Final Cut Pro X: SSD 1TB vs. SSD 500GB + FW800 Drive

1. Put a 1TB SSD in my Mac and use it for everything: the old HDD will not be used
2. Put a 500GB SSD in my Mac and put the 1TB HDD in a FireWire 800 case (like this one) and use the 1TB HDD to store all (and only) the FCPX files - This is the less expensive solution
3. Put a 1TB SSD in my Mac and put the 1TB HDD in a FireWire 800 case and use the 1TB HDD to store all (and only) the FCPX files - Most expensive solution and (for me) non-sense solution

ChrisA said:

Placing everything on on internal SSD is the fastest solution. FW800 is not as fast is the internal interface.

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RCAFBrat said:

Important when using HDD since not only is the disk slow relative to SSD, but more importantly there is unavoidable latency as the disk drive repositions its heads to read from or write to the next sector.

Like ChrisA says, if you can afford a single internal SSD that fits everything and eliminates HDD from workflow, that is hands down the best solution.

PS: alternative to the Samsung 850 EVO is Crucial MX200 (very good reviews and usually a little less expensive)

Cheers

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sevoneone said:

You did not mention what Mac you are using. If you have USB 3.0 and depending on your needs, it is likely a better choice than FW800. FireWire is better at sustained streams of data than USB, but USB 3.0 at 5 Gbps has enough overhead that it is fine for single external drive solutions. If you want an external RAID or to use multiple drives at once, Thunderbolt is probably the way to go.

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e1me5 said:

Yes, it is always better to have them separated on different drives. Option 2 is the best one.

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CanadaRAM said:

Put in the 1 TB SSD, the old adage of putting the files on a different drive from the main drive applies for spinning drives (where you have 2 or more processes contending for control of the head, plus seek latency) , and also assumes that both drives are on a fast bus (for example, a Mac Pro with SATA connections for 4 drives) for parallel access.

You will get more performance out of an SSD on the SATA bus (300 MB/sec with virtually zero latency) then you will on the Firewire bus (80 MB/sec plus drive latency). With 3x the performance from the SSD and with the speed limitation of the Firewire bus, there is no rationale to splitting the data onto the slower drive on the slower bus.

For economy, you can put the 1 TB spinning drive in a USB 3.0 enclosure for $25 or so, and use it for backup where speed is not critical.

Note: Your 2009 MBP is limited to SATA II (3.0 Gbps) performance on the SATA bus. This means you don't have to choose the fastest SSD on the market because almost all SSDs will saturate the bus of the machine.

Yours also may be among the machines with a nVidia SATA chipset that does not properly negotiate the SATA speed with a 6 Gbps SSD drive, leading to poor performance. The solution is to stick with a drive that is either locked to 3 Gbps (OWC Mercury Electra 3G) or choose a drive that does not use the SandForce controller
(Crucial and Samsung are the most often recommended drives)

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ColdCase said:

Once you start using FPX with a SSD, even SATAII, you will wonder how you lived all those years without it. So much more responsive, especially when scrubbing.

Editing from a FCPX library on a disk enclosure is agonizing slow in comparison unless you use RAID, which is probably impractical with your machine. It will be slower than using your current internal drive.

Buy as much internal SSD as you can afford. Buy external drives for archived libraries. Backup all to another external drive.

The old adage of separating OS and Data stemmed from recovery from disk corruption/failure and the backup mechanisms at the time. Doesn't make much if any difference today, especially with SDDs.

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Unami said:

it also depends on your type of projects. running a project with multiclips with a lot of angles won't work very well on the external hd - but when you only got one "track" on the storyline and only use prores proxy at 45 mbps (< 6 MB/s) you should have no problem with a fw800 hd that should deliver at least between 40-50 MB/s. i've not run into a lot of latency with fcpx myself, but there's probably more of it on a hdd.

i once had to edit for a few weeks on a laptop with projects and app on the same internal ssd, and it often gave me the spinning beach ball without doing anything apparently. i thought this was because of the data and the app being on the same drive. but it was in the early versions of fcpx (summer 2013) and also native xdcam-footage that might have caused the problem, so i don't know for sure.

i'd go for option 3, btw. unless you will get a new computer over the next year. better safe than sorry - and 500 gb seems not a lot, if you need to cut a bigger project with multiclips on your ssd. i'm usually working on multiple projects and often need around 1 tb of "active" space. a 500gb ssd will only leave you about 350 gb after you've installed fcpx, adobecc, davinci,...

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