Drives for a Photo/Audio/Video workstation

garage_logician · 11-13-2012, 10:33 AM

I have built (mostly) a PC that I am using for photo, video and audio. The mobo that I have is the Asus Sabertooth X79 which has SATA ports configured for SSD caching.

So, my question is this; what would be the optimal config for the drives in this PC? I do have a Samsung 840 Pro as the boot/application drive (which I just discovered may have reliability issues...). Additional drives would be used for storing lots of photos, audio and video.

I had initially planned on getting two 2-3TB drives but after discovering the SSD caching I wonder if I should get another SSD drive and use the caching. I do need both read and write performance if possible. Would two drives in a RAID configuration be as fast, or at least close, to an SSD cached solution?

Either way I need magnetic drives of some sort. I am looking for both fast and quiet (I know, competing interests). Any recommendations?

Thanks!
gl

Elixer · 11-13-2012, 12:02 PM

What is your price point ? I assume you also want to do backups ?

)

ronbo613 · 11-13-2012, 01:45 PM

I have a Samsung 830 for a boot drive, WD RE4 1TB drives for "work" drives(capture, temp files, scratch discs), Samsung HD204UI 2TB drives for onboard storage and WD Red 2TB drives in a Synology NAS for backup for my image/video editing workstation.

garage_logician · 11-13-2012, 11:45 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Elixer

What is your price point ? I assume you also want to do backups ?

)

I have a Synology DS1812+ configured with WD Red 3TB drives so I am good to go on backups. Cost is not an issue, but value is. I don't mind spending more to get more.

-gl

garage_logician · 11-13-2012, 11:51 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by ronbo613

I have a Samsung 830 for a boot drive, WD RE4 1TB drives for "work" drives(capture, temp files, scratch discs), Samsung HD204UI 2TB drives for onboard storage and WD Red 2TB drives in a Synology NAS for backup for my image/video editing workstation.

I was thinking of using the WD Red drives in the PC because they are quiet and run very cool. But I would give up some performance. I thought If I put it on an SSD cache it would help (writes would be faster, not sure how well the read caching would work for video and photo files).

I think I might put in a 128G SSD drive for a scratch disk but it may not be necessary with the SSD caching system, not sure.

The first thing I need to determine is if I will use the SSD caching or not.... too many choices.

sigmas · 11-14-2012, 11:57 AM

I also face this problem some one tell about this

Elixer · 11-14-2012, 03:06 PM

Well, haven't really used SSD caching, but, I suppose if you have a big enough cache, it could help with certain things. (It depends on how it does the caching, if it is read ahead or not, and other things like that. I also assume you are working with GB sized files ?)
How many free ports do you have ? If you have enough, then I would add another SSD (128 or 256GB depending on what size files and how many you use at once) to be used for the stuff your working on at the moment, then have RAID 0 for the rest of your work related stuff.

You may want to ask at the AVSforum site, they tend to have more pros there.

kbp · 11-14-2012, 07:14 PM

Definatly use the 128 SSD as a cache/scratch drive for your WD drives. Use the scratch half for caching any software (Photoshop-Lightroom, and browser cache..... etc.) and temp files.