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Best hard drive setup for animation videos?

Engaged ,
Nov 28, 2017 Nov 28, 2017

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Hi. I am self-taught at many of the Adobe programs and I know them pretty well, working in a low level professional design capacity. I have probably read a hundred threads and watched dozens of videos on what I'm asking but I'm still unclear as there seems to be conflicting options on a few things:

I make short animated videos. They can last anywhere from 1 minute to 30 mins. They are typically made up of the following: complex Illustrator and Photoshop files which are then brought into After Effects and animated. After that they are exported to .h264 files which are imported into Premiere. In Premiere they are combined with AVCHD video files and WAV audio files. I typically use Dynamic Link to make further edits to the video in AE and to add titles/effects/etc. Then I export an .h264 file using Media Encoder.

I am working on a 2012 Macbook Pro running CC2017 and OSX Sierra. It has two USB ports and one Thunderbolt port. I am currently running everything off my internal C drive and when at home I keep it plugged into a Thunderbolt port and backing up via Time Machine to a USB hard drive. The CPU is 2.9GHz Intel Core i7 and the graphics is stock Intel HD Graphics 4000 1536MB, and the computer has a 1TB 7200RPM drive with 500GB filled and I've upgraded the memory to 16GB.

I have been doing this for long time and I know that there are better ways to setup my system. My main concerns are the amount of time it takes to export files and that After Effects is so slow to preview everything and seems to reload everything each time that I make the smallest change. I understand that there are ways to speed that up but I'm wondering what my best path is considering monetary limitations etc.

My current plan and questions:

I understand that things such as project files, source media, scratch disks, caches, auto saves, and exports should all ideally be on separate hard drives, but since that's not realistic I'm wondering what the best setup is. I have read the generic setup post in the hardware forum among many others, but I'm still confused as to best practices. As I see it there are three factors: portability, redundancy, and performance. So,

- Is running everything off of my C drive shortening the life of my computer?

- I understand that there is a performance advantage to storing some files on external hard drives when working, but at what point does that reach the point of diminishing returns? In my experience transferring large folders from my C drive to an external drive it takes a long time, I don't understand how constantly moving things from one drive to another doesn't result in SLOWER performance. If I had three external hard drives plugged into my computer wouldn't that slow things down significantly and counter act any speed increases? Or am I just not understanding how computers work?

- Would it be better to invest in an external graphics card than several external hard drives?

- As I understand it, every time I try to play a preview of my composition in After Effects it takes time to load because it has to queue up a preview, which I have to wait to load into the RAM in order to watch it. I read that I should save my After Effects cache on an external disc in order for AE to save the preview that it just played so that I can make small adjustments and it won't take so long to queue up a preview each time. Why does it load up into the RAM now? Isn't the RAM needed for other things? Why can't I just point the cache to my C drive?

- For the type of work I'm describing, would a solid state drive be better than a thunderbolt drive, or would it be the other way around?

- Is it also better to be working off external hard drives for Illustrator and Photoshop work?

- Is it much more important to work off of a powered external drive instead of a usb powered external drive?

Thanks for any advice you can offer.

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Engaged ,
Nov 29, 2017 Nov 29, 2017

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Too much info...?

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Engaged ,
Nov 29, 2017 Nov 29, 2017

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Ok well I just got off a long phone call with Adobe tech support and was told my the rep and also a "senior technician" that everything should be kept on my internal hard drive, and that I should only keep my footage an an external drive if I run out of space. I asked if reading and writing to the same drive doesn't affect performance and they said no, that things run BETTER if everything is read/written on the same drive, and that the things on the forum threads and support videos are wrong. What the hell is that all about?? They were adamant that everything (project files, caches, scratch, auto save, exports, footage) should be kept on my internal drive. Can someone help me understand?

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LEGEND ,
Nov 29, 2017 Nov 29, 2017

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Their tech support doesn't know much about what works best. You see, putting everything on the OS drive slows down performance severely, and may also make Premiere's operation unstable. (And I have confirmed this with my own extensive testing, which with everything on the OS drive resulted in an exporting time of a whopping several hours for each minute of 480i video versus less than a minute with the media and projects separated onto a different drive from the OS and programs, and the crashes occurred much more frequently with everything on the OS drive versus a separate media and projects disk.) The OS drive should have only the OS and programs, never any media or projects.

Unfortunately, putting everything on the internal OS drive will restrict the disk I/O performance to only 32 MB/second due to all the OS maintenance operations being performed on that same drive. That's way below the performance capability of even a lousy 5400 RPM laptop hard drive, let alone a SATA SSD, these days.

With that said, Thunderbolt hard drives will never even come close to fully utilizing the maximum real-world throughput of the interface. In fact, their maximum physical transfer rate of less than 130 MB/second (for laptop-class hard drives) will be the limiting factor. By contrast, SSDs can sustain at least 400 MB/second even through a USB 3.0 connection.

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Engaged ,
Nov 29, 2017 Nov 29, 2017

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Thanks for the reply. I am still not over the mind-bogglingly advice I got from Adobe tech support today. They didn't just say it was ok to run everything off my laptop's internal drive, they said it was BETTER. I had to be transferred to a senior tech because I couldn't believe it. I still don't know what to think now, their advice makes no sense.

Anyways, so would I notice much of an improvement if I kept everything on an external bus-powered SSD USB 3 drive and only ran the OS and programs on my laptops internal HDD? In that scenario where would you recommend keeping the project files and After Effects cache?

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Community Beginner ,
Aug 10, 2021 Aug 10, 2021

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Hi, so im actually planning on buying a ssd 1tb for my laptop which has a second internal slot for it separate from the operating system's. So you were talking about external should i do that over a additional internal hard drive? With storing my projects even with the additional space i still will move them to a flash drive anyway but is it still wiser for the external then an additional internal? My main one is out of space, only a 5gb open which is the problem im having now. I do have a couple games which i can delete to free it up more and move my projects to a usb. So after i do that can i set it to run and save project files on the second ssd and would that help it run smoother thanks

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Community Beginner ,
Aug 10, 2021 Aug 10, 2021

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Ok disregard my last reply so would it work better if i have all the programs off of the second SSD and justbthe operating system is running on the main SSD so it would free up space and less stress on the main one itself. How much more efficient do you think it would run or how stable it would be thanks

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Guide ,
Aug 15, 2021 Aug 15, 2021

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Warpigs,

If you are using a laptop mechanical hard drive and editing H.264 you will propably be OK but a SSD would be much better. You should be able to see if your hard drive is hitting a bottle neck. The video below might be helpful even though I am using a Windows PC. 








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Engaged ,
Nov 29, 2017 Nov 29, 2017

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Could any mods possibly chime in as to why when I call tech support they say threads like this are completely wrong: Generic Guideline for Disk Setup

The first message you get when calling tech support is to check out the forums, then when I speak with anyone they say the forums are wrong....

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Guide ,
Aug 16, 2021 Aug 16, 2021

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Warpigs,

There is a lot of miss information on these forums. I have mentioned this to Kevin a few times in order to find a solution. 

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Engaged ,
Nov 30, 2017 Nov 30, 2017

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Ok i discovered that I was wrong about my internal drive, it's only 5400. So I'm going to make some upgrades. Here's my plan:

Replace internal drive with 1TB ssd

Move current 5400 HDD to DVD bay

Purchase external 250GB SSD USB 3.0

On internal SSD: OS, programs, project files

On internal HDD: Source media, exports

On external SSD: Caches, conformed media, auto saves, previews, scratch disk

Anyone can offer advice?

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Engaged ,
Dec 03, 2017 Dec 03, 2017

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Anyone have any thoughts on the setup I just described? This forum is my last hope  now that I know adobe's tech-support is useless...

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Community Expert ,
Aug 11, 2021 Aug 11, 2021

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I build my own, so this won't apply to a laptop... unless the laptop maker allows customization

 

Intel i9-10900k CPU in ASUS-Prime-Z490-P motherboard with 64Gig TEAMGROUP-3200MHz Ram
Seagate-FireCuda 500Gig M.2 for Windows and programs and usual Documents files
500Gig SSD for temporary and output files, 1T SSD for video and picture input files
Video MSI GeForce GTX 1650 128 Bit Graphics 4Gig GDDR6 Ram driver 456.71 + a DVD drive

 

I normally edit 1280x720 30fps video from a Canon SX510 camera but I downloaded some 4k files from a free site for testing, and my computer did very well with all of my test edits

 

For a laptop I would say that the minimum would be 2 SSD drives... for operating system and programs and the 2nd drive for files

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