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exact_vision
exact_vision
Participant
April 14, 2020
Question

SSD and NVNE Configuration for Laptop. Please Help

  • April 14, 2020
  • 3 replies
  • 1622 views

Hey All,

 

I recently purchased the new Asus ProArt Studiobook Pro X

https://www.asus.com/us/Laptops/ProArt-StudioBook-Pro-X-W730G5T/

I will mainly be using it for Premiere and After Effects. I keep seeing the recommendation of using seprate SSD's for your OS and applications, the second for media cash and a third for project and media clips. 

However with the speed and space that the OS drive has I am wondering if I could just use the OS drive for my applications and media cache and use a second external SSD for my media and project files.

 

Below are the speeds I got from the OS NVME drive in a Raid 0

This topic has been closed for replies.

3 replies

Roland Kahlenberg
Roland Kahlenberg
Legend
April 16, 2020

Fastest drive is where you want to store your active media. Active media means media that you are currently working with.

 

Cache drive can be on the second fastest drive and I recommned storing the cache separately, from your active media. It is expected that cache files have less demanding bitrates than active media files and it is with this assumption that I make these recommendations.

 

You should be able to place your cache files on a USB 3.1 (or newer) I/O SSD drive with throughput of 450-550MBps and not face any bottlenecks, for HD1080 footage. I've not messed about with 4K footage/projects or higher, often, but I don't recall bottlenecks when playing back such cached media from an external SSD hooked up via USB 3.1 (Gen 1) IO.

Very Advanced After Effects Training | Adaptive & Responsive Toolkits | Intelligent Design Assets (IDAs) | MoGraph Design System DEV
exact_vision
exact_visionAuthor
Participant
April 22, 2020

Thanks for the information. I was always under the impression that it was opposite. I've seen many videos where they have said the cache files should be on fastest drive and media files on the next fastest. What you said makes sense but so does the other side. So now I'm really confused 

Roland Kahlenberg
Roland Kahlenberg
Legend
April 24, 2020

Yes, thank you for clarifying that. There is a lot of misinformation out there. 

So going on that concept should I use 2 external ssd's?  I'm using the Asus laptop I described above and it has a 2 nvme running in raid 0, so it is insanely fast and is 4tb. I feel like I am wasting that for just the is and applications. SO I was not sure if I should use an external ssd for media or media cache and use my is drive for the other. I'm just trying to get the best out of machine and work as efficiently as possible. Thanks for all your advice 


I suggest you try out all the options you've been accorded; here and elsewhere - you should be so lucky to have lots of options to test. Hopefully, you'll report, back, with your results. HTH.

Very Advanced After Effects Training | Adaptive & Responsive Toolkits | Intelligent Design Assets (IDAs) | MoGraph Design System DEV
R
Community Expert
Rick GerardCommunity Expert
Community Expert
April 14, 2020

If you are really short on drive space you can use an external drive for your Program files but I would not recommend it as the best practice. 3rd Party effects and script installers often only look in the default locations and you could have problems keeping current. 

If you are limited on space, by all means, use a couple of SSD's but make sure that you use the fastest cables possible to connect them. Cheap cables can cut the data transfer rate by more than 80% when compared with the good ones. If you run into problems use something like the Black Magic Speed Test utility to make sure your connections are good. External drives are never as fast as internal ones no matter what kind of interface you use.

exact_vision
exact_visionAuthor
Participant
April 15, 2020

That was my main concern, as my C drive is blazing fast. So I was wondering if I should even move my media cache files since it would be on a slowe external drive. Plus my C drive is huge 4TB so I have no fear of using up space. So should I just leave my media cache files in the defult location?

R
Community Expert
RobShultzCommunity Expert
Community Expert
April 14, 2020

It depends on the system but I’ve always only used 2 drives and have been fine.

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