Hard drive setup suggestions for PC editing

1940 wrote on 11/22/2019, 4:33 PM

Hi,

I have just had a crash editing on a USB 3.ext box with a 2TB WD drive.

I think it was because of trying to edit 4K and all the stuttering etc. It started playing up then when I couldn't import files.

I have used TestDisk on it and so far no good but reasonably experienced in crashes over the years so there is a chance I may still get the 1.8TB of files back. I gad most backed up tho' not the last 2 days.

It has got me to rethinking my setup and I would like some suggestions as to a good editing drive setup.

My thoughts are this.

Save cam files to a 4TB External USB HD drive.

Transfer files need to a 480GB SSD drive for editing.

Transfer finished projects to another 4TB External USB HD

Backup all of course.

This way I can use the quickest drive for editing and safest to take to another drive for storage.

Dos this make sense, or is there a better/other suggestion.?

Thanks

Comments

johnebaker wrote on 11/23/2019, 6:03 AM

@1940

. . . . Transfer files need to a 480GB SSD drive for editing. . . . Dos this make sense, or is there a better/other suggestion. . . .

In principle that is the best strategy, the only possible issue is if the SSD is the only available drive, eg this is a laptop, then the free space available can limit what your final product is, or if you need bigger drives, the 2 extremes are :

exporting only - this does not require a large amount of free space per GB of video files - approx 4 GB (Full HD source files) or approx 6 GB (4K UHD source files), per GB of source files, this will allow for proxy files being used.

burning Blu-Ray disc ISO image - for a full 2 hr movie you need approx 4GB per GB of source files, plus 80GB - this allows for proxy files, the intermediate files, the disc files and the ISO file.

If the SSD drive is a second drive and is dedicated to video editting only, the free space is not an issue.

HTH

John EB

1940 wrote on 11/23/2019, 3:01 PM

Many thanks John EB.

I have a 500GB Win 10 OS drive then a few Ext USB 2TBs. It is the various USBs that I have been editing and storing on.

With this SSD I will only use it for importing and copying the files for the edit, then when done editing will save/move the project to an ext USB for storage. This was I have the SSD purely for editing.

I used to use the program default of User/Document/etc/;projecty but after s couple of HD fails, I decided not to pressure the OS drive so started using the other for editing and the OS drive for the actual program install.

CubeAce wrote on 12/17/2019, 3:43 PM

@1940

How long are your videos?

On average mine are between 3 to 20 minutes.

I ask because I'm editing 4K footage, sometimes with four streams running parallel to each other from a USB 2 input using WD My Passport drives to read from. Projects are set up to run on internal 1TB WD black drives and exported to wherever I want. It's best to try to avoid reading and writing to the same disk at once though.By that I mean writing to the same drive as the disk you are reading the project from.

Playback jitters can be caused by which processor is being used for your project monitor screen if you have two monitors and a graphics chip for each. Crashes tend to happen when you max out program when you try to do too much at once. Such as altering the length of clip while the project is playing or altering an effects parameters while playing back to try to see the effect it is happening. Try running Task Manager and try to work out which bits of the system are being stressed.

Ray.

yvon-robert wrote on 12/17/2019, 4:57 PM

Hi,

i suppose that you have a laptop with a 480 GB ssd dish, why you not work with 2 ssd disk one acting as main hard drive an the other using USB 3.0 as storage and video files. With 2 ssd you obtain the maximum speed and no delay. Forget big storage and low speed disk use the ssd technology now the price has droped.
Regards,