Best internal HDD for direct recording/movies?

[Bobba123]

Hey,

I want to start recording some footage from various games I play, and I was wondering if you guys could recommend a certain internal HDD that is best for this job? Bear in mind that this will be the only purpose for the drive, as I have SSD's for Windows, programs and games.

These files takes up a lot of space in good quality so the drive should have minimum 1TB storage - but my highest priority is great performance. It should have very high write/load speeds so it wont bottleneck or impact my gameplay in any way while recording. So in short, the best HDD performance wise (and of course stable) is what I am looking for.

I have been looking at the WD Black WD1002FAEX - would this be a good choice? Don't think about prices, just what I have written above. Thanks!

 

[manofchalk]

I think it would be best to get two 1TB drives in RAID0, a single HDD (except for maybe a Velociraptor) just wont be able to keep up with 1080p 45FPS+ recording.
Seagate Barracuda's are my drive of choice.

 

[Bobba123]

I think it would be best to get two 1TB drives in RAID0, a single HDD (except for maybe a Velociraptor) just wont be able to keep up with 1080p 45FPS+ recording.
Seagate Barracuda's are my drive of choice.

My recording settings are 1920x1080 resolution with 30fps. I have previously used an external WD My Book 3TB disk to save my footage to, but it sadly died some weeks ago. However while it worked it seemed fine and my recording program could write 134 MB/sec to it. I don't have enough knowledge to know if this is a lot or not, though...

I don't know if it being external was a good or bad thing compared to internal, but if the new internal I am looking for can write 134 MB/sec or higher then it would be fine with me.

 

[Bobba123]

I just looked up the Velociraptor you mentioned, definitely looks interesting from the reviews I have found on it. Would it be one you could recommend if I prefer to have a single HDD with high speed and performance?

 

[manofchalk]

If you were to stick with a single drive, I would say its pretty much your only option if you want good performance (and dont want to pay out the nose for a large SSD). Though its price/capacity is pretty bad by HDD standards, for the price of a 1TB Raptor you could get 4TB of RAID0 Seagate Barracuda's, which will offer similar if not better performance.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822236243
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822148834

 

[genz]

If you were to stick with a single drive, I would say its pretty much your only option if you want good performance (and dont want to pay out the nose for a large SSD). Though its price/capacity is pretty bad by HDD standards, for the price of a 1TB Raptor you could get 4TB of RAID0 Seagate Barracuda's, which will offer similar if not better performance.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822236243
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822148834

This is simply NOT TRUE, stop spreading FUD. A single WD black can record mpeg4 1080p recordings easily.

If that was not true then things like this:
http://www.play.com/Electronics/Electronics/4-/20444282/686831489/Sony-HDR-XR160E-Full-HD-Hard-Disk-Drive-Camcorder/ListingDetails.html
would not exist because they use tiny iPod classic sized hard drives.

What you are speaking of is uncompressed data, which is not used for ANYTHING but 3D. Even RED cameras use compression and they record in 4K. If you are using an external only for recording, you can easily just use a single WD black. It's when you get to compositing lots of takes of video footage (like you would do if you were recording a program or doing camcorder work) that you start needing RAID arrays. Until then, a single dedicated disk @ 7200RPM can do it. The bigger the better (The bigger the disk, the more data the drive head moves over)

 

[manofchalk]

He's recording gameplay footage, which unless your on-the-fly encoding (introducing the CPU performance into the equation unless your using a dedicated capture card) is uncompressed data.

Chances are that camcorder is using something along the lines of flash storage, basically an SSD. There's a reason why it costs so much, and it aint the 1080p sensor or quality lenses in something of that size.

And my rebutle argument.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bEGDgzlc7mA
Skip to 3:22 for relevant bit.

 

[Bobba123]

If you were to stick with a single drive, I would say its pretty much your only option if you want good performance (and dont want to pay out the nose for a large SSD). Though its price/capacity is pretty bad by HDD standards, for the price of a 1TB Raptor you could get 4TB of RAID0 Seagate Barracuda's, which will offer similar if not better performance.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822236243
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822148834

Alright, I can see there is quite a difference there between storage and price. But I have gotten some great info so I will consider what to do. Thanks a lot for the help!

 

[genz]

He's recording gameplay footage, which unless your on-the-fly encoding (introducing the CPU performance into the equation unless your using a dedicated capture card) is uncompressed data.

Chances are that camcorder is using something along the lines of flash storage, basically an SSD. There's a reason why it costs so much, and it aint the 1080p sensor or quality lenses in something of that size.

And my rebutle argument.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bEGDgzlc7mA
Skip to 3:22 for relevant bit.

It is uncompressed data, but it is compressed on the fly in RAM before it reaches the HDD, completely undoing the need for SSD style read speeds. Do you have any idea how big true uncompressed HD signal is? You'd need 597,20 MB (4,78 Gbit/s) plus overhead.

See here: http://web.forret.com/tools/video_fps.asp?width=1920&height=1080&fps=24&space=rgb444&depth=32

And did you even look at the camcorder, because I owned one. In 2009 it was £800 and had 500Gb of drive built into it, a mathematical impossibility for SSD of that time, never mind price.

Like I said, stop spreading FUD.

Edit about your video rebuttal:

That HDD was doing around 46fps through most of the video, that's nearly double the 25fps that most videos on the internet are at. If the reviewer had capped the framerate at output fps (25, 29.97 or sometimes 30 for web) then it would have been smooth as butter.

 

[manofchalk]

Uncompressed in colloquial terms then, because recording 1080p gameplay will mean you easily start creating 30s videos in excess of 3GB.
Who said anything about read speeds? For an application like this you want massive sequential write speeds, which is what you can achieve with RAID0.

Flash memory technology is used in SSD's, also in USB thumb drives which have been around forever and available in large capacities. I didnt say it had an SSD in it, I was saying that it was likely using flash storage, which SSD's are based on. 

But regardless, as the video I linked too showed, you need a beefy storage setup to record 1080p gameplay using an application like FRAPS. A single 7200RPM drive will reduce performance.
And I gave out the advice based on the intent to record gameplay, I didn't know if the OP intended to cap his FPS until after I gae the suggestion.

 

[genz]

Uncompressed in colloquial terms then, because recording 1080p gameplay will mean you easily start creating 30s videos in excess of 3GB.
Who said anything about read speeds? For an application like this you want massive sequential write speeds, which is what you can achieve with RAID0.

But regardless, as the video I linked too showed, you need a beefy storage setup to record 1080p gameplay using an application like FRAPS. A single 7200RPM drive will reduce performance.

Read/Writes are nearly identical on non Sandforce SSDs, it was a slip of the tongue. My bad.

Anything will reduce performance vs no FRAPS, even a 20+Drive Raid array. That's why capture cards are still used by the pros. The fatal flaw in your point is that you said that compression will introduce CPU overhead, then you say 'uncompressed in colloquial terms' which is still compressed and thus still giving you CPU overhead. The point is once you have writes at a consistent speed below the maximum the drive can do then the problem sits elsewhere because the drive is not the bottleneck.

30fps is a 34.7% reduction in writing compared to the 46 that example used. This equates to less CPU use as well because less compression is done.

I've said it and I'll say it again. A single dedicated WD black can do this. If you want 60fps, two will suffice, in fact you might be able to squeeze it out of a WD Black 2TB due to the increase in read/write speed.


Oh and a 30s recording of fully uncompressed 1920x1080x32bit@24fps=17,92 GB so 3GB isn't even close.