Hardware Advice - 500GB + Drive for videos

[Teknetron]

Hey all,

I know some of you guys put out lot's of videos.
I'm looking to add a dedicated drive on my server machine only to be used for video processing / storage.

I've sort of been out of the loop as of late in regards to technical upgrades as I have had no need for any. Just wondering if any of you can point me in the right direction for a stable, fast drive to be used for this purpose.

I know SSD drives are fast, in fact it's all I have inside my computers. However I'm not sure how the massive amounts of read/writes from video editing/processing would affect an SSD drive, if it would at all.

Thanks

[Ughmahedhurtz]

Short answer: don't sweat it on modern, reputable brand SSDs. See this article for some data on Samsung 850 Pro longevity: http://www.anandtech.com/show/8239/update-on-samsung-850-pro-endurance-vnand-die-size

If you're still worried about it after reading that, just buy an SLC drive. They're quite a bit more expensive but they provide about 10x the life cycle of the same size MLC drive, all other factors being equal. See: http://www.smxrtos.com/articles/mlcslc.htm

Whatever you decide, go read some tech/benchmark reviews on the drives you find that fit your budget and size requirements. There may be other issues that reviewers will flag that you don't see on Amazon/newegg reviews. ;)

[MiRai]

I've been editing from, and rendering/recording to Samsung SSDs exclusively for years now—which includes 1080, 1440, 2160, and some 4320 video footage—and I've only written ~25TB to, what used to be, my main recording SSD (http://i.imgur.com/9plBLRq.png). I've since added another 1TB drive to record to so that the EVO could have a break (for now), and it's not even at 4TB of written data.

At 50GB/day of writing, the 1TB 840 EVO is estimated to last 63 years (http://www.anandtech.com/show/7173/samsung-ssd-840-evo-review-120gb-250gb-500gb-750gb-1tb-models-tested/3), the 1TB 850 EVOs have listed at 2PB (Petabytes) total (http://www.anandtech.com/show/8747/samsung-ssd-850-evo-review/4) of endurance, and the 1TB 850 Pro SSDs are apparently capable of 6PB (http://www.anandtech.com/show/8239/update-on-samsung-850-pro-endurance-vnand-die-size). Obviously I'm listing the estimated endurance of Samsung 1TB drives, and as shown in the tables, the drives with a lower capacity apparently have a lower endurance.

In my opinion, SSDs have proven themselves as a reliable replacement to any HDD, and the only thing that is still a turn off are the prices when comparing larger SSDs to larger HDDs, but hopefully that will change in the near future.

[Teknetron]

I hadn't realized that a good SSD could last for so many writes.

Thank you both for the information and the articles. Good reading in the morning with my coffee to kick start my brain hah.
When it comes down to it though, I in all likelihood, won't even come close to the lifespan of an SSD.

Thanks again

[Hor]

I recently picked up one of these that I'm using as video dump / scratch disk, as I get more into making video content I can see how it's really going to be a BIG help. I also love the Samsung SSDs, and the Corsair Neutron series, though those are a bit more expensive they're also very reliable. Which is why I use them for my main OS/games drives. For raw storage drives in my NAS I use Hitachi HDDs, they're dirt cheap and have a fantastic record.

[JohnGabriel]

Seagate has a new USB 3.1 external 8 terabyte drive for $350

http://www.foxnews.com/tech/2016/04/01/grab-8tb-usb-powered-external-hard-drive-from-seagate.html

[MiRai]

Seagate has a new USB 3.1 external 8 terabyte drive for $350

http://www.foxnews.com/tech/2016/04/01/grab-8tb-usb-powered-external-hard-drive-from-seagate.html
I would probably not recommend something like that, since...

1) Seagate doesn't have the best track record these days
2) 8TB is a lot of data to store in one place without something like RAID1 or RAID5 to save your ass when the drive dies

If you want that much storage it may be time to look into a RAID5/6 NAS or something along those lines, but to be fair, that would be much more expensive.

[Hor]

Yeah, if you're willing to go with some used parts getting a cheap processor and motherboard from eBay, then the rest of the goodies online new. You can build a NAS with some redundancy and solid software solution pretty easily.

PCPartPicker part list (http://pcpartpicker.com/p/CP84XL) / Price breakdown by merchant (http://pcpartpicker.com/p/CP84XL/by_merchant/)

CPU: Intel Core i3-550 3.2GHz Dual-Core Processor (http://pcpartpicker.com/part/intel-cpu-bx80616i3550) ($10.00 @ eBay)
Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-P55-USB3 ATX LGA1156 Motherboard (http://pcpartpicker.com/part/gigabyte-motherboard-gap55usb3) ($20.00 @ eBay)
Memory: Kingston 2GB (1 x 2GB) DDR3-1600 Memory (http://pcpartpicker.com/part/kingston-memory-kvr16n11s62) ($10.99 @ SuperBiiz)
Memory: Kingston 2GB (1 x 2GB) DDR3-1600 Memory (http://pcpartpicker.com/part/kingston-memory-kvr16n11s62) ($10.99 @ SuperBiiz)
Storage: Hitachi Deskstar 7K2000 2TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive (http://pcpartpicker.com/part/hitachi-internal-hard-drive-0f10311) ($56.95 @ Amazon)
Storage: Hitachi Deskstar 7K2000 2TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive (http://pcpartpicker.com/part/hitachi-internal-hard-drive-0f10311) ($56.95 @ Amazon)
Storage: Hitachi Deskstar 7K2000 2TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive (http://pcpartpicker.com/part/hitachi-internal-hard-drive-0f10311) ($56.95 @ Amazon)
Storage: Hitachi Deskstar 7K2000 2TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive (http://pcpartpicker.com/part/hitachi-internal-hard-drive-0f10311) ($56.95 @ Amazon)
Power Supply: Corsair CX 430W 80+ Bronze Certified Semi-Modular ATX Power Supply (http://pcpartpicker.com/part/corsair-power-supply-cx430m) ($27.98 @ Newegg)
Total: $307.76
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2016-04-05 09:02 EDT-0400

I didn't include a case or cooler, since it's a NAS you may not be too concerned about the box it's in. Which case, you can salvage a case from someone. Or get a new cheap one with the cash left over compared to the external drive listed. Additionally, same goes for the cooler. You don't need much, a stock cooler should be fine and again, you either likely have one that'll work, will get one with the CPU. Or can get one off someone you know, failing that you can find the stock coolers listed on eBay for next to nothing. Most I'd spend on a cooler for this would be about $20 (Coolermaster EVO or something, but that would even be overkill for this imo, though you might be able to get away with passively cooling with that giant heatsink... might).

There's still room for a couple more drives too, so yeah you could have a decent setup there. If you went full raid with it, I'd definitely recommend dropping a few dollars on an actual raid card though.

[Ughmahedhurtz]

If you went full raid with it, I'd definitely recommend dropping a few dollars on an actual raid card though.
Last couple of RAID5 systems I've set up with 8 drives or less have been software raid configured in the OS. They Just Work(tm), are easier to maintain and debug (IMO) and far outperform either the LSI or Adaptec dedicated controllers I had in the other systems. We have a system that does outperform any other here but it's a high-dollar RAID card that costs more than your average budget PC all by itself. :p