Video editing - External SSD (USB to SATA)

[LukaKitty]

Quite recently, I got myself a new SSD. Specifically a M.2 one to populate the second M.2 slot on my motherboard.

This upgrade has let me to a spare 240GB SSD with a SATA 3 connectivity, as using both M.2 slots disabled a few SATA ports.

 

 

~ An Idea ~

A bit of time before I went out of my way to type and post this topic, I wanted to make a video about something I recorded.

The I came to think, would this new external SSD be any "good" for video editing with a USB 3.0 to SATA 3 connection?

 

 

~ Bear In Mind ~

1. I've ran out of available SATA ports, due to two M.2 SSD's.
2. Only got 3 ways to connect external drives. 2x USB 3.0, and 1x USB 2.0.
3. No SATA to USB Type-C suggestions, due to impracticality with other devices.

 

 

~ Thoughts ~

With this said, I want to hear what you ladies and gents have on mind regarding this. ^-^

[Enderman]

There are PCIe cards that add sata or M.2.

Or you can sell the small drives and just buy a better larger one so that you don't have 20 different drives connected at once.

[LukaKitty]

30 minutes ago, Enderman said:

There are PCIe cards that add sata or M.2.

Or you can sell the small drives and just buy a better larger one so that you don't have 20 different drives connected at once.

Yeah, I use all my drives for different tasks, so no.

 

I wanted to know thoughts about this topic, not suggestions to buy other stuff. >.<

[Enderman]

2 minutes ago, Crinklekitty said:

Yeah, I use all my drives for different tasks, so no.

 

I wanted to know thoughts about this topic, not suggestions to buy other stuff. >.<

Any why can't you use one drive for multiple tasks...?

You know that it doesn't matter, right?

You can use folders or partitions to separate files used for different tasks.

[LukaKitty]

18 hours ago, Enderman said:

Any why can't you use one drive for multiple tasks...?

You know that it doesn't matter, right?

You can use folders or partitions to separate files used for different tasks.

In my case, it happens to actually matter a bit. Besides, I want to keep my drives as de-fragmented as possible as well.

Also, not like mechanical hard drives are unable to read and write at the exact same moment.

 

Using folders doesn't help in terms of different tasks.

And partitions are just two "drives" on the same disk.

 

The less strain on the drives, the better.

I mean, if you were to install a crapton of stuff on one drive and boot off of it, it'd take longer to get everything up and running compared to a drive with less programs and such on it. Besides, not like putting the majority of your files on one drives is gonna help if the drive suddenly fails.

 

C drive: Boot drive, drivers (SSD)

D drive: DVD-RW

E drive: Games (HDD)

F drive: Games with long loads (SSD)

G drive: Media center (HDD)

H drive: Software and stuff (SSD)

I drive: Downloads and other things (HDD)

 

If you were to combine drive E, F, G, H, and I... the drive would have way more stuff to do, and would be noticeable.

[Enderman]

4 minutes ago, Crinklekitty said:

If you were to combine drive E, F, G, H, and I... the drive would have way more stuff to do, and would be noticeable.

I can guarantee you that if you use a single SSD for that stuff, there will be absolutely 0 noticeable difference.

I also use a separate SSD for my OS and programs to make clean installing easier by just unplugging the data drive.

But no, there is no advantage of splitting programs and files and games among multiple drives unless the drives are HDDs or memory cards or something painfully slow.

[LukaKitty]

7 hours ago, Enderman said:

I can guarantee you that if you use a single SSD for that stuff, there will be absolutely 0 noticeable difference.

I also use a separate SSD for my OS and programs to make clean installing easier by just unplugging the data drive.

But no, there is no advantage of splitting programs and files and games among multiple drives unless the drives are HDDs or memory cards or something painfully slow.

As if buying a 4TB SSD is gonna be any cheap. >.>

 

By the way, I feel like you're not thinking much of other things as well when it comes to different kinds of storage.

SSD's can and will wear out over time, which is going to be a problem. Besides, not like having everything on one drive is gonna help you anything in redundancy. If you were in my position, but used one drive for everything... you'd be in the shit. Had to install Windows about 10 times in 2017. And the last time I did, it was because I nuked everything on my main drive by accident.

 

I currently use 3 HDD's, and 3 SSD's on a daily basis. If I were to use only one HDD for example, I would notice slowdown if I were to storage games, play high quality media from it, and download roughly 20 to 30 files on it in one go. And I don't see how partitioning it will help, as the HDD will still only have one arm, and 3 virtual drives to worry about. SSD's wouldn't last very long with the way I shift files around on HDD's... Oh, and using over a Terrabyte of LAN activity back and forth between my drives and my server doesn't help either.

 

As for SSD's... well, highest M.2 NVMe SSD I've seen in retailers, go up to 2 TB.

 

 

You may not see any performance difference, but I sure as sh*t do.

And honestly, your method does not help in the event of a drive failure. At least for me. And I do make backups, but not frequent enough, due to the amount of files.

[Enderman]

1 hour ago, Crinklekitty said:

As if buying a 4TB SSD is gonna be any cheap. >.>

You can get 1TB ones for a couple hundred bucks.

 

1 hour ago, Crinklekitty said:

SSD's can and will wear out over time, which is going to be a problem.

No, actually they are far more durable and reliable than HDDs because of no moving parts.

Also, if you're talking about the limited write lifespan, an SSD will live longer than you will, you will never write multiple petabytes of data to a drive in your lifetime.

 

1 hour ago, Crinklekitty said:

If I were to use only one HDD for example, I would notice slowdown if I were to storage games, play high quality media from it, and download roughly 20 to 30 files on it in one go.

If it is an SSD, not an HDD, you will not notice any performance issues doing all that stuff at once.

It has far more bandwidth than all those things can use at once, unless you're downloading from a local server with something like 10Gb network connection and an SSD or ramdisk on the other end.

 

1 hour ago, Crinklekitty said:

You may not see any performance difference, but I sure as sh*t do.

I think you have trouble comprehending the transfer speeds of an SSD compared to a hard drive.

It is not just sequential speeds matter, random access speeds, iops, and latency all are far more important than sequential speeds, and those are hundreds or thousands of timess faster on an SSD compared to a HDD.

 

1 hour ago, Crinklekitty said:

And honestly, your method does not help in the event of a drive failure. At least for me. And I do make backups, but not frequent enough, due to the amount of files.

Splitting all your files up on 5 drives does nothing for redundancy, if a drive fails you still lose your data.

It only helps against drive failure if you're running raid 1 or 5 across all disks.

[homeap5]

3 hours ago, Crinklekitty said:

SSD's can and will wear out over time, which is going to be a problem. (...) Had to install Windows about 10 times in 2017. (...)

Why not 365 times? It will make your SSD lifespan even shorter.

 

[STRESSMASTER]

On 10/2/2018 at 7:07 PM, Crinklekitty said:

Quite recently, I got myself a new SSD. Specifically a M.2 one to populate the second M.2 slot on my motherboard.

This upgrade has let me to a spare 240GB SSD with a SATA 3 connectivity, as using both M.2 slots disabled a few SATA ports.

 

 

~ An Idea ~

A bit of time before I went out of my way to type and post this topic, I wanted to make a video about something I recorded.

The I came to think, would this new external SSD be any "good" for video editing with a USB 3.0 to SATA 3 connection?

 

 

~ Bear In Mind ~

1. I've ran out of available SATA ports, due to two M.2 SSD's.
2. Only got 3 ways to connect external drives. 2x USB 3.0, and 1x USB 2.0.
3. No SATA to USB Type-C suggestions, due to impracticality with other devices.

 

 

~ Thoughts ~

With this said, I want to hear what you ladies and gents have on mind regarding this. ^-^

do you have a Esata port on the IO shield? if so you can get a external bay with it's own powersource and hot swap 3.5 and 2.5 drives. It cost like $20ish. Otherwise the same device will also offer a USB 3.0 or 2.0 connection

 

link below to a example

Spoiler

https://www.amazon.com/Mediasonic-Bay-Dock-2-5-SATA/dp/B0078H8L04/ref=sr_1_2?s=pc&amp;ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1538642098&amp;sr=1-2&amp;refinements=p_n_feature_keywords_browse-bin%3A2886986011%2C2886967011

 

or

 

https://www.amazon.com/SISUN-Docking-Station-Reader-Black/dp/B009F7TXMK/ref=sr_1_2?s=pc&amp;ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1538642136&amp;sr=1-2&amp;refinements=p_n_feature_keywords_browse-bin%3A2886986011

you can also add a Esata controller

 

example below

Spoiler

https://www.amazon.com/EopZolTM-Express-SATA3-SATA3-0-ASMEDIA1061/dp/B01CJHE688/ref=sr_1_26?s=pc&amp;ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1538642345&amp;sr=1-26&amp;refinements=p_n_feature_keywords_browse-bin%3A2886986011

 

[LukaKitty]

10 hours ago, Enderman said:

You can get 1TB ones for a couple hundred bucks.

 

No, actually they are far more durable and reliable than HDDs because of no moving parts.

Also, if you're talking about the limited write lifespan, an SSD will live longer than you will, you will never write multiple petabytes of data to a drive in your lifetime.

 

If it is an SSD, not an HDD, you will not notice any performance issues doing all that stuff at once.

It has far more bandwidth than all those things can use at once, unless you're downloading from a local server with something like 10Gb network connection and an SSD or ramdisk on the other end.

 

I think you have trouble comprehending the transfer speeds of an SSD compared to a hard drive.

It is not just sequential speeds matter, random access speeds, iops, and latency all are far more important than sequential speeds, and those are hundreds or thousands of timess faster on an SSD compared to a HDD.

 

Splitting all your files up on 5 drives does nothing for redundancy, if a drive fails you still lose your data.

It only helps against drive failure if you're running raid 1 or 5 across all disks.

1. Clearly you missed the point of me using 4TB or something.

Besides, not like everyone in the world sh*ts money to buy several 1 TB SSD's anyway.

 

2. You do realize that SSD's have a limited read/write lifespan, right...? If written on too much, the cells will wear out, and become useless when it's worn out too much.

 

3. Not every SSD exactly the same. Most SSD's "I've" seen (keyword: I've), were rated to handle several hundred Terrabytes of re-writes, not petabytes.

 

4. In performance, I was mostly focused on HDD's performance being noticeable if loaded with a lot of tasks... let alone video editing.

 

5. I'll still have redundancy in one way, which is this:

  - If I were to store everything on one drive, and it fails, I'd lose everything on it.

  - If I were to store different things on different drives, and one fails, I'd only lose files for that drive. Not every file I have.

 

 

I'm asking about something I already have, not something to buy.

[LukaKitty]

8 hours ago, STRESSMASTER said:

do you have a Esata port on the IO shield? if so you can get a external bay with it's own powersource and hot swap 3.5 and 2.5 drives. It cost like $20ish. Otherwise the same device will also offer a USB 3.0 or 2.0 connection

 

link below to a example

  Hide contents

https://www.amazon.com/Mediasonic-Bay-Dock-2-5-SATA/dp/B0078H8L04/ref=sr_1_2?s=pc&amp;ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1538642098&amp;sr=1-2&amp;refinements=p_n_feature_keywords_browse-bin%3A2886986011%2C2886967011

 

or

 

https://www.amazon.com/SISUN-Docking-Station-Reader-Black/dp/B009F7TXMK/ref=sr_1_2?s=pc&amp;ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1538642136&amp;sr=1-2&amp;refinements=p_n_feature_keywords_browse-bin%3A2886986011

you can also add a Esata controller

 

example below

  Hide contents

https://www.amazon.com/EopZolTM-Express-SATA3-SATA3-0-ASMEDIA1061/dp/B01CJHE688/ref=sr_1_26?s=pc&amp;ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1538642345&amp;sr=1-26&amp;refinements=p_n_feature_keywords_browse-bin%3A2886986011

 

I do not have any eSATA ports on my PC, no. It's mainly filled with loads and loads of USB ports.

 

Also, using a eSATA with it's own controller wouldn't help me, as I pretty much use every power outlet I have for my rig.

[LukaKitty]

11 hours ago, Enderman said:

You can get 1TB ones for a couple hundred bucks.

 

No, actually they are far more durable and reliable than HDDs because of no moving parts.

Also, if you're talking about the limited write lifespan, an SSD will live longer than you will, you will never write multiple petabytes of data to a drive in your lifetime.

 

If it is an SSD, not an HDD, you will not notice any performance issues doing all that stuff at once.

It has far more bandwidth than all those things can use at once, unless you're downloading from a local server with something like 10Gb network connection and an SSD or ramdisk on the other end.

 

I think you have trouble comprehending the transfer speeds of an SSD compared to a hard drive.

It is not just sequential speeds matter, random access speeds, iops, and latency all are far more important than sequential speeds, and those are hundreds or thousands of timess faster on an SSD compared to a HDD.

 

Splitting all your files up on 5 drives does nothing for redundancy, if a drive fails you still lose your data.

It only helps against drive failure if you're running raid 1 or 5 across all disks.

By the way, in case you don't believe me in the amount of data I can write on the SSD before it'll wear out over time, here you go:

 

Recap:

I want to know more about the stuff I already have, not buy unnecessary storage.

Hell, I'd buy and build a new mATX PC instead for that money.

 

 

 

 

Source:

https://www.kingston.com/datasheets/SV300S3_en.pdf

[Enderman]

1 hour ago, Crinklekitty said:

By the way, in case you don't believe me in the amount of data I can write on the SSD before it'll wear out over time, here you go:

 

If you do some research you will find SSD endurance tests from about 3 years ago, and the SSDs lasted up to 2PB.

Also, SSDs have improved a ton since then, so you should expect about 5-10PB probably for a consumer SSD.

An enterprise SSD will last even longer.

You will never run out of SSD writes in your entire lifetime.

It is a non-issue.

[seagate_surfer]

It is very difficult for one standard user to get to write the amount that a drive is supposed to support daily, of course that the lifespan gets affected by several different factors, including manipulation, power levels, heat, etc... But under ideal conditions, they last a lot! you can still find people using drives of 10years old (or even more).

[LukaKitty]

On 10/4/2018 at 9:53 PM, seagate_surfer said:

It is very difficult for one standard user to get to write the amount that a drive is supposed to support daily, of course that the lifespan gets affected by several different factors, including manipulation, power levels, heat, etc... But under ideal conditions, they last a lot! you can still find people using drives of 10years old (or even more).

Oh, professional at work here.

 

 

Getting back on topic, rather than having an argument:

I use my drives for different stuff, and happened to have a spare 240GB SSD left over.

And I mainly wondered:

"Would it work well for video editing on a USB 3.0 connection?"

 

I recently edited a video and used it as a scratch disk, and found it working well. But I'm also wondering what other people's thoughts on this is. And of course, without telling me to go buy a SSD with a ton of space for everything, which I find a bit rubbish. At least for my use.

 

 

Responding to what you said:

The available SSD I have right now, used to be my boot drive for a while, and was located behind a front fan. Not sure how power levels went, as I just went "Plug & Play" with it. After upgrading my rig, I used the SSD as storage for software and miscellaneous files, such as OBS, Audacity, AverMedia HDMI capture, and hell, even a game server.

 

Lifespan isn't my main concern for the next 4 years for different reasons, but rather what I can do with it. And what if my idea is a good one or not.

[STRESSMASTER]

Spoiler

On 10/5/2018 at 6:25 PM, Crinklekitty said:

On 10/4/2018 at 11:35 AM, Crinklekitty said:

I do not have any eSATA ports on my PC, no. It's mainly filled with loads and loads of USB ports.

 

Also, using a eSATA with it's own controller wouldn't help me, as I pretty much use every power outlet I have for my rig.

 

 

so you do not have a PCIe 1x slot avaliable? SATA/eSATA controllers shouldn't need additional internal power. you get that via the external base which also plugs into the wall. since it takes so little power any power splitter device will work

[LukaKitty]

On 10/16/2018 at 12:17 AM, STRESSMASTER said:

  Reveal hidden contents

 

so you do not have a PCIe 1x slot avaliable? SATA/eSATA controllers shouldn't need additional internal power. you get that via the external base which also plugs into the wall. since it takes so little power any power splitter device will work

I've got no eSATA slots available at all, but got 4 PCIe 3.0 x16 sized lanes left. However, looking at the contact pins, it looks like a PCIe 3.0 x8 lane.

 

But as I mentioned before, if it required a wall outlet for power, I can't use it.

[SSD Sean]

I use this for one of my external SSDs: https://www.amazon.com/AUKEY-Enclosure-Support-Protective-Compatible/dp/B01J3NM642/

 

It features usap protocal for faster transfers and I think it supports TRIM with USAP as well...But I’m away from home for a few days and cannot verify for sure. That should suit your needs to connect any 2.5” drive over usb 3.0 and enable decent bandwidth for video transfers. I don’t see why you shouldn’t use an external ssd for video editing besides the issue where not all external support TRIM. Without it, your SSD can slow down after a lot of work, garbage collection without TRIM will cause increased write amplification. Sometimes WA can cause 2-10x the writes to the NAND than what you are actually writing. Tho, sequential workloads like video editing have lower WA than random workloads. But if you get one with TRIM support you’re set. 

 

While I separate my data similar to how you do, I’m with enderman on his recommendation though. If one day you can just sell off your two storage SSDs and just get a single larger one, especially an NVMe one, that is the best thing. Consolidation is good...trust me, I have over 200 SSDs and HDDs lol. No performance loss in most situations, if anything faster performance, and the latest MyDigitalSSD BPX Pro and Corsair MP510 feature about 1.7PB endurance (1,7000TBW) for rather “cheap.” There are also many high capacity enterprise SSDs with higher endurance on eBay for rather cheap too. Besides that, endurance isn’t much of an issue for mains storage SSDs, doing semi-pro/pro level video editing is tho. That’s the time you need beefed up endurance and it’s reccomended to just have a dedicated drive for the task. But for normal and heavy consumer uses, it’s not an issue. Just don’t expect more endurance life than the company’s endurance rating. While SSDs have improved and endurance with it, there are reasons drives are rated the way they are. Specifically, error rates over time shoot up after hundreds of TB are written. When it gets to a point where LDPC ECC has to kick in, an SSD can get really slow if the NAND has gotten too worn.

 

I have a 105TB NAS and lots of stuff I transfer between it and my desktop a lot. Over 5 years I’ve written 20TB to like 3-4 of my SSDs, or 80TB or so. 

 

Also, you don’t have a backup? What kind of thrill seeker are you? lol Get at least an external large enough to protect your important files. A file does not exist unless it exists in three places. HDDs are cheap, recovering precious data off a failed drive is not.

[STRESSMASTER]

On 10/17/2018 at 12:30 AM, Crinklekitty said:

I've got no eSATA slots available at all, but got 4 PCIe 3.0 x16 sized lanes left. However, looking at the contact pins, it looks like a PCIe 3.0 x8 lane.

 

But as I mentioned before, if it required a wall outlet for power, I can't use it.

you can't get a AC splitter?
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B071NGLS26/ref=s9_acsd_top_hd_bw_b3C6a_c_x_7_w?pf_rd_m=ATVPDKIKX0DER&amp;pf_rd_s=merchandised-search-3&amp;pf_rd_r=M20PA8Q5GJAQ14GNNCXM&amp;pf_rd_r=M20PA8Q5GJAQ14GNNCXM&amp;pf_rd_t=101&amp;pf_rd_p=64ba99c2-3847-58d2-8d96-7df81f53ea1b&amp;pf_rd_p=64ba99c2-3847-58d2-8d96-7df81f53ea1b&amp;pf_rd_i=761520
 

As for the Esata slot the PCIe SATA card is actually only 1x you can put this car in ANY PCIe slot that is 1x or higher even if the slot would accept a lot more pins.

The PCIe Sata card will have a eSATA port normally by default. The one I previous linked does have the eSATA slot and also has a internal SATA slot.