SSD Firewire Drive for FCPX

ustein

ustein

Well-known member
As FCPX does all its rendering in the Project and Events folders how about using a Firewire SSD drive. All feedback would be helpful.
 
Just idle rambling here, on my old macpro I had a dedicated eSata internal drive as the render drive.

I'm waiting on the new Macpros to arrive the latest rumour is Q4 2011 as intel have just published a schedule for the Xeon sandybridge stuff, I'm wondering will the new machines still have internal eSata drives with external thunderbolt. Anyhow I'll be dedicating a drive for renders I think external thunderbolt will be faster thou.
 
I bought my MacPro last year and it does not have Thunderbolt. I look for a solution to improve the disk speed for FCPX but also be able to carry the drive with me for demos.
 
Your internal drives eSata are much faster than FW800 but your are limited to 4 and one of those is usually allocated as the system drive. I dont think your (new) Macpro has and external eSATA interface but its easy enough to add one. I would make sure I had 4 internal eSatas fitted before considering external storage.

Inside my old Macpro there are 2 unused eSata interfaces, just plugs on the motherboard not connected to anything, I purchased on of these. (see below) it lets you extend the unused plugs to the rear of the computer I installed mine just below the graphics card.
Connecting the internal cables is very awkward but once done i have an additional external interface for two eSata drives which behave just like firewire, plug and play only much much faster.


http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Internal-SATA-Cable-External-eSATA-PCI-Bracket-Slot-/310171615594?pt=UK_Computing_CablesConnectors_RL&hash=item4837ab416a#ht_2708wt_1033



 
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Firstly, FCP X will run fast on almost any drive above FW800. However, if your "scubbing" a lot through the video then having a raid drive would be your cheapest and best solution. The SSD drives are amazing, but you can only take advantage of that blazing speed by installing on a serial connection/eSata.
You need to look into the speeds of these ports, because eSata is much faster then FW800 and the new Thunderbolt is even faster.
With the macs, there is also USB 3 to consider.
If I had a mac pro, then I would have the System disk on an SSD and have a raid of Western Digital Black drives. for the video disk.
From your setup, it sounds as though you need to do more research on the different ports and drives.
http://www.barefeats.com/tbolt01.html
 
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I thought your question was about which storage / render disk and configuration to use?
Your now asking about SSD / External scratch to solve exporting issues? Sry, just a bit confused about your original question now.
 
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Sorry the confusion.

I want to improve render speed. I mentioned the GPU I have and the bug was a side note.
 
Render speed is very reliant on CPU, RAM, and GPU... Using a SSD wont much of an improvement with regards to render speed compared to a fast 7200rpm drive.
Rendering to an internal drive on you MacPro will be faster then to an FW800 drive, but only by a little.
The best setup would be to have an internal raid that you edit video on... thats where a fast drive/s makes a slight difference.
But when you render, a FW800 or Sata or Thunderbolt will all be around the same speed.

To my knowledge, duel graphic cards wont help with FCP renders. Motion and After Effets could possible benefit from duel cards.

If you want a fast external render drive, possible look into buy a USB 3 card and a new USB 3 portable drive...
 
Not an expert but I always thought the drive speed was key when rendering, the CPU is miles faster than the hard drive interface. When on a big render I can hear my drives chugging away and the CPU has to wait

I Think giving your system a fast dedicated render drive will reap benefits and thats how I set my machine up and intend to in the future, I'd steer away from USB 3 - yes its fast but it demands processor cycles to work which is an extra burden on your CPU , FW, eSATA and thunderbolt dont they have their own dedicated hardware.
 
No, the render is the most CPU, RAM, and GPU intensive.
The data the computer needs from the Hard Drives at render point, needs to be constant but not intensive.
I could render 10 mins from a usb 2.0 drive, and compared to the internal drive... it would only be a few seconds slower.

Its when your video scrubbing, in the editing process that you benefit from a fast hard drive array. The hard drive needs to be fast and be able to handle random access reading.
A simple test, is to run "Activity Monitor" or some type of drive data indicator (I use istat menu) and you can see the bandwidth your hard drives are consuming.
At render point, its minimal... however the CPU and GPU are working quite hard. (open a video file and scrub along the time line a little, then do a render and check the bandwidth mid way through. You will see a large difference between the 2)
At the end of the day, we are talking about saving a couple of mins in rendering times.
Yes an SSD will make a difference, yes a raid will make a difference, yes FW800 vs eSata or Thunderbolt will ALL SAVE you some time from your rendering waits. But it really comes down to having a drive with a fast response time that will help save you seconds.
Once you export out something rather large, say 10mins... you wont see much of a difference between any of these drives.
 
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