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portable editing drives for 4k?


bonesandskin
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I have been using Samsung 850 Pro 1TB SSDs in Inateck USB 3.0 enclosures (the enclosures seem to affect performance of the drives) for editing on a MacBook Pro w/ 16gb RAM. It is the only thing I have found that can keep up with 4k/hold up in real time editing (though I do often use 1/4 or 1/2 resolution in Premiere to keep things snappy). The EVO series drives seemed not able to hold up in my experience.

Has anyone else found something that works well which is also portable?

Has anyone tried the Samsung 950 PRO Series?

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It's not the SSD. At a sequential read/write speed at about 450-500 MB/s it should definitely be fast enough for 4k, no doubt about it.

Quite a lot depends on the USB enclosure controller. Try to benchmark the ssd in the enclosure and see if you can reach those 450-500 MB/s speeds (or at least up to around 400 MB/s, which is often the real-world limit with USB 3.0). If not, you can assure that the enclosure is keeping your speeds down. Try running the AJA Ki benchmark: https://www.aja.com/en/products/aja-system-test.

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6 hours ago, mkabi said:

Look into SSD docking stations instead of enclosures, I'm not saying that that is the solution to your problem... But it's a possibility.

Since I was looking into a similar setup, meaning on-the-go workflow and backing up (as most of us should)...

I came a across this docking station: https://eshop.macsales.com/item/OWC/TB2U3DKR2/

It has Thunderbolt.

I think that that's as portable as you can get in terms of dual docking systems with Thunderbolt, I can't find singular docks with Thunderbolt, but there are many single or more slot docking systems with USB 3.0. Mind that I was looking at the portability factor here.

In my opinion, get that and for home use get the blackmagic rack system.

 

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On 5/11/2016 at 7:25 AM, bonesandskin said:

I have been using Samsung 850 Pro 1TB SSDs in Inateck USB 3.0 enclosures (the enclosures seem to affect performance of the drives) for editing on a MacBook Pro w/ 16gb RAM. It is the only thing I have found that can keep up with 4k/hold up in real time editing (though I do often use 1/4 or 1/2 resolution in Premiere to keep things snappy). The EVO series drives seemed not able to hold up in my experience.

Has anyone else found something that works well which is also portable?

Has anyone tried the Samsung 950 PRO Series?

Maybe obvious but are you using just one external drive for editing? At least 2 is recommended with one drive for media one for preview files etc.. (2 slower drives usually faster than one fast one)

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Sorry, I wasn't clear about the first part. I benchmarked a few enclosures and the Inateck performed the best which is why I was using them.

The issue is I am over 1tb for the project so I can't keep 2 separate drives for media and preview -- I need 2 x 1tb drives plugged into the 2 USB ports. And buying 2 x 2tb drives makes my heart stop. But in any case the preview files are on the Macbook's SSD along with the Premiere project file.

Docking station doesn't seem so portable to me... maybe if there is a thunderbolt docking station with only 2.5 inch drive slots. Also carrying around enclosure-less SSDs seems a bit dangerous to me. I know they are more stable than HDDs, but still...

There's no such thing as a "home system" in my case; I am edit much more on the go and am "home" only 2-6 months of the year.

Hmm...

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You could still try as an experiment using your SSD for preview files and putting media on a big USB drive..

WHat kind of files are you editing? Transcoding to an easier format is always a possible solution to speed things up.. Are you having trouble before or after adding effects?

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On 5/11/2016 at 5:25 PM, bonesandskin said:

I have been using Samsung 850 Pro 1TB SSDs in Inateck USB 3.0 enclosures...for editing on a MacBook Pro w/ 16gb RAM. It is the only thing I have found that can keep up with 4k/hold up in real time editing (though I do often use 1/4 or 1/2 resolution in Premiere to keep things snappy)....Has anyone else found something that works well which is also portable?

Of course SSD is fast but it's also expensive as you mention. If you are editing camera-native H264 4k content you may not need that much I/O speed. In my experience that is more CPU-limited than I/O-limited. For editing performance if you must transcode to a lower-compression codec like ProRes, then it may not fit on a 1TB SSD, so the speed doesn't help.

If you have any doubt about how much I/O performance you need, use Activity Monitor or iStat Menus check what your actual I/O rate is during editing operations.

One of the fastest USB 3.0 bus-powered portable drives is the 4TB Seagate Backup Plus Fast: http://amzn.com/B00HXAV0X6

More expensive but with Thunderbolt and USB interfaces is the 4TB WD Passport Pro: http://amzn.com/B00ITI0514

These are RAID-0 drives so you'd need to ensure they are backed up, but even SSD drives must be backed up, as any drive can fail.

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