Will working with files only from Google Drive slow down ae?

[Defineyourgoal]

Hi, 

I have all of my project files on Google Drive and uses the G.Drive app for windows. I wonder, will this affect how fast ae will work compared to if I work on my project files on my SSD-harddrive? I have a fast internet connection (around 600mbit/sec down, 850mbit/sec up). 

I have two 500gb SSD NVMe hard drives, 64gb ram and have heard that I should run Ae on one and have the project files on the other drive. Or is it so that the project files themselves cannot cause slower ae speeds if I have a fast internet connection and instead it's the cached files that should be on the separate hard drive?

I just did a pre-render on a comp to speed up my previews inside Ae, yet after adding the pre-render and turning the layers off, Ae's previews almost went slower. Perhaps this has something to do with the google drive sync anyway. And yes, I know there are many things affecting speed, so the main question is regarding using Google Drive.

/Pär

[Jose Panadero]

I think this is not the best option to work in After Effects. Even if your internet speed connection is fast, the important thing is if it's capable to sustain a high data rate when previewing or accesing multiple files simultaneously. If you are working with video files AE will work slower with files on a "cloud" drive. Anyway my main workflow is to work with large video files so this is an opinion based on my experience. 

[Defineyourgoal]

Thanks, Jose for your input. 

I believe making the G. Drive folder available "offline" makes the issue disappear. As long as these locally cached files directory is on my hard drive (if now that folder actually contains my offline data, not sure). Perhaps using an app like InSync, that makes it possible for me to choose where my offline-files will be located is a better option?

/Pär

[Mylenium]

Nothing will change this. It's simply inherent how online synching works. It doesn't matter what service you use. Some files will always be locked and under surveillance and slow down your local work. Those services aren't meant to work with large files as they are common for video work and realtime access. That's the plain and simple truth here.

Mylenium

[Defineyourgoal]

Thanks, Mylenium. 

The first question then is, what project-size limit is a guideline to know if it should be stored locally? For example, every project over 10Gb = locally. Everything under 10Gb = google drive since it won't make any difference. My projects are around 15Gb in total. Usually less.

Following up on what you mentioned, the best bet would then be to have all of my project files and program files on hard drive C, cached on another hard drive (D), and then have a third hard drive (T) that backups harddrive C. Once the project is done, the files on C are put in Google Drive. If you back up your files, what's your preferred way for maintaining speed in Ae?

Or just skip harddrive T and directly back them up to a cloud service that supports this?

/Pär

[Mylenium]

Again, those services aren't even meant for 200 MB files, much less complex projects with gigabyte files. They are meant to deal with office documents, photos and at best short phone camera clips. Similarly, the number of files does matter as apparently each separate file will cause individual file I/O and synching checks. There's no general recipe here, but I'd never keep those amounts of footage on a remote server. These issues even partially exist on a local optical fibre network and we never stored any massive video files outside our dedicated video architecture. Not saying that whatever you have in mind won't work, but you should definitely favor local storage and backups every time.

Mylenium

[Defineyourgoal]

Thanks, just spoke to the computer store regarding backup for my rig. In short, since raid-configs does not work on my rig, my best bet would be to buy a mechanical hard drive and use the free software called "Macrium" which automatically copy+paste my SSD-data to the mechanic harddrive. As a backup solution. Once done with the project, I will upload the folder to G.Drive and onto another backup-harddrive.

Mylenium, do you recommend having my project files on the same SSD-drive as ae and my disk-cache on the other SSD-drive or should it be the opposite?  

Thanks