Raid Replacement Hard Drive Recommendations

[chadandreo]

I am looking to increase the storage on my Thunderbay 4 raid. My current setup is 12TB/9TB raid 5. 

What would you all recommend for internal HDDs for video editing and reliability?

[OliKMIA]

There isn't much options, the 3 majors brands left are seagate, WD and Toshiba. All about the same in terms of performance and reliability (check blackbaze stats on its website). So far the largest HD are in the 12-16 TB range and the price per TB doesn't lower beyond 3-4TB. We are reaching the maximim size and nothing should change until next year when WD and Seagate will introduce HAMR and MAMR.

As for speed, you should get a 7200rpm but the best is not to use HD for editing, even mounted in Raid 5.

Here are some comparison I made of actual price and product range

 

[androidlad]

HGST drives have the best reliability, especially the helium ones. I know HGST is now part of WD but it's quite different from WD.

[chadandreo]

21 minutes ago, OliKMIA said:

There isn't much options, the 3 majors brands left are seagate, WD and Toshiba. All about the same in terms of performance and reliability (check blackbaze stats on its website). So far the largest HD are in the 12-16 TB range and the price per TB doesn't lower beyond 3-4TB. We are reaching the maximim size and nothing should change until next year when WD and Seagate will introduce HAMR and MAMR.

As for speed, you should get a 7200rpm but the best is not to use HD for editing, even mounted in Raid 5.

Here are some comparison I made of actual price and product range

 

 

What would you recommend besides a raid for editing in my situation?

I shoot high-end and sometimes multi-day 4k weddings and each job is about 4-800GB, so SSDs arent practical for me.  

[OliKMIA]

There isn't much more you can do in terms of speed I believe since you already use Raid 5. Raid 0 with multiple disks could help but this isn't very economical.

In my case I have a dedicated 1TB SSD where I put all my "hot files", the one going in my timeline to be edited. Once I'm done with that project, I delete the files from the SSD and keep them on the Raid drives. Nowadays you can find good 1TB SSD for $150.

This is a simple and economical solution but the performances are much better than traditional HD.

[chadandreo]

2 hours ago, OliKMIA said:

There isn't much more you can do in terms of speed I believe since you already use Raid 5. Raid 0 with multiple disks could help but this isn't very economical.

In my case I have a dedicated 1TB SSD where I put all my "hot files", the one going in my timeline to be edited. Once I'm done with that project, I delete the files from the SSD and keep them on the Raid drives. Nowadays you can find good 1TB SSD for $150.

This is a simple and economical solution but the performances are much better than traditional HD.

I have a T3 and Sandisk Extreme 510, but its not practical since we work on multiple projects at a time. 

I usually do basic editing on regular external HDDs and save the intensive stuff and exporting for my raid. 

[nigelbb]

I don't understand why SSDs aren't practical if your projects are 6-800GB each will easily fit on a 1TB SSD. A 1TB SSD costs about the same as a 6TB HDD.

[Shirozina]

46 minutes ago, nigelbb said:

I don't understand why SSDs aren't practical if your projects are 6-800GB each will easily fit on a 1TB SSD. A 1TB SSD costs about the same as a 6TB HDD.

6-800gb projects are pretty small projects. At the moment for large amounts of data and fast read and write times RAID 0 is still a lot cheaper than SSD.

[chadandreo]

1 hour ago, nigelbb said:

I don't understand why SSDs aren't practical if your projects are 6-800GB each will easily fit on a 1TB SSD. A 1TB SSD costs about the same as a 6TB HDD.

we typically work on 5-7 different projects in stages at a time. 

[nigelbb]

47 minutes ago, chadandreo said:

we typically work on 5-7 different projects in stages at a time. 

Just put each project on a separate SSD.

[Shirozina]

5 minutes ago, nigelbb said:

Just put each project on a separate SSD.

5-7 1TB SSD's are going to cost a lot more than a Raid 0 setup but yes that's an option if costs are not a concern. 

[OliKMIA]

21 hours ago, chadandreo said:

I have a T3 and Sandisk Extreme 510, but its not practical since we work on multiple projects at a time. 

I usually do basic editing on regular external HDDs and save the intensive stuff and exporting for my raid. 

I understand. For speed, RAID 0. The more drives you add, the faster but there is also a greater risk of loosing everything if one drive fails. RAID 5 seems a good solution for speed and safety. As for which drive to pick, it depends of your budget. You can see my previous chart as a starting point for your research. For a RAID 0 system used for editing I would got for WD black or Seagte Barracuda Pro. They are fast, relatively cheap and available in different capacity based on your need.