What is the best use of SSD and other dedicated hard drives for rendering speed

[Randall Leong]

Originally Posted by Kelly Huffaker

Since it's common knowledge that 7200rpm disks or higher is best for video editing, is there a way to check how fast my external esata hard drives are? Like is there something on the computer that can identify disk speeds for internal and external drives? I can't see them written anywhere on the boxes, or even find the tech specs anywhere on the internet. These are the external drives im using. http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16822204069

Based on the dates of the customer reviews, don't expect much performance out of those particular external hard drives: Those drives use platter layouts that are now three generations old. Those drives use three or four platters to attain their 1TB capacity. Most current hard drives use only one or two platters to attain such a capacity. This directly impacts sequential transfer speed: A 1TB hard drive with four platters cannot achieve a sequential transfer speed of 100 MB/s even on the outer tracks while a same-capacity drive with only a single platter almost hits 200 MB/s on the outer tracks. This sequential speed also affects the speed of the renders and exports.

[Marcus Durham]

Actually Seagate have been selling such a drive for a couple of years. It's a standard hard disk that also has an SSD. The drive caches the data you use most in the SSD.

Momentus XT Hybrid Drive | Seagate

I had one in my old Macbook and once the drive learns your habits, it can be quite quick. However I am not sure of the advantages if you are using it for video production or editing alone. It's geared towards stuff you do time and time again (i.e load Premiere every morning etc).

A better solution may be a Seagate Raptor. These spin at 1000 RPM and are very fast indeed. However they are noisy and very thirsty for power.

You pays your money and you takes your choice.