Blackmagic Forum

Hi All,

Re: Best Setup For New Internal and External Hard Drives.

So I will have a PC (shortly) with the following internally:

Drive 1. - SSD 1TB
Drive 2. - SSD 2 TB
Drive 3. - Spinner 2TB - not sure of make
Drive 3. - Spinner WD Red Plus 8TB

What is the best way to optimize DR utilizing the above? We are in process of making a feature film - so need allot of storage.

I am thinking of this:

Drive 1. - SSD 1TB. Dedicated C Drive - All system and DR installed here as default

Drive 2. - SSD 2TB. Dedicated to DR Database(s), DR Projects, DR Cache Files (i.e. scratch disk), DR Gallery Stills

Drive 3. - Normal Spinner 2TB. Use for whatever you want. Maybe smaller shoots, misc etc.

Drive 3. - Normal Spinner WD Red Plus 8TB. Use this for the actual footage of feature - Dailies including footage, sound, asset files etc for the feature project.

What do the more experienced DR users think?

I am not all that technical and I have confidence in simplicity. I appreciate the above doesn't cover backups, however that can be covered using external disks.

I experimented with editing a project with footage and sound stored on the Normal Spinner 2TB and DR ran and edited BM 4k RAW Q.5 just fine. So I am (reasonably) confident that the WD Red Plus 8TB should work just as well?

Many thanks as always for any input you can provide.

Kind Regards,

Lee

For a one man shop, here's what I recommend as a starting point for good speed and organization.

C: System (= or <1TB SSD)
D: Databases (= or <1TB SSD)
E: Exports (= or >4 TB)
F: Gallery/Cache/Optimized Media/Proxies (= or >4TB)
G: Media (= or >10 TB)

As you expand the storage system, C and D can be made RAID 1 for additional safety, G can be made into RAID 3, 5 or 6 for additional speed and safety, and E can be made a RAID 1 for safety as well.

In all cases, use externals/networked drives only for backup and archives.

So, 1 and 2 would work for C and D, 3 will do (for now) as a combined E and F, and finally 4 as G.

What is the total size of footage you have and what are your PC specs - without knowing this all advice is speculation at best.