SSD or Raptor for media drive? (Premiere CS6)

[matteusclement]

I have a SSD for my OS and all WD blacks for my current scratch/media drives.

I'd like some faster loads and/or renders. Working on an 8core system with 32GB ram.

The raptor has 500GB where as the SSD's for the same price have only 240GB.

What's my better bet:
- SSD as media drive
- SSD as scratch drive
OR
- raptor as media drive
- raptor as scratch drive

working with 5dii footage. no raw.
I tend to work on smaller projects (less than 50GB), maybe 3-5 at a time.

 

[Cubytus]

If you can afford it, a SSD is a no-brainer.

 

[sliceoftoast]

I would go with SSD, those raptors will run very very warm

 

[phrehdd]

I would go with SSD, those raptors will run very very warm

It is true that Raptor drives run hot (10,000 rpm certainly runs hotter than 7200). However, they are 2.5 inch drives that are cased in a massive heatsink that appears as a 3.5 inch drive.

SSD's can also run relatively hot.

Raptors come with a 5 year warranty and some SSD's do as well. Overall, the SSD has the advantage on speed while Raptors have the advantage of cost for volume size. If it were me in the original poster's shoes, I would save a bit more and get a larger SSD such as the Samsung EVO or Pro drive of at least half a gig in size.

 

[sliceoftoast]

How old is the Mac in question? You could pick up some thunderbolt based storage too

 

[ChrisA]

I have a SSD for my OS and all WD blacks for my current scratch/media drives.

I'd like some faster loads and/or renders. Working on an 8core system with 32GB ram.....

If you have SSD then you do NOT need to place difference files on different drives. You can have scratch, system and media all on the same SSD drive and it will be faster than having the system on SSD and the data on 10,000 tmp drives.

The trouble is that you run out of space. That is the only reason to buy a second drive if your first one is SSD. The reason why, back in the "old days" we used a second drive for media has "head contention" and this issue completely goes away with SSD. Putting it all on one drive USED to cause to much radial head movement. The SSD has not mechanical parts

If you have a large enough SSD put it all on one drive, if it will not fit buy one more SSD and put the media there. You don't need a third drive until the second one is nearly full.

 

[Cubytus]

If you have SSD then you do NOT need to place difference files on different drives. You can have scratch, system and media all on the same SSD drive and it will be faster than having the system on SSD and the data on 10,000 tmp drives.

The trouble is that you run out of space. That is the only reason to buy a second drive if your first one is SSD. The reason why, back in the "old days" we used a second drive for media has "head contention" and this issue completely goes away with SSD. Putting it all on one drive USED to cause to much radial head movement. The SSD has not mechanical parts

If you have a large enough SSD put it all on one drive, if it will not fit buy one more SSD and put the media there. You don't need a third drive until the second one is nearly full.

To my knowledge the OP hasn't said what was his SSD size. Surely you can't hold everything on an SSD less than 512GB. I may be mistaken, but up to 50GB projects, 3 to 5 at a time, places the requirement at 250GB max. That's a considerable amount in SSD sizes/prices, and from the OP's estimation, it would already be full.

FWIW I have a 120GB SSD installed in a MacBook, and let's say space is really tight, and it just holds a quite conservative installation of Lion.