB/s to the cache (I'm doing a lot of motion graphics, no idea how this change when making VFX), so there is not really potential to speed things up. M.2 however has the shortest response times and can handle the most I/O operations, which is for sure useful for the cache drive.

Use a 2nd M.2 for project and footage if you like. I'm working with a NAS, too. Connection is 1GBit/s, NAS can output 400MByte/s and this only bottlenecks when working with 4K video, which I hardly do.

When working with motion graphics, character animations and stuff like that, I usual spend more time hitting the RAM border or waiting for the preview rendering. Loading assets, even with many layers, is not really an issue or noticeable.

Szalam

Community Expert

I disagree with Roland. The cache should be on the fastest drive per most of the testing I've seen.

Roland Kahlenberg

Legend

Looks like a one-arm battle is asunder. :-)
Which test(s) are you alluding to?

Here's my take. Cached files from a single timeline are in essence a single layer when called for a preview. One only needs a drive that is quick enough to play back a single stream of video at the required video rez for frames cached to the HD. We only need a HD which is fast enough to feed data into RAM without the user having to wait. On a 550Mbps SSD, this should be instantaneous. Additionally, AE is intelligent enough to calculate when to initiate playback based on the transfer of the cached (to HD) frames such that the preview is not consistent, ie does not stop midway while cached (to HD) frames continue to be transferred to RAM.

If frames have not yet been cached to the HD then it's a different story. Here, we want a super fast drive that loads as many layers as the timeline has, within the Preview Range. So, we're talking about many streams here. Hence, the fastest drive for media is ideal.

Very Advanced After Effects Training | Adaptive & Responsive Toolkits | Intelligent Design Assets (IDAs) | MoGraph Design System DEV

Roland Kahlenberg

Legend

The fastest HD should be used to store active media.

Very Advanced After Effects Training | Adaptive & Responsive Toolkits | Intelligent Design Assets (IDAs) | MoGraph Design System DEV

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