Which of MY storage is best for Resolve/Fusion performance

Hi Guys

We recently switched from a 1080p workflow, to a 4K 25fps workflow and my system is naturally not performing as nice as it was with 1080p.

So I have 3 different storage options and I will have to choose one of these as we wont' be upgrading in the nearest time just yet.

1) Local SSD for OS - I prefer to avoid this for cache or storage due to limited read/write life of the drive.
2) External USB3 - Western Digital Elements drive
3) Synology NAS connected with 1Gb LAN (4 X WD Red drives in Synology Hybrid Raid setup)

Most source files will be on option3, but could I use this as my cache drive also, or perhaps that should be option2 instead?

I do realise a NAS on a 10Gb setup would be ideal, but budget is going towards other things at the moment...

Comments, suggestions welcome!

I just went through this painful experiment for my feature film. The best solution for a budget,,,

I have a 4 bay enclosure at raid zero for footage and cache files. I use my internal SSD drive for the resolve database n backups.

I have another a western digital “my book” 5400 rpm drive for backing up everything

Performance will also be improved by amount of video ram and processors. Video ram seems to be the most important. I have 16 gbs.

With my film, I use 5 video tracks. When I got to finishing, I had to use 80 audio tracks.

I’m not in 4K but that many tracks is probably as stressful as 4K with a few tracks of video n audio.

The system does lock in at 24p.


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Thanks Richard for the info and sharing your experience.

I have some additional info. Seeing that I'm unlikely to upgrade my network to 10Gb, I also actually have a spare internal 5TB WD Red 5400rpm drive, and also a 1TB WD Raptor 10 000rpm drive.

Should I perhaps use one of those internal drives as my cache drive?

Furthermore, where do I actually set my cache?
From Resolve preferences in the "Media Storage" section, then the System tab, I currently have this set to my NAS. Is that it?

Does the Fusion tab also use this setting, or it has its own cache that needs to be set?

Is this a collaboration environment? Multiple machines using PostgreSQL databases?

I doubt the PostgreSQL itself will be a bottleneck in any case...

Is this a collaboration environment? Multiple machines using PostgreSQL databases?

In this case it's just me using Resolve/Fusion in the free edition at 4K (or Ultra HD). I'm hitting some limits so I need to see if its worth me getting a studio version to get the use of my additional GPU, vs rather spending the cash towards better network/nas, although option2 will cost a lot more...

In that case:

https://www.newegg.com/p/pl?N=100167523 ... 86&Order=4

In that case:

https://www.newegg.com/p/pl?N=100167523 ... 86&Order=4

so you're saying a single internal drive for cache would work best in my case?

As a data point, the fastest NVMe SSDs right now have about 3 GB/sec of read bandwidth; a typical hard drive has a bandwidth of about 90 MB/sec. (Most of the external SSDs that are floating around can't hit 3 GB/sec...)

1 GB/sec = 8 Gbps, so that 3 GB/sec SSD could support reads at about 24 Gbps, and the 90 MB/sec hard drive of about 720 Mbps.

ProRes 422 4K has a bandwidth of about 503 Mbps.

BRAW ranges from about 160 to about 580 MB/sec, or 1.25 to 4.53 Gbps.

Bear in mind that when you layer footage or when the DAW is rendering it may be accessing more than one clip at a time.

USB 3.0 (USB-A) maxes out at 5 Gbps.

USB 3.2 (USB-C) can hit about 20 Gbps.

Thunderbolt can hit 40 Gbps, but 8 Gbps of that is reserved for video signals only (to a monitor for example) so in effect 32 Gbps.

My setup is theradripper x3960 64gb ram rtx 3090 and a rtx 2080 super. Setup is. Samsung 970 pro for system files, mp600 corsair 1Tb for programs and cache, 4Tb slow for backup, 20Gb ram disk for smaler projects.
Workflow is copy all files to ram disk and import media to resolve and if export can be en ram disk i export to it also. This is for me the fastest for my 5-15 min projects


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