Generic Guideline for Disk Setup

[Harm_Millaard]

There have been many questions about how to set up your disks.

Where do I put my media cache files, where the page file, and what about my preview files?

All these allocations can be set in PR, so I made this overview to help you find some settings that may be beneficial. It is not a law to do it like this, it is a generic approach that would suit many users, but depending on source material, workflow and backup possibilities, it is not unthinkable you need to deviate from this approach in your individual case.

The reasoning behind this overview is that you want to distibute disk access across as many disks as possible and get the best performance.

Look for yourself:

I hope this helps to remove doubts you may have had about your setup or to find a setup that improves performance.

[davidbeisner2010]

My experience with an SSD for OS/Programs has been that it slightly affects

start time, but has given no speed boost to the actual performance of PrPro

while I’m working.

[Dabalani]

So why not keep the OS on the hard drive and use the SSD for either the Previews drive or the PageFile/Media Cache drive?

(Note, I also use Lightroom 4, where the Previews drive is constantly being accessed.)

Alternatively, how about using the SSD to cache the Media Drive using something like Intel SRT?

[RjL190365]

SSD is not recommended at all for the cache or previews drive due to their very limited number of rewrite cycles. Due to this constant rewriting, the SSD can fail in as little as a few weeks - and such failure due to excessive wear and tear is not covered at all by any company's warranty.

You see, the cache/previews drive gets rewritten to hundreds or even thousands of times a day with heavy video editing use. And many MLC (that's correct: most consumer SSDs are MLC) SSDs are rated for a lifetime of only 10,000 rewrite cycles total.

[ECBowen]

One of the factors SSD drives improve on is Disk Latency. The access time for SSD drives is measure in microseconds instead of milliseconds. This means an SSD drive can handle a much larger execution queue than mechanical drives. This allows you to have the OS and some cache files like the page file on the SSD drive without losing performance. The current SSD drives from Intel are rated to handle 20GB or more of data a day for 10 years without failing due to blowing through the write cycles. So you should not have a problem with the number of write cycles either.

Eric

ADK

[Dabalani]

So Eric,

If you don't care about OS and application start-up times, how would you take advantage of SSD's speed to boost performance?  Put the Media Cache on the boot drive?

[ECBowen]

The Media Cache files can get very large especially over time. I would not put that on the SSD drive. However other Cache files such as the Page File or Photoshop cache files would go there and would improve your overall experience with interfacing with applications.

Eric
ADK

[lasvideo]

The new enhanced global caching in After Effects benefits dramtically from having its folder placed on an SSD drive. Adobe encourages this approach.

[PaulieDC]

When did Adobe become the gold standard on hardware? They also encourage RAID0 and 5 on disks larger than 1TB which is the recipe for write errors galore. SSDs don't do well with heavy writes, plain and simple. No way would I put cache on an SSD and this point in the technology. Two years from now that may be different, and if that happens then yes, SSDs are a good choice, but not in their current state. If you want fast cache for the same or les money, the Western Digital prices have finally come back down to earth. Get yourself the 300gb or 450gb Velociraptor which spins at 10,000rpm. That'd make a fine cache drive.

[Bill_Gehrke]

PaulieDC wrote:

They also encourage RAID0 and 5 on disks larger than 1TB which is the recipe for write errors galore.

Get yourself the 300gb or 450gb Velociraptor which spins at 10,000rpm. That'd make a fine cache drive.

I have to disagree with the first statement, never have seen any write performance problems on any disk arrays AFTER checking out read and write performance of the individual disks before putting them in arrays.

I whole heartedly agree with the second statement.

[PaulieDC]

Actually Bill, you're partially right, I had to write that in a hurry. 1TB and under probably won't show issues, and 1TB and over usually doesn't for Raid Edition drives, but wire up two 2TB WD Greens and data loss will eventually occur. It's not realistic for Adobe to detail that out in specifics, I understand that. Also, there's a lot of misconceptions floating regarding SSDs and a lot of the early issues are solved, but the write-often problem does still exist, at least for now. One thing that shpould be broadcast to every SSD pioneer is not to defrag, or at least not repeatedly, but get a good utility like O&O Defrag that will perform TRIM instead.

But anyway, to the credit of the folks on this site, most people who understand RAID know all about what drives to use anyway, lol. So for the noob, I'll just steer 'em at a Raptor until they're ready to open the wallet for RE drives and a good PCI Raid card. My point was to undo the boxed thinking that if Adobe says it, it must be fine.

[Dabalani]

The Velociraptor is a 2.5" drive.  Doesn't that partially negate its faster spin rate as far as throughput is concerned?  Also, it is a couple of years old at least, so it has lower density than the newest platters.

[FITB_STUDIOS]

All I will say regarding drives, is that I have had 4 WD Black 2TB Drives in my Sans Digital External Raid Box in Raid 5 for almost 3 years. Never had an issue other than one disk dieing 2 weeks in. But they expect that, thus the 30 day return/exchange on drives. I also have 4 WD 640gb Drives in Raid 5 in my computer running with bios software raid and have never had an issue either other than when Intel Matrix Storage program updated to the 8.9.9.??? and higher versions Where it kept dropping a disk. Did some digging, went back to the 8.8.8.???? Version and have never had a hickup!! That's been going for over 3 years as well. Just set your power setting to never spool down drives and it's all good to go!!!

-Paul

[Bill_Gehrke]

Dabalani wrote:

The Velociraptor is a 2.5" drive.  Doesn't that partially negate its faster spin rate as far as throughput is concerned?  Also, it is a couple of years old at least, so it has lower density than the newest platters.

Actually the 10,000 rpm 2.5-inch drive, especially the newest 450 GB and 600 GB drives are the absolute best single drives you can possible use without going to the 15,00 rpm SAS drives

[JEShort01]

PaulieDC,

If you are bad-mouthing RAID arrays with WD Greens, then possibly your issue is with the Greens themselves, not the "RAID" technology! Greens, especially the earlier generations from WD, have had a simply horrible track record.

Jim

[Guest]

So what are the pros/cons of internal vs external raid? I was thinking about purchasing a stardom sohoraid sr4 box for an external array but would rather do what's best if internal options are better. Interesting to know that you don't want to go over 1TB with a raid 3 or 5 array, I didn't know that was an issue. Anyhow, internal or external?

[Harm_Millaard]

Interesting to know that you don't want to go over 1TB with a raid 3 or 5 array,

Maybe even more interesting to know that there is no problem with going up to a petabyte (not on Windows however), but there is no problem at all going up to 96 TB is you so desire and all internally. I will not go that far, but 48 TB is no problem at all. I don't know who told you this BS, but he is utterly wrong and does not know what he is talking about.

Internal is always better and faster than external, unless you end up with external backbones in the 24+ Gbps range and that is prohibitively expensive. External is usually connected over eSATA, USB3 or FW800 ant that is many times slower than over PCIe.

[Guest]

I think he meant more than 1TB per drive. Is that still incorrect?

Thanks much Harm! Can you clear up one more thing for me? If I'm purchasing a nice motherboard with a RAID controller on it, is this not as good or the same thing as purchasing a RAID controller card?

I lied, one more thing... So if I have 4 drives for a raid, I've seen you've suggested RAID 3 over RAID 5, is that right? Would all my media and project and export files now go on this raid? That's what it looked like on the initial graphic or chart.

[UlfLaursen]

Maybe Harm can correct me if I am wrong, but I believe if you get a good separate RAID card, you are better off performance wise, you pay extra $$ but get more performance.

/Ulf

[Harm_Millaard]

Maybe have a look at Adobe Forums: Raid Performance and Rebuild Issues including the links mentioned there and also PPBM6 Planning a new system

Ulf is completely correct. For parity raids you need a dedicated controller, not some motherboard software (meaning without a dedicated IOP) solution.

[PaulieDC]

Right, please don't even attempt mobo raid, there's nothing like a dedicated card.

At this point I'm not sure where the guns are pointing with the whole RAID/Drive Size thing but it seems to have gotten a bit off the path. My point was simply that if you are going to use individual hard drives that are larger than 1TB in a RAID array, you've got to be sure to use RAID Edition (or whatever other manufacturers call it) drives, because when you start joining large drives, the raid edition drives have an unrecoverable read error rate of only 1 in 10^15 bits, whereas regular desktop drives usually weigh in at an error rate of 1 in 10^14. If you string a bunch of 500GB drives together with that less efficiant read error rate, the chances for failure aren't highly elevated, but when you try RAID with 2TB or 3TB consumer drives, your chances of error increase tremendously. I picked the WD Greens just as an example, not a target, just making the point. It's not an opinion, it's the standard for enterprise-level storage design.

Now, had I actually read the guides that Harm and others have provided, I'd probably find that this is all covered already, lol. I think you guys get the point: attempting to RAID huge consumer drives (especially on a mobo) is like trying to run the Boston Marathon in sandals... you can do it, but...

[Guest]

Can you guys suggest a couple of reasonably priced raid controller cards for either raid 3 or 5? What features should I be looking for? Also, on that subject, Raid 3 vs 5, any help? I keep seeing RAID 5 touted elsewhere but noted in one of Harm's faq's RAID 3 was recommended over 5 for video.

[PaulieDC]

db, I use this one:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16816116109

But wait for others to post suggestions. Mine is what I consider entry-level even though it costs $329. That price range really is entry-level when you start looking at cards that will do the job. There are $49 RAID cards available but they are one micron above what you get with onboard RAID0. Anyway, it's one for your list, but do see what others post. One thing to note: I don't see that it supports RAID3, the specs say RAID 0, 1, 5, 6, 10, 50 and Single Disk.

BTW, it you end up going for this card, you need the header to attach your drives also:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16816116097

Naturally you'll provide power to the drives from your PSU. If you consider this card, you may come across it offered in a "kit" with cables included. Don't get the kit, those cables are for backplane installations. You just want a mini SAS to Sata array.

[JEShort01]

And I would agree with David.

Jim

[Guest]

Hello,

I understand where OS and programs are but I don't even know how allocate pagefile, media, projects, previews, exports.

I found media cache under edit>preferences>media.

How do I get to set up the rest?

Thanks you for helping,

Bert

[Harm_Millaard]

Pagefile is setup in Windows.

Media, projects and exports where you store them, previews in PR from Project>Project settings>Scratch disks.