MP All Models Media/Photo storage on HDD vs SSD

[LEOMODE]

If I were to store all my media/photo files to mechanical drives (HDD), and I try to load them up and run them on Final Cut Pro or Logic Pro, would they lag compared to putting them onto SSD?

I know transfer file will obviously be slower, but I was curious if loading/working with the files real-time will also suffer with lag as well.

I'm not a video/music professional so I'm just curious if I should opt in for buying a HDD for video/photo storages.

Thanks.

 

[kohlson]

In a world where $/GB was the same for SSD and HDD, the answer would be obvious. Since this is not reality, balancing the needs of storage and performance is in order. I have a 1TB NVMe SSD that is my working drive. At this time, 2-3 current project reside in full on this drive. They are also backed up to 2 different HDDs. Projects that I am not currently working on live on HDDs. When I want to work on them I copy them (all assets) to the SSD.

I think in your case, it depends on the size of the asset and how you have you FCPX library/event set up. Are assets copied into the library? Or do they stay in place? Are they large?

The slowest drive I have is an 8TB USB3 drive, reads and writes about 90 MBps. But disk latency is also a noticeable with this drive. I haven't tried it, but I am certain I would be unhappy working from this drive in any way.

 

[LEOMODE]

In a world where $/GB was the same for SSD and HDD, the answer would be obvious. Since this is not reality, balancing the needs of storage and performance is in order. I have a 1TB NVMe SSD that is my working drive. At this time, 2-3 current project reside in full on this drive. They are also backed up to 2 different HDDs. Projects that I am not currently working on live on HDDs. When I want to work on them I copy them (all assets) to the SSD.

I think in your case, it depends on the size of the asset and how you have you FCPX library/event set up. Are assets copied into the library? Or do they stay in place? Are they large?

The slowest drive I have is an 8TB USB3 drive, reads and writes about 90 MBps. But disk latency is also a noticeable with this drive. I haven't tried it, but I am certain I would be unhappy working from this drive in any way.

Ah got it, so it is noticeable in real life usage for loading/working within the app. That is very helpful thank you. I'm gathering the consensus so I know which storage amount I should choose for my Apple OEM SSD.

 

[LeonPro]

I would never use HDD for actual editing unless they were multiples of it configured in RAID. As mentioned above, save the old projects in HDD but work off an SSD.