Hard Drive for Video Editing?

Gundog48

Gundog48

Gundog48

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I am looking to get a hard drive to use to store all my video ect that I edit with after effects. I found that my current hard drive had only an 8mb cache :mad: so am looking for a high speed one.

I dont really want an SSD. I have been looking at 10K RPM hard drives and 32mb cache hard drives. Basically, I will outline my specifications and I would appreciate it if you left your suggestions, preferably with a link to the manufacturers product page. I am a reviewer, and am starting a series of reviews on how to set up a studio, so I would like a product that costs up to £100-£150 and one that costs up to £55.

1st HDD:
  • Must cost a maximum of £100-150
  • Capacity of about 500Gb or higher
  • Must have very high speeds for video editing
  • 3.5"
  • SATA connections

2nd HDD
  • Must cost a maximum of £55
  • Wants to be about 320Gb
  • Must have high speeds for video editing
  • 3.5"
  • SATA connections

I am also toying with the idea of moving Windows over to this disk as well, and only use my slow 8mb cache one for file storage. What do you think of this idea and how should it be done?

Thanks,
Jake
I am
 
Cache size of a drive makes almost no difference to a drives speed, it's the rotational speed and platter density that matter followed but controller and firmware. 8MB cache suggests the drive is old so it will be slow.

For video editing access times don't matter, it's all about transfer rates. So forget 10k drives, current 7200rpm disks have better transfer rates than the 10k Raptor and Velociraptors and 10 or 15k Enterprise drives cost a fortune, put out lots of noise and heat and require a SAS controller.

With video editing spreading the load makes the most difference. Reading, writing and storing temp files (scratch disks) on separate disks makes a massive difference.

As for drives themselves. Well the Samsung F3's (500GB & 1TB) are the fastest 7200rpm's. No contest there. But you might also consider the 5400rpm disks that use 500GB platters (Samsung F2, WD Green and some Seagate one). These go up to 2TB and whilst not as fast as the latest 7200rpm disks they perform very well and cost less, especially the F2.

With storage being so cheap you could also easily use RAID0 arrays rather than single disks.
 
AbsenceJam said:
Cache size of a drive makes almost no difference to a drives speed, it's the rotational speed and platter density that matter followed but controller and firmware. 8MB cache suggests the drive is old so it will be slow.

For video editing access times don't matter, it's all about transfer rates. So forget 10k drives, current 7200rpm disks have better transfer rates than the 10k Raptor and Velociraptors and 10 or 15k Enterprise drives cost a fortune, put out lots of noise and heat and require a SAS controller.

With video editing spreading the load makes the most difference. Reading, writing and storing temp files (scratch disks) on separate disks makes a massive difference.

As for drives themselves. Well the Samsung F3's (500GB & 1TB) are the fastest 7200rpm's. No contest there. But you might also consider the 5400rpm disks that use 500GB platters (Samsung F2, WD Green and some Seagate one). These go up to 2TB and whilst not as fast as the latest 7200rpm disks they perform very well and cost less, especially the F2.

With storage being so cheap you could also easily use RAID0 arrays rather than single disks.
Click to expand...

Thanks for the info. I am quite new to hard drives, so would I be able to set up my current hard drive with my new hard drive in raid 0 to increase the speed of my current one? It would be great to speed up my windows boot! How do I set up RAID? Is it more of a hardware thing like SLI (linking the two HDDs with a cable) or something set up in the BIOS?

So basically my new hard drive will go faster mainly because there is not so much usage? Genius!
 
I'm sorry but I think you're gonna struggle.... you're asking for Capacity & Speed & a strict budget. Only two are going to happen really.

I had one of the original Western Digital Raptors, when the largest available was 74GB, back in the day.... and it's still going strong. In that rig I had it as my OS & Apps drive and had a normal 7,200RPM 16mb cache hard drive for all my files.

Built a PC last year for someone, and it's use needed it to be FAST but still have reasonable capacity, so I put in two Western Digital VelociRaptor 300GB's. Nice and quick and without the cost and low capacity of SSD's.

If I was building today I'd probably go for two VelociRaptor 300GB's in RAID-0 to give 600GB as 1st HDD. A VelociRaptor 300GB as 2nd HDD. And a Western Digital Caviar Black 1TB as a backup drive / long term storage of the unedited footage (maybe a 2TB if money was no problem).


Though I'm not sure you even need anything more than a standard 7200RPM for video editing :confused:, access times are surely going to be your least concern!
 
Westyfield2 said:
I'm sorry but I think you're gonna struggle.... you're asking for Capacity & Speed & a strict budget. Only two are going to happen really.

I had one of the original Western Digital Raptors, when the largest available was 74GB, back in the day.... and it's still going strong. In that rig I had it as my OS & Apps drive and had a normal 7,200RPM 16mb cache hard drive for all my files.

Built a PC last year for someone, and it's use needed it to be FAST but still have reasonable capacity, so I put in two Western Digital VelociRaptor 300GB's. Nice and quick and without the cost and low capacity of SSD's.

If I was building today I'd probably go for two VelociRaptor 300GB's in RAID-0 to give 600GB as 1st HDD. A VelociRaptor 300GB as 2nd HDD. And a Western Digital Caviar Black 1TB as a backup drive / long term storage of the unedited footage (maybe a 2TB if money was no problem).


Though I'm not sure you even need anything more than a standard 7200RPM for video editing :confused:, access times are surely going to be your least concern!
Click to expand...

Thanks! I already have 1 1TB external for backups. I am not really asking for speed and capacity, just a balance between on the price. I think a 300Gb would be ample for my stuff, I will probably move it onto my original HDD or backup HDD once I have finished because it doesn't matter then. Its mainly about the speed of access during editing.
 
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