Best Disk Setup in a MacBook Pro at DVinfo.net

John Hewat · May 29th, 2011, 01:22 AM

Hello all,

I've recently replaced the optical bay of my macBook Pro with a second SSD, meaning that I have a pair of 120GB SSDs inside the machine (which are not identical).

My question is how best to use that space?

Drive 1 is the stock Apple one.
Drive 2 is the faster OWC one.

At the moment it's like this:

Drive 2 has OSX and applications (with 60GB to spare).
Drive 1 has two partitions:
a) 60GB Scratch Disk
b) 60GB Windows 7 in BootCamp

Because Drive 2, the OWC brand SSD is a much faster disk, should I move the scratch and render cache over to it instead of the slower drive?

I'm about to undertake a project in Premiere with over 4TB of video out of the 7D so I'm thinking I'm going to need an external scratch disk anyway. Am I right?

Thanks for your help,
-- John

Jon Larson · June 1st, 2011, 01:20 PM

John,

I doubt you will notice much of a difference between the two; but if you want to split hairs, choose the one with the best sequential read/writes for your media, and the one with the best random access transfer rates for your OS.

The more important consideration is that you seem to be serious about editing 4 TB of source material on a laptop with no mention of external data storage for source files, backups, rendered content, etc. All notebooks are a compromise between power and portability, and your is heavily weighted towards portability. All this is to say yes--you will need external storage, and a lot of it, and in multiple locations. And even once you have all that, you will still be struggling against the inherent limitations of your laptop.

In summary, I wouldn't recommend it...

May 29th, 2011, 01:22 AM	#1
John Hewat Major Player Join Date: Dec 2005 Location: Melbourne, AUSTRALIA Posts: 735	Best Disk Setup in a MacBook Pro Hello all, I've recently replaced the optical bay of my macBook Pro with a second SSD, meaning that I have a pair of 120GB SSDs inside the machine (which are not identical). My question is how best to use that space? Drive 1 is the stock Apple one. Drive 2 is the faster OWC one. At the moment it's like this: Drive 2 has OSX and applications (with 60GB to spare). Drive 1 has two partitions: a) 60GB Scratch Disk b) 60GB Windows 7 in BootCamp Because Drive 2, the OWC brand SSD is a much faster disk, should I move the scratch and render cache over to it instead of the slower drive? I'm about to undertake a project in Premiere with over 4TB of video out of the 7D so I'm thinking I'm going to need an external scratch disk anyway. Am I right? Thanks for your help, -- John __________________ John Hewat Mammoth Media Productions

June 1st, 2011, 01:20 PM	#2
Jon Larson New Boot Join Date: Dec 2008 Location: Seattle, WA Posts: 13	Re: Best Disk Setup in a MacBook Pro John, I doubt you will notice much of a difference between the two; but if you want to split hairs, choose the one with the best sequential read/writes for your media, and the one with the best random access transfer rates for your OS. The more important consideration is that you seem to be serious about editing 4 TB of source material on a laptop with no mention of external data storage for source files, backups, rendered content, etc. All notebooks are a compromise between power and portability, and your is heavily weighted towards portability. All this is to say yes--you will need external storage, and a lot of it, and in multiple locations. And even once you have all that, you will still be struggling against the inherent limitations of your laptop. In summary, I wouldn't recommend it...