Editing with just one SSD

[Mervin Langley]

I have always used multiple drives, one for OS and Vegas files the other for project files. I am now purchasing a much more powerful machine with a 1TB SSD (four 256GB SSD in RAID 0. As this is a mobile workstation I'd like to get away without using an external HDD. Does the old wisdom still apply (about using two drives) with faster, more powerful processors and SSD's?

[Leslie Wand]

i suppose it's what format you're editing that really matters. hdv doesn't really need a raid - might if you have multicam and want some fx. 4k certainly.

i'd opt for one drive dedicated to os and progs, the other three dependent on above - probably 2 in raid and one as bounce back....

however, i'm old school and just use ssd for c: system and progs, the rest on regular hd's

[Jeff Harper]

I'm not quite understanding your question, (I just woke up) but if you're asking if you should have separate hard drives for your video files and your OS, absolutely.

Project files, I think can be saved anywhere, don't believe it matters much, but you just want a dedicated drive for your video files. Optimally you should want the video drive to be running with another HD controller as well, but on a mobile unit I don't know what kind of options you have.

Personally I would think I would divide my drives into two groups on your mobile unit. SSDs for my OS and then a pair for video files, but again, don't know if you can arrange that with your mobile unit.

I would suggest adding a Western Digital My Passport USB 3 external drive for backup if you're trying to keep things streamlined. Very small and require no AC cord. They come up to 2tb in size. Pretty fast drives for what they are and they are inexpensive. I have bunches of them and I love them.

[Mervin Langley]

Thanks for that information. Does this requirement for separate drives for OS and video files still stand for modern 4th gen I7 processors with lots of RAM? Also, would a USB3 external drive allow me to see the video files smoothly at the best settings in Vegas 12 and 13? I can do so currently with my first generation I7 with 8GB RAM provided I use a SATA 7200RPM external drive. Thanks for the response.

[Leslie Wand]

you still haven't mentioned what files you're using?

[Mervin Langley]

AVCHD, MXF, and Prores HQ. Mostly the first two when I'm not using the Ninja.

[Leslie Wand]

not sure any of them really need a ssd raid, but i would still opt for my earlier suggestion, 1 = c:sys/progs, 1 = bounce final 2 as raid....

[Adam Stanislav]

Originally Posted by Mervin Langley

Does this requirement for separate drives for OS and video files still stand for modern 4th gen I7 processors with lots of RAM?

It is not so much a requirement as a way to make things happen faster. And no matter how fast your processor or the size of your RAM, it can only process data as fast as it can read it from the drives and write it to them. Drives tend to be the slowest part of the system.

At any moment in time, a computer system can either read from a drive or write to it, but not both simultaneously. Additionally, it can only read one portion of the drive at a time. The computer needs to read system software and the video data. If both reside on the same drive, it has to read them one after another. If they are on separate drives and using a different bus (that the drive controller runs on), then the modern i7 processors can read them simultaneously, since the drive controllers are separate hardware circuits.

Because of that, the use of separate drives is actually more important with the modern multi-core processors than it was back in the day of single processors.

So, ideally, you would have a drive dedicated to the system (i.e., Windows in our case), another to applications (i.e., Vegas in our case), another to the video input data (i.e., your source video), and another yet to the video output data (i.e., what Vegas writes/exports to). If you do not, it will still work, but it will take longer. If each of the drives is on a separate bus (or more exactly, each drive controller is), all of that disk I/O can happen simultaneously.

Remember, there are always many processes running in the background, system processes that have nothing to do with Vegas and your editing. Always, no matter how streamlined your system is. That is why it is best to have the system itself on a drive dedicated just to the system. All of that affects how fast Vegas can do its job.