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kaelell

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Nov 16, 2009
346
0
Hi ,

As I am now upgrading my hardware to the new 27" Imacs, Just wondering what your ideal/recommended set up would be for Editing video in FCPx and Adobe After Effects.

so I now would have a fusion drive, a thunderbolt SSD drive and several 7200rpm Firewire800 drives. I dont want to overcomplicate things unessecarily if the benefit is minimal.

My intention was to the software would run from the SSD part of the fusion drive, the project would sit on the main hard drive (and hence the render files?) and the Raw Media on the external SSD(or seperate firewire). Not using the firewire drives for anything other then Archiving.


Am I overlooking anything or would it be preferable to even save the project on the External SSD along with the Raw files?


just want to get it right in my head before I set up the new iMac, thanks in advance for any advice.
 

pigbat

macrumors regular
Jan 18, 2005
219
0
How do you plan to use the firewire drives? Is there a thunderbolt to firewire cable?
 

gnasher729

Suspended
Nov 25, 2005
17,980
5,565
My intention was to the software would run from the SSD part of the fusion drive, the project would sit on the main hard drive (and hence the render files?) and the Raw Media on the external SSD(or seperate firewire). Not using the firewire drives for anything other then Archiving.

Two things:

1. You have no control where on the Fusion drive your software is, but any software that you use would automatically move to the SSD portion. And I would expect large parts of your projects to be on the SSD portion as well, not that you can see it except by measuring speed.

2. If you think that the hard drive part of the Fusion drive is used a lot, it can be worthwhile to go for the 3TB, even if you don't actually need the space. The reason: The first 10% of a HD are fastest, the next 10% are a bit slower, and so on. The last bit of space on a hard drive can be as slow as 40% of the speed of the fastest part. Going for a 3TB drive and using only one TB means you only use the 30% of the drive that are fastest.
 

Siderz

macrumors 6502a
Nov 10, 2012
991
6
I currently have a maxed out 21.5" iMac (Fusion Drive, 3.1GHz i7, 16GB RAM, GeForce 650M 512MB).

On the internal drive, I have the OS and applications. The Fusion Drive puts the most used applications on the SSD portion (You have no control over which file goes where) so my editing software is gonna be on the SSD portion, and will open quickly etc. (I've actually only used 33GB, so I'm assuming everything is on the SSD right now).

I have a LaCie Thunderbolt 240GB SSD RAID 0, on this I put my video files, render files, project files, resources...well, anything that revolves around the project.

I then have a FireWire 800 1TB G-Drive, which I use for archiving my projects.

So, how I basically work is, I create a folder on the Thunderbolt SSD, that's the project folder, and I put everything there related to the project; video files, project files, render files (Already mentioned this).

Then, once I'm done with a project, I move the folder over to the 1TB drive, and that acts as the archive. If I want to go back to it, I'll either load it from the archive drive, or copy it back to the SSD and load it from there.

Putting all the project related files into a single folder is really useful, this means you just need to copy that one folder across to different places instead of going round trying to find all the assets.
 

kaelell

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Nov 16, 2009
346
0
That's kind of what I thought however I read something a while back that said split them over 3 drives - software , render files, media


But now with SSD drives , I dnt quite know if same applies having to split render files & media

Also effectively using 1 ssd external, really means you are splitting over 3 locations ? (Fusion / hard drive / external)

But then since writing the post and people experiencing fusion drives , it seems we really have no control over it so whatever is in use will probably take up the drive. Maybe that doesn't matter so much now?

----------

I guess ultimately what I'm asking is if there really any benefit to be gained from using the FW800 drives I have.
 

Siderz

macrumors 6502a
Nov 10, 2012
991
6
I guess ultimately what I'm asking is if there really any benefit to be gained from using the FW800 drives I have.

Don't know what you mean.

I was using my FW800 drive for the video/render/project files, but now that I have Thunderbolt, I may as well use a Thunderbolt drive, so went for an SSD, and because it's small, use the FW800 drive just as an archive.

I'd suggest you get a small, cheaper SSD and just use it for projects that you're working on, then when you're finished, move the project over to the FW800 drive.
 

kaelell

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Nov 16, 2009
346
0
sorry what I meant was, ( following on from some advice long ago to split media, render/project and software) and given currently we've moved on from that and now have really fast tb SSD drives,

is there any reason to keep a third drive ( the FW800) in the setup or do you think the very best performance will be as simple as Fusion drive + external SSD, just keep it to 2 locations.

im agreeing with you, only use for archiving makes sense. but maybe someone wiser then I will tell me otherwise.


p.s ofcourse one reason for storing the project and render files on the FW800 if it doesnt hinder performance is to save space on the 1TB fusion drive ( went 1TB because of bootcamp)
 
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