Storage Drive SSD ideal read/write speed

Report · Jun 27, 2023

I work in Premier Pro and After Effects frequently and I get frequent crashes and very slow previews and renders. I suspect it is my storage drive that is the bottleneck and I'm looking to upgrade that. I'd like to get opinions of the community on what I should be looking for to optimize price to performance ratio.

Current specs:

SSD M.2 500GB - for OS

SSD M.2 500GB - for Scratch Disk

HDD 2TB for storage (this is where I store my media and project files)

GeForce RTX 3070 8GB graphics card

AMD Ryzen 9 5900x (12-core) 4.8 GHz Turbo processor

Mother board - ASUS Prime x570-P

The HDD storage drive, I think, is the most likely suspect for the bottleneck I'm experienceing. So my quesitons are:

1) Am I correct in thinking adding an SSD to store media and project files for PP and AE would make a performance difference.

2) If So, what specs on the SSD would be most beneficial? It seems I can get 560/530 MB/s read/write speeds with large storage volume for around $400 (https://www.amazon.com/SAMSUNG-870-QVO-SATA-MZ-77Q8T0B/dp/B089C3TZL9?source=ps-sl-shoppingads-lpcont...). I can get much faster read/write speeds 6500/3500MB/s for around $600 (https://www.newegg.com/samsung-pm9a3-7-68tb/p/2U3-0005-000J8?item=9SIBFJRJCC0742&nm_mc=knc-googleadw...) but will I get additional performance boost out of that?

Report · Jun 27, 2023

How is your SSD connected? Make sure you use the best quality cables. Transfer speeds can be reduced by as much as 80% if you use cheap cables. All of my external drives are Thunderbolt 2 or newer. As long as I have good cables, the transfer speeds are very good.

Report · Jun 27, 2023

Hi Rick, I will be connecting internally directly to the mothor board. I should have multiple unused slots still available, so my intention is to connect the new SSD directly to the mothorboard. I'm jsut not sure what specs to look for on the SSD. is there some upper limit to how fast read/write adobe AE and PP can make use of? Will I get any performance boost out of paying up for the faster read/write speeds?

Report · Jun 27, 2023

Rick, also to be clear I have not purchased the new SSD yet. My hope was to get a little guidance in this channel on what the optimal purchase decision might be. How much of a performance boose, if any do the faster read/write speeds get? Is it worth the additional 50% in cost?

Report · Jun 27, 2023

I think that SSD's are worth it. Storage is cheap. My first digital editing system had an Ultra SCSI II drive array, and it cost about the same as a new car. The average price was almost $1,000 per GB. SSD prices for good drives like the Samsung 990 Pro are under $100 per TB.

Report · Jun 27, 2023

Rick, Great insight. Thank you. I think that answers my first question about the SSD being a solution to the current bottleneck. So, regarding the second question about specificaations, do you happen to know if there is a significant performance difference for PP and AE between an SSD with read write speed of 560/530 MB/s and an SSD with read write speed of 6500/3500MB/s? The cost difference is substantial, so I'm hopeing to deterimine if PP and AE will make use of that additioanl speed or if there is an upper limit to the read/write speed which I will actually see in performance. Thanks so much for the responses so far.

Report · Jun 27, 2023

How much is your time worth? How long will it take you to recover an additional $100 in expenses from fewer problems, faster file transfers, and faster renders? How long will an SSD last? If I save thirty minutes in a week, I've more than saved a hundred bucks. That is how you run a business and how you should run your financial life. That was the case when I spent nearly $20K on a stack of hard drives. I spent the money because it made me money in the long run.