Hi all,

I'm a Premiere CS6 editor and have recently started editing footage from the Blackmagic Cinema Camera. As such, I'm transferring and handling large amounts of data.

The project I'm working on at the moment is over 2TB just for the raw files, with a further 500GB of proxies.

I've bought a SATA3 raid card to upgrade my current SATA2 8TB raid (the disks are already SATA3) and thought I'd ask a few questions.

My previous RAID card was four port, and this new one (a Highpoint RocketRaid 2720 (https://www.pccasegear.com/index.php?main_page=product_info&products_id=19403)) is eight port.

So I have a few more options now.

Firstly, I plan to reconnect my 4 x 2TB Hitachi drives in their RAID 0 configuration again.
Secondly, my OWC 120GB SSD as my system drive with OS and programs.

That takes up five ports. And here's where I have new options:

I could keep the same system I had before: an additional 1TB disk for scratch disk (preview files & media cache) and an additional 1TB drive for exports and backups

That would be:
C: 120GB SSD - OS & Programs
D: 8TB RAID (4x2TB 7200 SATA 3 Drives) - Media & Project Files
E: 1TB 7200 SATA 3 - Cache & Previews
F: 1TB 7200 SATA 3 - Exports & Backup

However, now that my RAID card has eight ports, I could purchase two more drives to match my currently RAIDed drives and alter the setup to be this much more simple configuration:

C: 120GB SSD - OS & Programs
D: 12TB RAID (6x2TB 7200 SATA 3 Drives) - Media & Project Files & Cache & Previews
E: 1TB 7200 SATA 3 - Exports & Backup

Or alternately:

C: 120GB SSD - OS & Programs
D: 8TB RAID (4x2TB 7200 SATA 3 Drives) - Media & Project Files
E: 2TB RAID (2x1TB 7200 SATA 3 Drives) - Cache & Previews
F: 1TB 7200 SATA 3 - Exports & Backup

Basically, I'm wondering whether the RAID card is better served by giving me the largest RAID possible (using six drives) or by giving me two separate RAID 0s.

And is there any real advantage to replacing the cache & preview disc with an SSD? I'm also considering replacing the Exports disc with an SSD as size is not a priority but often speed is. Though I'm not expert enough to know whether drive speed is an issue for my exports at the moment.

Additionally, I never know what settings to apply when I build a RAID for the first time. It's been years since I've done it, but choosing things like cluster size or sector size or something like that seems like a thing I'm sure to get wrong. Are there any hardened rules?

Also, a question that's bugging me: isn't Scratch Disk the same as a media drive? Scratch Disk, according to Adobe, is where the "captured video" goes. Isn't that where I'd store my media?

This type of question comes all the time on the official Adobe forum and is well covered in their FAQ sections, such as the thread below. I'm sure if you read through it you'll soon find your answers, or at least very good pointers from some real Adobe gurus.

Just posting this in case you were unaware of the terrific web resources Adobe maintains for us users.

optimizing for performance: Adobe Premiere Pro and After Effects | After Effects region of interest (http://blogs.adobe.com/aftereffects/2011/02/optimizing-for-performance-adobe-premiere-pro-and-after-effects.html)

Yeah I've read and watched everything and so often there's contradictory opinions.

Even Harm's Generic Disk Setup chart says to basically put everything (other than OS and programs) on as large a RAID as you can build.

But other advice suggests you should have separate disks for reading (media drive) and writing (preview files and exports).

But perhaps with such a large RAID it becomes less important...

And I still can't find much about sector size and all those settings.

Adobe's white paper is from more than a year ago, an eternity in the SSD world.

John,

Take a look at the Tweakers Page (http://ppbm7.com/index.php/tweakers-page) where I have updated a number of popular articles to reflect recent hardware development, like Haswell, Ivy Bridge-E, GTX 7xx cards and added several more. So have a look around.

Two things I particularly like about it that there is now a common depository for a lot of stuff hardware related (and I will continue to add to them), and the second thing is the common starting point of codecs and editng style that impact a system very much.

Hope it is informative and helps answering some of your questions.