austindonald1 wrote:
Do you have a recommendation for an external ssd for windows 10 pro? Im storing bmpcc cinedng raw files.
There's some info here:
https://www.pugetsystems.com/recommende ... mendationsSpecifically see the text below, which is copied from the page at the link above. Note that this is geared to desktop machines, not laptops, mainly because laptops are not optimal for Resolve. If you're using a laptop, an external drive might be the only way to go.
Storage (Hard Drives)
Storage is a commonly overlooked aspect of a video editing workstation. While the CPU or video card may be what does all the processing, if your storage isn't able to keep up it doesn't matter how fast those components are. What makes storage complicated is the fact that not only do you have to deal with the various types of drives available today, you also want to have them configured in a way that will maximize performance in DaVinci Resolve
What type of storage drive should I use for DaVinci Resolve?
There are three main types of drives you might use for a video editing workstation: SSD, NVMe, and the traditional platter drive. Of these three, traditional platter drives are the slowest but are extremely affordable and available in much larger capacities than SSD or NVMe drives. Due to this, they make excellent long-term storage drives, but in most cases are not ideal to working directly off of.
SSDs are several times faster than a platter drive but are also more expensive. These drives are excellent for a wide range of tasks such as holding your OS and applications, storing media and projects you are actively working on, or as a cache/scratch drive.
NVMe drives come in two flavors (M.2 and U.2), but either one will be significantly faster than even an SSD drive. They are about 30% more expensive than an SSD, but in return are up to five times faster! However, in most cases you will not see much of a performance increase with a NVMe drive since a modern standard SSD is already fast enough that it is rarely a performance bottleneck. High bitrate footage (~2,000 mbps or higher) is typically the only time where having your media on NVMe drive is necessary for DaVinci Resolve.
What storage configuration works best in DaVinci Resolve?
While you could get by with just a single drive, we recommend a two to four hard drive configuration depending on your budget and desired performance level:
Primary Drive - OS/Software (SSD) - Includes your operating system and the base DaVinci Resolve installation. An SSD is highly recommended as it will greatly improve how fast the OS and programs startup, but there is usually not much of a performance benefit to upgrade to a faster NVMe drive.
Secondary Drive - Project Files (SSD/M.2 NVMe) - If possible, it is a good idea to separate your project files and disk cache onto a secondary drive. For most users a standard SSD will work fine, but if you work with high bitrate RAW footage there can be a large performance benefit to using a M.2 NVMe drive.
Optional Tertiary Drive - Dedicated Media Cache/Scratch (SSD/M.2 NVMe) - Using a dedicated SSD for your media cache and scratch files can at times improve performance when playing and scrubbing through compositions. Upgrading to an even faster NVMe drive can give some performance gains, but the difference is more pronounce in other applications like After Effects.
Optional Storage Drive (Platter) - For long term storage where the high speed of SSDs is typically not required, a larger traditional platter hard drive is a good choice as they are still much cheaper per GB than SSDs.
Can you work from an external drive for DaVinci Resolve?
Technically, you could keep your footage and projects on an external drive and edit directly from that drive. However, this is one of the most common causes of performance and stability issues we hear about from our customers. We highly recommend having a large enough internal drive so that you can copy all your files to a local drive before editing. External drives are terrific for backup and archiving, but not ideal to work off of.
Resolve 18 Studio, Mac Pro 3.0 GHz 8-core, 32 gigs RAM, dual AMD D700 GPU.
Audio I/O: Sound Devices USBPre-2