Drive Setup for Editing Workstation

[Daniel_5250]

Hi Guys,


I'm getting a parts list together for a workstation build for lightroom/photoshop and premier pro as well as some music production. I've decided on the main components but I'm a bit stuck with hard drive choice.

I was thinking: 500GB SSD boot drive for windows and programs (Samsung 850 Evo)
500GB SSD for a project drive (Samsung 960 Pro)
Raid 5 array of WD Red drives for mass storage

I'm nos sure if using a SATA SSD for the boot drive will be much slower than using another M.2 drive?

Also, what is a scratch/cache drive? I thought it was a project drive but some builds have both listed.

Cheers!

 

[USAFRet]

The 850 EVO is just fine for the OS drive.

For the cache...that is a dedicated folder for a temp working space that the application uses.
I have a small SSD for that, but it could be anywhere.
Not critical to change it to a different drive.

This is in LR 5:

 

[Daniel_5250]

So maybe a 128GB 850 Evo for a cache?

And keep the 960 pro as a project drive? Or would a standard SSD be a quick?

 

[USAFRet]

So maybe a 128GB 850 Evo for a cache?

And keep the 960 pro as a project drive? Or would a standard SSD be a quick?

On my system, various folders on that 120GB K drive serve as cache space for various applications.
LR, PaintshopPro, CAD package, etc, etc.

Mainly, because I had that drive laying around, and rather than letting it go to waste, use it for that stuff.

I would keep the 960 Pro as the project drive.
It is 'faster' than a regular SSD (850 EVO, for instance). 'Faster enough' to warrant the extra cost is all up to you.

 

[marko55]

I'm gonna throw this out there based on experience with other apps that use temp/cache drives, and USAFRet may need to correct me here based on his experience: Typically you want your temp/cache drives to keep up with your main application/DB drive because that's the drive it'll be moving data on/off with while processing data. So if you're using a 960 Pro for your project drive, its likely best to grab a 960 xxx for the temp drive.

When you have the ability to set the max size of it like USAFRet showed (vs only being able to specify an entire drive and it using all of its space), I've seen folks put a 960 pro (for instance) as their OS drive instead of the slower 850 you're looking at and just allocating a few GB on that OS drive for temp since the OS drive typically isn't doing much while these apps are running since they run most of their I/O off the other SSD (project drive in this case from the looks of it). How's that for a run-on sentence for ya....

 

[USAFRet]

^^^^^

Right.
If I didn't already have that small SSD around, I wouldn't have bothered getting a separate one just for the cache space.
I would have just used space on one of the other main SSD's.

 

[Daniel_5250]

I'm gonna throw this out there based on experience with other apps that use temp/cache drives, and USAFRet may need to correct me here based on his experience: Typically you want your temp/cache drives to keep up with your main application/DB drive because that's the drive it'll be moving data on/off with while processing data. So if you're using a 960 Pro for your project drive, its likely best to grab a 960 xxx for the temp drive.

When you have the ability to set the max size of it like USAFRet showed (vs only being able to specify an entire drive and it using all of its space), I've seen folks put a 960 pro (for instance) as their OS drive instead of the slower 850 you're looking at and just allocating a few GB on that OS drive for temp since the OS drive typically isn't doing much while these apps are running since they run most of their I/O off the other SSD (project drive in this case from the looks of it). How's that for a run-on sentence for ya....

Right, so another 960 pro for the boot drive and cache? Then that will speed up program launch etc as well