Summary:
- I expect my new Crucial M500 SSD will satisfy my multicamera HD video editing requirements far more than my old 7-disk RAID.
- In neither case should their bandwidths be the bottleneck for say one live (raw HD-SDI) HD channel or say 10 simultaneous ProRes files.
- In addition, the SSD should avoid the Disk-RAID’s issues over seek-time (latency). framentation, moving parts, noise, heating (unwelcome in summer) and power supply requirements.
- That’s the theory …it waits to be tested …when I get a time-break to backup everything then install and test it.
Detail:
Some video bandwidth requirements:
- Raw HD-SDI of 720p 25 frames/sec or 1080i 50 fields/sec: 188 MB/s == 1.5Gbps
- ProRes: approx 15 MB/s == 120 Mbps
- XDCAM-EX: VBR, around 4.4 MB/s == 35 Mbps
Sustained sequential (as video ought mostly to be) data read/write speed estimates:
- RAID of 7200 rpm disks:
- 7 x raid5 plus 1 hot-spare: around 600 MB/s == 4.8Gbps
- In my case, I get 400 MB/s == 3.2Gbps.
- That’s around two live HD channels or 25 ProRes HD files, though in practice one would expect the need for headroom-margin, hence say one live HD channel or 10 Prores files? Not bad.}
- SSD:
- For my Crucial M500 960GB Laptop-internal SSD:
- SeqRead: Over 375MB/s == 3Gbps
- SeqWrite: Over 500 MB/s == 4Gbps
- And no issues over seek-time (latency) or framentation or moving parts or noise or power supply.
- For my Crucial M500 960GB Laptop-internal SSD:
- USB3
- 625 MB/s == 5Gbps
- 7200rpm disk > USB3: 110MB/s == 880 Mbps
- Local 7200 rpm drive:
- 40-100 MB/s == 320–800 Mbps, for most modern drive types.
- NAS: 100MB/s == 800 Mbps advertised, under 50 MB/s == 400 Mbps in practice.
- But there can also be latency issues.
- USB2:
- 60 MB/s ==”480 Mbps” in theory…
- …but in practice, as seen by user, is more like 38 MB/s == 300 Mbps.
WebSearch:
- http://hexus.net/tech/reviews/storage/57861-crucial-m500-ssd-240gb-960gb/
- Crucial M500 960GB
- http://superuser.com/questions/317217/whats-the-maximum-typical-speed-possible-with-a-usb2-0-drive
- More than 35-40 MB/s {280-320 mbps) on USB2.0 is practically impossible
- http://www.tomshardware.com/charts/3.5-hard-drive-charts-2008/Average-Read-Transfer-Performance,658.html
- Data speed tests on t200 rpm drives
- Speed ranges from around 50-100 MB/s i.e. 400-800 mbps
- http://forums.adobe.com/thread/875841
- 7 x raid5 plus 1 hot-spare: around 600 MB/s
- SATA2 or SATA3 will not make much difference, the raid controller and the amount of cache memory on the controller will have a much bigger impact.
- http://www.sonycreativesoftware.com/Forums/ShowMessage.asp?Forum=4&MessageID=812261 (of 2012-05-13)
- SSD definitely matters and is better. Multi-cam editing in particular. You’re not dealing with a few streams in that scenario. Also non-SSD drives become fragmented, slowing seek times. Fragmentation on an SSD is meaningless. Seeks times are pretty much instantaneous. When a non-SSD drive has to seek to a new segment it causes a huge drop in perf, even if it’s only for a split second.
- There’s also a lot to be said for the size, no moving parts and low power consumption.
Tags: SSD