Storage devices for recording

Ldr_Chicken · December 19, 2014

Hi guys, i've recently grown an interest for recording on my pc, going back earlier this year i built a gaming pc and something i sorta lapsed on and just went with whatever seemed good was my Harddrive. I bought a decent Harddrive that was recommended to me and everything's been great. Ive always tried to record however the recording speed is only at 30fps since my harddrive could never go any higher. However my machine could run a game like Bf4 while recording at something like 80fps.

Now i'm hoping you're still with me as my knowledge with Harddrives is extremely limited and i wouldn't be surprised if i've made absolutely no sense at all.....

So my problem is i'd like to record at 60fps... my current specs allow me to do this with ease but my harddrive cannot write it fast enough and it sort of holds me back and makes recording quite a pain. So ive done a small amount of research and a solution that i've came across is to purchase another storage device such as an SSD or a HDD and record to that while playing on my current Harddrive.

So im here to ask if this would be a worthwhile solution and would it work out? and would you have any suggestions or is there any certain type of storage device that i need in order to do so? I have a Harddrive sitting around that i simply hooked up into my Pc loaded it up and set Dxtory to record in an empty folder in that Harddrive but i'm not even sure if that Harddrive had the ability to do so or if i even did it right. As it could record around 60fps but it would fluctuate rapidly from 40 to 60 and the recording would come out all choppy.

Anyway i hope you have an idea at what i'm getting at and i await your response.

wpirobotbuilder · December 19, 2014

Hi guys, i've recently grown an interest for recording on my pc, going back earlier this year i built a gaming pc and something i sorta lapsed on and just went with whatever seemed good was my Harddrive. I bought a decent Harddrive that was recommended to me and everything's been great. Ive always tried to record however the recording speed is only at 30fps since my harddrive could never go any higher. However my machine could run a game like Bf4 while recording at something like 80fps.

Now i'm hoping you're still with me as my knowledge with Harddrives is extremely limited and i wouldn't be surprised if i've made absolutely no sense at all.....

So my problem is i'd like to record at 60fps... my current specs allow me to do this with ease but my harddrive cannot write it fast enough and it sort of holds me back and makes recording quite a pain. So ive done a small amount of research and a solution that i've came across is to purchase another storage device such as an SSD or a HDD and record to that while playing on my current Harddrive.

So im here to ask if this would be a worthwhile solution and would it work out? and would you have any suggestions or is there any certain type of storage device that i need in order to do so? I have a Harddrive sitting around that i simply hooked up into my Pc loaded it up and set Dxtory to record in an empty folder in that Harddrive but i'm not even sure if that Harddrive had the ability to do so or if i even did it right. As it could record around 60fps but it would fluctuate rapidly from 40 to 60 and the recording would come out all choppy.

Anyway i hope you have an idea at what i'm getting at and i await your response.

It depends on the quality you want to record at. The most consistent solution would be an SSD -- never mind the high write speeds, the access latency is very low which will reduce dropped frames if your write rate spikes. A mid-level drive would be a good choice (MX100 or 840/850 EVO). If you are doing extremely high-quality recording, then you will want much better performance consistency, so a drive like the Samsung 840/850 Pro, Intel 730, Sandisk Extreme II would be better choices.

You also could get a RAID 0 of small 10K drives (think Velociraptor, 500GB). The RAID 0 would be far less expensive than the SSD configuration (for the same size) and would give similar sequential performance. It would also be less reliable, though, and be more noisy.

Ldr_Chicken · December 20, 2014

It depends on the quality you want to record at. The most consistent solution would be an SSD -- never mind the high write speeds, the access latency is very low which will reduce dropped frames if your write rate spikes. A mid-level drive would be a good choice (MX100 or 840/850 EVO). If you are doing extremely high-quality recording, then you will want much better performance consistency, so a drive like the Samsung 840/850 Pro, Intel 730, Sandisk Extreme II would be better choices.

You also could get a RAID 0 of small 10K drives (think Velociraptor, 500GB). The RAID 0 would be far less expensive than the SSD configuration (for the same size) and would give similar sequential performance. It would also be less reliable, though, and be more noisy.

Awesome, thats answered my question perfectly thank you very much.