SSHD vs Intel SRT/Asus SSD Caching

Hardware HDD's & SSD's
1

In trying to pick out parts for a new compositing workstation I realised that I need fast io to the video files, but mass storage at the same time

I'm thinking about a few options:

1. SSD (boot, applications), SSD (media files), HDD (everything else)

2. SSD (boot, applications), SSD (SRT/SSD caching for media), HDD (everything else)

3. SSD (boot, applications), SSHD (everything else, including media)

4. SSD (boot, applications), 2xHDD RAID0

for my particular usage (compositing in Nuke), which storage setup is going to give me the best read/write speed?

Mostly wondering about:

- How do options 2 and 3 compare in terms of performance, if my media files are still within the 8gb flash limit and are actually getting cached with the SSHD

- Between options 1, 2 and 3, which one has the best potential to prolong the life of the SSD/SSHD? I assume with any type of caching you're constantly writing to the SSD, which may cause a problem?

2

Option 4. (ive seen raid 0'd wd blacks (2tb) hit 250read / 230write or close to that, was a while ago). If you can afford it though (sell a kidney if you have to i guess) 2x large capacity ssds in raid 0 will be king.

 

3

but surely the 250read / 230write of the raid0 WD blacks is slower than even a single SSD where I can just permanently keep my media files? For example, the 840 pro has sequential read/write over 500MB/s

and unfortunately I dont have the funds to run such large capacity SSDs in raid0

4

Well how much space do you need for the working files then? 

Of course even in raid 0 hdds are slower than a ssd, but you have to weight up the capacity vs speed tradeoffs. 

You could even just grab a single 1tb ssd and be done with it then have another hdd external (or internal) for backups.

5

ah I see. Well, I'd be OK with manually moving files to the SSD when I need them

When I'm compositing in Nuke it will pull media files from a drive, and when the viewport renders a frame it will write that to a disk cache for faster viewport performance. If I keep this viewport cache on an SSD will it reduce its lifespan? Any changes to the composite will require a write to the cache and I dont know if the constant writing of such large (2k+ res) files would negatively affect the drive

And I'm guessing that if this Nuke disk cache is an issue, it would be just as big of an issue for a SSD as for a SRT SSD cache?

6

Wouldnt worry so much about the read/writes on the latest ssds. The nand use is evenly spread as much as possible, in saying that larger capacity ssds should outlast smaller sized drives as re/writes per cell will be less over a given 'x' amount of Tb's.

I gave the smart response caching a go when I first got my current z77 motherboard, yeah it works ok. The speeds were reasonable enough, but I much prefer just straight up ssd.

If you build a system with a heap of RAM you can also create a RAMdisk ~ say 8gb if you have 16gb total installed. Storing your nuke swap on that should make things pretty quick.