What is best drive to setup cache, memory cache, allocation etc. for social video/motion banners?

[bjwalker_]

What is best drive to setup cache, memory cache, allocation etc. for social video/motion banners?

[Mylenium]

And what exactly are you asking? About configuring an existing system? Buying new hardware? You need to clarify and provide the necessary technical details.

Mylenium 

[bjwalker_]

thank you, Mylenium.  I would like to learn some initial steps to start working with After Effects (AE) regarding cache, media cache, any AutoSave files, and/or other files that AE seems to automatically store on the Mac hard drive that can slow down Photoshop, Illustrator, etc.  For example, I moved all other Adobe software working files to an external drive so I can open Photoshop. The computer is a macOS Monterey, but there is limited RAM, speed, and memory. What could be the first steps to work with AE better? Should there be an additional external drive just for AE files?

[Warren Heaton]

Which make and model Mac is it?  Most Macs from 2013 or newer come with very fast Flash storage (wickedly fast in recent models) which is well suited for After Effects.   Of course, opting for standard drives on the iMacs and Mac mini meant saving some money.  There was also the Fusion drive (Apple's fancy marketing name for a hybrid drive) which is pretty fast.

Hopefully you have at least 512GB of internal Flash storage, but better yet 1TB, 2TB or more.

An external Thunderbolt 3 or 4 SSD drive will work well.  Opt for the fastest read/write speeds that fit your budget.

[bjwalker_]

Regarding Mac make and model:

Apple M1
16 GB Memory

494 GB storage (not sure if this is flash storage)
Perhaps two external drives? one for working files and the other for cache files?  

[Warren Heaton]

Yes, that's Flash storage and it's wicked fast.

Configuration wise, there's nothing to configure or worry about.  Just start using it.

After Effects should have defaulted to the Disk Cache (Preferences > Media & Disk Cache > Disk Cache) to be about 50GB.  You can increase this, but you may need to decrease it as the Macintosh HD fills up.

If you find you need storage space for project files and source footage, just about any USB3 SSD drive should work but of course, Thunderbolt 3/4 SSD is faster (but most expensive).

Be sure to implement some sort of backup.  If Flash storage fails, the files that were on it are usually just gone.