Thanks so much Doug for the generosity of your time and very practical knowledge. Greatly appreciated. Your advice on the T7 is spot on, only slower stuff works with them.
Like a lot of people I found out the hard way about T7's. I only bought it because I couldn't get T5's and the specs read better. I now use it on the ATEM and that has been successful. I have heard that the T7 Shield does work for video though from more than one source.
I appreciate your time on this Doug. Update: I tried a couple of the Crucial X6 drives but kept getting errors when recording iso files from Atem Mini Pro Iso. The Samsung T5 has only has been pretty solid.
02:30 🚫 Common Mistake: Samsung T7 drive not recommended for video recording due to frequent issues like lost footage and dropped frames. 04:40 📊 Tested SSDs: Samsung T7, SanDisk Extreme Pro, Crucial X8, Crucial X6, and a custom Sabrent enclosure with Samsung 970 Evo. 06:15 📈 Crucial X8: Offers consistent performance throughout, recommended for video recording, and priced competitively. 08:24 🌟 Top Recommendation: Crucial X6 SSD provides excellent performance, reliability, and is cost-effective, making it a great choice for video projects. 10:19 💼 Build Your Own: Sabrent USB-C NVMe Enclosure with Samsung 980 Pro Series SSD is recommended for those seeking a custom and high-performance solution.
Doug I have to say you are absolutely 100% correct in your assessment with these drives. I recently bought an Atem ISO to record our City Council Meetings which can last from 2.5 to 4 hours. On the first night, I though someone sent me an attack. Little did I realize that is was the poor decision to use the SAMSUNG T7. Then I used the SANDISK EXTREME PORTABLE 2Tb and it lasted a little longer but started crashing around the 2.75 hr mark. Then I got the crucial and no problems what so ever. I have a few enclosures but they are mine and not the city’s. So yeah, the constant need for writing and the drive never slowing down is spot on. However I recorded a 5 hr event on the Blackmagic Studio 6K pro on the SANDISK and had no problems directly into the USB - C slot recording BRaw in 6K.
Thanks again for doing the spade work for us Doug. I use Samsung 980's in my main production machine but have just noticed that here in the UK they are selling, across the board, Samsung 990 PRO 2TB PCIe 4.0 NVMe for less than the 980. Getting one to check out.
Would you say the issues with 980 performance due to firmware issues are now long gone? Would definitely be interested in seeing the performance of 990s as the price point for 980/990 is very similar here in the UK
Doug, I literally canceled an Amazon order for a T7 Shield after watching 30 seconds of this video! I'll be ordering the Crucial now using your link. Thanks for your content!
We went with the X9 Pro from Crucial, and it works flawlessly thus far. Record, unplug from HyperDeck, connect to Mac Studio, and edit! Saves a decent amount of time! Thanks, Doug!@@djp_video
Hi Doug, I got the Sabrent enclosure and Samsung 908 Pro...formatted on MacOS but it is not recognized by the ATEM Mini Extreme ISO - via the USB C out where you can record all the inputs. No problem mounting on a Mac - any thoughts?
I just finished spending a few hours with this as long as I format the 980 SSD using exFAT it just works. It sometimes takes a few seconds for the ATEM to recognize the drive, but it never fails to do so.
Thanks - Amazon had the X8 2TB insanely priced for its Prime Days sale under $80 - was less than the X6! Thanks to this video I could order with confidence knowing it will work for video work I am doing. I have some of the other drives you reviewed and you exposed their issues/limitations. A big help. - I also have the sabrent combination and that lives up to your recommendation and hype. Just a good education about these drives for anyone interested and doing video work. Thanks again.
SUBSCRIBED, thanks Doug! for taking the time to share your knowledge. I recently got the Crucial P3 Plus SSD 4TB formatted to exfat; to stick downloaded 2160p films onto so I could play them back on my 4K projector over the USBA port but .. endless buffering and stuttering playback. I´ve already ordered the crucial x10 pro so will try that out next
Thank you so much for this video. I got very worried about my current sandisk extreme ssd due to numerous articles that these drives are failing because of soldering coming lose. Your video was the perfect answer to my search. I ordered today the Sabrent USB-C NVMe Enclosure and the Samsung 980 Pro SSD 2TB. Hope to receive them in a few days. I followed your links to amazon to sponsor you but had to search again on amazon in my own country :) Thank you for your great videos. So very helpful always.
I appreciate the support! The USB-C enclosure/Samsung SSD pairing works really well. I have heard from some people that they've had a hard time getting it to work with Blackmagic cameras and switchers, so if that's your intended use case make sure to test it well during your return window.
@@djp_video ohh? And there I thought you adviced these for combination with black magic? Anyway, It does work with the atem extreme but I have not tested it while feeding it with 8 active camera's because I want to add better heat pads first. Somewhere else I red that the sabrent house does not connect well with the lower part of the samsung 980pro and therfor can get to hot.
I did. I've never had any trouble with it myself. But perhaps Sabrent changed something, because I've gotten reports from a few viewers who have indicated that they were not able to get their Blackmagic devices to recognize the Sabrent enclosures.
@@djp_video I have no problem with Atem Mini Extreme ISO recognizing the samsung980pro 2TB in the Sabrent USB Type-C as can been seen on the photo I just took of it being connected and recording. I have only not yet tested it with recording a lot of camera's at the same time (The ISO functionality) www.janvalk.com/sabrent980pro.jpg edit: I red a comment further down saying he formatted on a mac. I like to add that I did the create drive and formatting to ex-fat on a windows 10 computer.
@@djp_video mm it looks like youtube deleted my comment. maybe because I had a link to a photo is which I show the atem mini extreme connecting and recording with the samsung980pro in a sabrent enclosure exactly like the one you show in this video. So I can say that mine does work. janvalk(dot)com(slash)sabrent980pro(dot)jpg
Such a useful video - I'm sure that people invest in the Samsung t7 with blind faith that it will be one of the best external SSDs on market. So it is a surprising and useful to know that it is not!
I been ditching the sandisk portable SSD drives and Van building my own nvme drives with the enclosure like you do. They are so much faster and cheaper to build. I've been using Western digital, crucial, and Samsung evos
Well... just lost 1/2 of our show from a Samsung T7 record used with ATEM xtreme iso. This happened after I stopped and started the record 1/2 way through. Don't make this mistake yourselves! Will be sure to use "Doug certified" drives moving forward. Details: we ran numerous tests with no issue. 1 hour and 1.5 hour tests with 6 iso's. On show day we ran 1 hour 6iso's no issue. Then stopped and restarted recorder. Thats when issue happened. No warnings on atem xtreme. Just the data amount was not changing. Tried to stop records after 2nd hour to find device had not recorded anything.
I have been really happy with the SanDisk PRO-BLADE ecosystem. It started off with a fairly heft price premium, but has come down to be much more in line with other offerings at similar storage capacities. It has >800MB/s sustained writes, ~2400MB/s reads (when using the Thunderbolt 3 dock -- which is admittedly expensive but gives you four bays for concurrent offloads). And the mag format makes them super easy to swap in seconds without having to unplug/replug any cables. I use them to record ProRes 4k30 from Blackmagic Video Assist 12Gs and have never had them drop out.
The channel doesn't quite bring in enough income to buy every type of drive out there ;) And recording directly to USB-C devices isn't normally part of my workflow (I primarily use SD cards or SATA SSDs) so I kind of have to make a point of buying and testing devices separate from what I normally do when working for clients.
@@djp_video All good Doug. Appreciate you anyway for what you do for all of us! Hope I didn't come off as putting you down for it. Was just excited to possibly see someone using the PB's as they are pretty new and I was very impressed with what I have seen from them. This Vid was awesome anyway! I record 4-6 hrs at a time and have had issues w ssd's. this vid explains why very well. Thank You Sir!
A very well put together video! That said, I have been using Sandisk Extreme (non-pro) 1T’s for video editing exclusively for four years now without any problems whatsoever. I am presently on SSD’s # 13 and 14 (I make a backup copy of each disc after every use). I work almost exclusively in 4K 24fps so maybe that’s not enough bandwidth to bump into the thresholds you describe? It’s interesting that by your technical analysis, which is clear and concise, I would avoid the Sandisk Extreme like the plague, yet by my practical experience I would highly recommend the same in terms of both performance and value.
Same here. I had good results with the sandisk extreme non pro BUT recent articles show the sandisk drives can and do fail due to design errrors (soledring) so from that moment on, I no longer would risk it or recommend any sandisk portable ssd
Nice roundup of the options available, the sabrent enclosure in a test with, say a samsung 980 vs a 980/990 pro would be interesting to look at, as the nvme drives are getting so cheap at the moment with the introduction of pcie5.0 drives.
Here's the 980 Pro test: www.djprod.biz/diskperformance.php?id=iRVMxFPo3KK9DlIUqYAVPgc And the 990 Pro test: www.djprod.biz/diskperformance.php?id=TNlWDGt4BtK2ErQb4ndy-o Check out my website for more test results. www.djprod.biz/diskperformance.php
If an atem iso extreme can record each input up to 80 megabits per second + program stream quality, that would be a theoretical max of 720 megabits per second, or about 90 megabytes per second. Speeds don’t seem to be the issue, rather variance and wait time between buffered writes that might cause the atem to error out recording or recordings getting corrupted in general. But yes, technically speaking, the more stable and faster writing drives will give you the least amount of problems, but it’s just a side effect of them writing faster (less variance and faster flushes to nand) rather than the write speed itself.
When I was setting up my last project I could not get the T5 and I knew the T7 were not good so a friend recommended the OWC Envoy Pro FX and it has been rock solid. 7 channels of ISO plus program with no issues. I think the Sabrent USB-C NVMe is the way to go. I want to try the SanDisk Pro-Blade they look like a great system.
T5 is a great, easy option. But an SSD with and enclosure is faster if you get the right SSD and enclosure. The fastest SSD I currently own is the SK Hynix Platinum P41 2TB with an ORICO NVMe SSD Enclosure 40Gbps. My Crucial 4TB is fast as well, but not as fast as the Hynix in Blackmagic drive tests.
The problem with the T5s is that they haven't been manufactured for some time now, so you're either buying old stock at inflated prices, or a used drive with unknown history.
@@djp_video agreed. This is why I’ve switched over to buying SSDs and enclosures. The biggest issue at this point is finding an enclosure with fast throughput. Advertised speeds of 40Gbps aren’t always accurate and oftentimes just a straight up lie so you need to be careful. I’d like to see someone do a side-by-side test of a fast SSD using different enclosures. Maybe I’ll do one?
Any update on the X8? Does it still perform quite well and consistent? Read a few reviews that were discouraging on the long term high speed performance
In long, intense write operations it slows down to about 60 MB/sec. But all modern drives slow down at some point. Virtually all drives utilize a high-speed buffer to cache write operations, and once that buffer fills up writes slow down to the native write speed of the underlying storage cells. The big difference from one drive to the next is how large the buffer is. In the case of the 2 TB X8 that I use and tested, it was around 160 GB before it slowed down. Filling an entire 2 TB drive took around 6 hours. I recently performed a re-test of the 2 TB version, and the results are here: www.djprod.biz/diskperformance.php?id=H8TJQNQFJdiu9-B1IfwHe. The drive was half full. And you can see where the write performance drops at 160 GB, then speeds up again as it reaches the empty portion of the drive about half way. I've also tested an X10 Pro since this video. Results here: www.djprod.biz/diskperformance.php?id=6E6HU8s1Gs6u-dTe72Ul82I. The overall performance is considerably better. But it does start buffering earlier -- around 50 GB. It did recover periodically and would cycle back and forth between buffering and writing. That would indicate that it has a small buffer, but the overall storage write speeds are considerably higher. Keep in mind that you have to push either of these drives pretty hard to get the buffer to fill. Like if you're copying data from another high speed drive. For many workflows, like recording on a camera or ATEM, you'd probably either never fill the buffer. or it would take a very long time. When compared to drives from other manufacturers, both of these are better than other drives in their price class. You can't avoid buffering altogether, but going with a high speed NVMe drive in a USB enclosure gives you your best bet of not having the buffering impact your ability to use the drives for operations that require consistent high speed. Like the Samsung 980 Pro / USB enclosure recommendation I made in this video. www.djprod.biz/diskperformance.php?id=iRVMxFPo3KK9DlIUqYAVPgc (Sabrent enclosure) or www.djprod.biz/diskperformance.php?id=R896PzWPPbeBSlCuFbAm (ORICO USB 3.2 Gen 2x2 enclosure).
@@djp_video Thank you so much for this response. I really appreciate it. By your assessment, is a write speed of 60MB/sec still sufficient for recording from the ATEM? Also, do you reckon getting a similar behavior to the X10 pro on the X9 pro? Sorry for the bother, it's just I'm about to decide between getting the X8 and the X9 pro (as I don't have the ports to take advantage of the X10 pro speeds and both have reduced prices) and I want to know if the sustained performance of the X9 Pro is worth splurging a bit more
You'll never hit that issue with the ATEMs. They don't create enough data to ever fill the buffer. The X8 will be plenty fast for what you're doing. You can get an X9 if you want something newer, but it won't be any more reliable when used with ATEM switchers.
Thanks for the great comparison. I don't know why it wasn't working but I bought a Samsung 980 Pro SSD, but it in a 10GB Selore docking station (hub) and tried recording from my iPhone 15 Pro Max, Prores 422, 4k and it hung up and dropped frames every time within a few seconds. Just to note, I also had a 65w Anker powerbank hooked up to power the hub. I also tried it hooked up to my Macbook Pro, dropped in two layers of Prores 422 to see if it could edit video without dropping frames and it failed again, just playing back a simple single-layer timeline. I thought I might have gotten a bad Selore hub and/or drive so I purchased both again, so I had two sets to compare and the same thing happened. The 10GB Selore hub and the Samsung 980 Pro SSD failed to record and playback even one stream of Prores 422(4k) I tried formatting the drive to both APSC (for my mac) as well as XFat. Nothing worked so I returned all the units. Am I missing something? This sounds like it should have been a slam dunk for recoding iPhone ProRes and/or editing Prores from the computer.
I'd try a different USB-C to NVMe interface. There seems to be a compatibility issue going on there. You could try the one I mentioned in this video, but it seems that some users are having compatibility issues with it too. Another one I've tried and had good luck with these: amzn.to/40yTOmy or amzn.to/3SuEXYl
Interesting. I have a couple of T7s that have done fine, no issues at all with recording the ATEM. I haven’t stressed it though, admittedly. Good info, thanks Doug!
Thanks Doug. Great video. Just ordered the iPhone 15 Pro Max so this is incredibly handy! Just to be clear - you would recommend the Samsung 980 over the Crucial X6?
Yes. But based on the feedback I'm getting from viewers, I'd steer you away from the Sabrent enclosure. It seems that a lot of people are having issues with it. Also, since this video, I've gone back and re-used a couple of my X6 drives and it seems like they really slow down a lot after the first full write cycle, so I'm withdrawing my recommendation for that model.
have you ever reviewed wireless headphones? I just watched you video on external SSD and was very impressed. Would LOVE to hear you review wireless headphones!!!
I started down the path to try to do a roundup of headphone options, and bought more than a dozen models of both wired and wireless variety, but it was so disappointing that I never finished that project. I'm also not sure I'm ready for the amount of vitriol that would come from such a video. People have such different tastes and strong opinions. And every manufacturer's interpretation of 'good' sound is so wildly different. For example, I bought a pair of Sony WH-1000XM4 headphones a couple years ago based on the fact that they were getting just phenomenal online reviews everywhere. And I absolutely hated them. They sounded awful! They were the worst pair of headphones I'd heard outside of budget (basically disposable) models. Audio sludge. The low end was just a muddy disaster and vocals were nearly indistinguishable from everything else in the mix, and the noise reduction had a tinny ringing that was painful to listen to. I haven't been impressed by any other models that I've tried, from any manufacturer, either. Plus, with most using Bluetooth, the audio quality is only ever going to be so-so, and it's always going to have quite noticeable latency, making them suitable only for casual listening. I've stopped trying and just accept that a wire is going to be a reality for me. The best bang for the buck I've found there is the Sony MDR-V6 (not the 'similar' but not nearly as good MDR-7506) -- it's too bad they were discontinued. I also like the Philips Fidelio series, beyerdynamic DT 770 PRO, and most everything I've heard from Grado. But I still haven't heard a good pair of wireless headphones -- the trend in the last decade or so has been way over-boosted, muddy bass and overly bright, harsh treble, and at thes same time burying vocals so deep they can barely be heard less understood, and I can't stand any of them. In terms of in-ear models, I've tried a whole bunch from some pretty reputable companies and keep coming back to the Shure SE215. Phenomenal quality for the price. Even the Bluetooth version is really good. I don't use the earbud style that much because they just don't stay in my ears very well, but when I do I've landed on the Anker Soundcore Liberty Air 2 Pro just because I can't justify spending any more than that on something I'm probably going to lose. The sound quality is just okay, but at that price point that's about as good as you're going to get.I've heard that the Galaxy Buds+ are also quite good.
@@djp_video FYI - Having had my MDR7506 for over 15 years, when I read your comment that Sony discontinued them I immediately did a google search. I'm happy to say that Amazon sells 3,000 per month and has 1 day shipping so I immediately ordered a second pair... just in case LOL and occasionally it's nice to have a second pair to loan out.
Hey Doug, what would you say is the minimum recommended MB/s a drive should have to be considered "safe"? Naturally, I own a couple of Samsung T7 (1TB and 2TB models) and so far when I record in BRAW 12:1 or ProRes 422 LT (for podcasts) and have my camera and recorder set to notify me of drop-frames, I've not yet experiences issues (thankfully). That said, I obviously don't ever want to run into this issue and would hope to avoid that. I think I'll pick up an NVMe solution. Thanks for the advice! What would you recommend the minimum ballpark figure to shoot for write speeds? Would 550 MB/s be good enough for straight up RAW?
It isn't so just about the raw MB/sec, but whether the drive has a big enough buffer to be able to cope with momentary spikes as well as the longer-term sustained writes as well. The spikes are where the T7 fails, and the Blackmagic recorders produce spikes regularly. Without a big enough buffer on the drive, it will eventually fail to keep up.
@@djp_video that’s really good to know, Doug. Thank you. I appreciate the insight. I wonder why Samsung went backwards with this model. I’d better get a different drive. For now I’ll use my Hyperdeck (with EVO drives) and avoid using the T7s.
Thanks for the video. Would have been nice to show the performance of the Samsung 980 Pro in the Sabrent enclosure the same way you did the other drives.
T7 works fine here with Atem Mini - 4 channel ISO recording multiple hours, but fails instantly on HyperDeck Studio HD Plus 4K 30p PRORES recording! When connected to Mac Mini M1 T7 offload speed from Sandisk SDXC Pro-Reader hovers arround 40-50 MBytes/sec compared to offload to internal M1 memory, the speed is 150MBytes.
The ATEM Mini is recording in h.264 which requires a lot less bandwidth than the ProRes you're using on the HyperDeck. If you had a faster drive, like the Crucials I mention in this video, you'd be able to keep up on the HyperDeck in ProRes as well.
Thanks for this! I’m looking for an SSD to use with my S5iix. I’ve been using the Panasonic recommended t7 shield. What do you think of the crucial X9 Pro or X10 Pro. I also use an M1 MacBook Pro to edit.
very helpful and understandable comparison of the speed performance of these drives. Not sure whether the long term reliability differs - do faster drives generally fail sooner ?
Thank you for this. It was really helpful. I am considering going with the Samsung 990 Pro 4TB in the Sabrent enclosure you suggested. Any thoughts on going with the heatsink version of the 990 versus the one without the heatsink? Any idea if the heatsink version will fit in the Sabrent enclosure?
If you're putting it in an enclosure, get the version without the heatsink. The enclosure it self serves as the heat sink. And the version with the heat sink wouldn't even fit.
For much better performance, consider a USB4 enclosure, which (depending on the port you plug it into), could give you up to 40 Gbps. Here's one I've used and know to work well: amzn.to/4fI6azw
@@djp_video The14% negative reviews on that enclosure are troubling--overheating, fan failure, random disconnects. Having dealt with a OWC Envoy enclosure that behaved like this (and cost me days of down time), I find myself hesitant to go this route.
Great video Doug, I wish I'd watched tis 2 days ago! I just shot a bunch of stuff on my S5iix yesterday to a T7, I haven't reviewed the footage yet. Fingers crossed it worked! Have you had a chance to check out the new Crucial x9 and x10 drives? If they're as reliable as the x6 and x8 I might grab a few to replace my T7 and T5 drives. Many thanks for all of your great videos!
I haven't tried an X9 or X10 yet. And nobody has submitted any performance data using my software tool. I'll get to them eventually, but I already have more drives than I need.
Doug, I just got the 2T PCIe and put it in the sabrent enclosure. It will mount on my M1 mac mini and my macbook pro, no problem - but no matter how I format it, it will not mount on my 6Kpro or my atem extreme. I've tried formatting it every way possible there is... Same results! I've used a number of hard drives with both the atem and the 6K pro. never had this issue. I'm researching to figure out what's going on, but if you have any clues, I'd appreciate it. Thanks! Your channel is awesome.
It appears that there is a firmware issue and requires updating of the firmware through “Samsung Magician”… which only runs on PC. From the research I’m doing so far, the Samsung 980 pro looks like a dead end for Mac users, as there’s no way to update it. Strange that it will mount on a Mac, but not on the ATEM or 6K pro.
Yes I tried formatting in the 6Kpro. I’ve tried everything! I’ve discovered there is a ton of information on line discussing the need to update the 980 and 990 firmware. I want it to work! But it seems that it’s just easier to return it and go with the crucial X-6 if you own a Mac. At least that’s the way it appears to me right now.
Interesting to say the least. I have been using the Samsung T7 for over two years. I have 12 in rotation and I haven’t seen failure or dropped frames with my ATEM MINI EXTREME ISO since the first failure day 1 that led me to discover on my own that it was a heat related failure. I added a cooling fan and have successfully used the T7 for up to 6 hours with no issues that I’m seeing. Curious at what ambient temperature you did the testing and would you have seen a different result with a fan cooling system. I’m definitely not saying I wouldn’t change to something else I’ve just been either lucky or keeping the drive and the ATEM properly thermal managed has led to my experience that they seem to work just fine. Thoughts?
Most of the complaints I've heard are coming from people who use the T7 with Blackmagic cameras, where they're recording RAW, or people using them with HyperDecks. They just can't keep up with those kinds of speeds. The ATEM Minis record at a much lower bitrate, and the T7 might be fast enough for that application. They're still not a fast drive, though.
@@djp_video so I’ve probably been lucky with mine. I will replace as needed based on your recommendations if & when I start recording RAW. Right now I’m 1080p/30 most times out of my Extreme ISO. All 8 cameras, program and audio. The key for me was adding a fan to my rack to keep fresh cool air blowing over both the T7 and the Extreme. My first use I had the lock up issues that everyone talks about and I identified that the T7 was hot enough to fry an egg on. Keeping it cool has resulted in favorable behavior but I can see how it might not do well with higher transfer speeds. Thanks for staying on top of these issues! If you’re ever in Denver hit me up. I’d love to give you a tour of my production setup for live performance videos.
I'd like to know what the speeds are for the Sabrent enclosure?? I would definitely do this, but I'd like to know the speed difference between the prebuilt compared to the build your own....
Thanks Doug, loved your video. Loved that you looked at realistically ...., we all want good stuff at as low as price possible. So many people on You Tube are looking at the best of the best (regardless of price). But there is no point buying a car that can do 200MPH, if the fastest I am allowed to drive is only 100MPH ...., what's the point(if you know what I mean - using car an anology). X6 is getting great reviews for lots of people..., and was thinking of getting one as scratch disk for my FCPx editing. But I know that uses QLC Nano - Do you think that will be a problem considering the size of video and therefore the amount of rewrites the drive can deal with? Am I getting sucked into the marketing spin about TLC, SLC and MLC's . I assume you would get a few hundred editing jobs out of a typical X6?????
The X6 has been discontinued now. But the replacement X9 and X10 product lines would work pretty well for that task as long as the number of writes you are doing is reasonable. These drives, like most others, have an SLC cache to make the drive responsive, but once it fills up the NAND flash is much slower so writes to the drive slow down until the drive has the chance to flush the cache.
@@djp_videoThanks for that - really appreciate it. I went for the X9 pro 4TB in the end, as it was only an extra 50euro...., I was getting a TLC Nand (so hopefully a little better) .
Thanks for an informative video, Doug! Unfortunately I am another person who cannot seem to get ATEMs to recognize the 2TB Samsung 980 Pro NVMe SSD in the Sabrent enclosure. I have tried three different ATEM Mini Extremes as well as formatting the SSD on both Macs and Windows boxes in various ways. The SSD is running the latest Samsung firmware and works fine on computers. Any thoughts?
It seems that this isn't that uncommon. I haven't experienced the problem myself so I haven't taken any time to troubleshoot (the 980 Pro has worked okay for me).
I have the problem as well with two BMD mini record decks that have the alpha output. I have 4 mini records that have the SDI loop through and the 980s work great
UPDATE: My problem was NOT the 2TB Samsung 980 Pro NVMe SSD, but rather the Sabrent enclosure. I moved the Samsung SSD to a KingWin NVMe enclosure and it works great on both ATEM Mini Extremes and a Mini Pro. It is too bad because I really like the Sabrent enclosure Doug recommended and I will use it elsewhere, but not with the ATEMs. I suspect Sabrent has changed something in their firmware or chipset to make the ATEMs not like it. Anyway, I hope this helps somebody. Thanks for the video Doug.
Hi there. Seems like this discussion is about SSDs for use with real time video work. What would you recommend for use as a Mac back up with Time Machine? I intend to back up my entire Mac and don’t want to use Sandisk due to reports of their failing recently. Thanks!
This may seem counterintuitive, but I'd consider looking at a model a couple years old, preferably new in box if you can find such a thing. Newer drives use a different generation of technology which packs the data in more tightly into available space and it makes them both less reliable and much, much slower. If you can get your hands on a TLC (triple-level cell) drive from Samsung or Western Digital or Crucial that's likely going to be your safest, and maybe fastest, option.
Blackmagic Design also has found the T7 being unreliable. Problem is the write cache ... once its saturated the write drops too much and the Pocket Cinema Camera stops recording. The T7 Shield however works, as it can uphold the write speed needed. Tested it recently on a live gaming tournament, recording both on the ATEM and BMPCC4K with two T7 Shield 2 TBs, both worked flawlessly. The T5 seems to work fine, but avoid the T7 like the plague. T7 Shield is ok. /Edit: The event lasted for almost 8 hours, where we were recording non stop. I also tested recording at UHD@24 FPS in BRAW 3:1 for up to four hours non stop, without dropped frames. So in that case I trust the Blackmagic Design media compatibility listing for the T7 Shield actually is accurate.
Using both the T7 and The Evo 970 with an Acasis Enclosure. In Both cases they get very hot when stressed. Tough, The Acasis enclosure gets even hot in idle, which is very strange.
The video is very good! Thanks The Crucial X6 1 Tb SSD costs around €65. The Sabrent box costs around €38. The Samsung 980 NVME SSD is very expensive, because it is very good! Do you know of any NVME SSD, for video processing, that has identical performance to the Crucial X6 and is cheaper than the Samsung 980? Thanks
There are definitely SSDs out there that cost less than the 980 Pro, but it's kind of a "you get what you pay for" kind of thing. The cheaper SSDs will slow down drastically on large file write operations, just like ALL of the portable USB SSDs do. The main reason I recommend the 980 over other options is that it goes a lot longer on write operations before it slow down than nearly anything else I've tested. In a lot of cases, you'll never see that slowdown. That said, the new Lexar NM790 series ( amzn.to/49Q0LnA ) has performed amazingly well in my testing -- better than the 980. And it's priced similarly, or even a little bit lower, than the 980 Pro. This is one of those areas where you don't really want to go cheap if you have a choice. You do get a lot more by spending a little bit more. One note---there seems to be a number of people that are having issues with compatibility with the Sabrent enclosure, especially when used with video production equipment. This enclosure ( amzn.to/3QK3jL2 ) seems to be better about compatibility.
I have several of the T5s and i have been very happy with them. i primarily record using the BMPCC6KPro @ 6k resolution and usually 30 frames a second. Black magic approves the much newer T7 shield, but i have yet to get one for testing. it does have a 2tb version. but as of yet nobody is making a good holder to mount it to my camera. have you seen or heard much about these T7 shield models?
For my BMPCC4K I have a small rig cage and there is a T5/T7 holder for it, which can hold both the original T5 and the T7 shield. I think its the SmallRig SSD Mount 3272.
@@jadefinchscene5644 I guess the small rig SSD mount should be compatible just fine on a tilta cage as long as you have a screw hole left to screw it into. So good luck/have fun with trying the SSD mount, I'm sure it'll work.
this is pretty great, but you missed the reason for why the drives "fail". whats happening is the internal buffer is filling up and then it has to write directly to much much slower nand. the t5=slower but consistent, t7=faster but small buffer ~40gb, t7 shields= faster and consistently fast. Also weird that your findings showed a buffer in the sandisk extreme pros. most DIT's were defaulting to those for years for very good consistent performance and good speed. at least that was until a whole batch of them started failing without any info from sandisk.... and now we're all onto the t7 shields. although apparently theres now an x9 and x9 from crucial that are promising looking
I’m guessing you’re certainly aware of these and perhaps deliberately not mentioned them, but do you have any thoughts on Sandisk’s Professional (not to be confused with the’Extreme Pro’ nomenclature) G-DRIVE Range of SSDs, or LaCie’s ruggedised Models for that matter? I realise there’s a significant price premium over the options you’ve discussed here, but, if you happen to know much about them, would you rate the performance and reliability of such drives as highly as your suggestions this application, or would it be fair to say the massive price of such products is largely for the sake of the brand name? Coming from more of a filmmaking background, I’ve spotted the highly visible orange SSDs from LaCie on sets many time-perhaps because that’s just what many in the industry have grown to trust and so stick with it like so many other tools of the trade-but I’m not sure if they’re particularly commonplace in the live multicam environment anywhere near as much. I’d be interested to know your opinion on these seemingly higher-end options.
Please could you recommend any fast USBC cables for video edditing?? I'm pretty sure I've got a decent external ssd but the cables might be the bottleneck..
If you want a cable that you can feel confident is always going to work, you can go with a Thunderbolt 4 cable. They're designed for the higher speeds of Thunderbolt, so they work really well with the slower speeds of USB. amzn.to/4bUT13N
Hello there nice video and very useful information. I have a question since im in the process of getting an external ssd for my ipad. Ive heard that the sandisk extreme and the samsung t7 drain a lot of battery when editing from the drive in apps like lumafusion that lets you edit directly from the drive. Now with the information you give us here about frames drops etc. I have discarded these 2 drives. I was looking into the samsung t5 since i have seen good reviews about battery drain and no heating issues, but i cant find the t5 anywhere anymore. So O just stumbled into the crucial brand, and to be more specific, the new Crucial x9 pro which looks very promising. I seen a lot of videos and very good reviews about this new drive, but all fail to mention the ipad, I would like to know its performance on the ipad. Im more interested in 1. Heating issues, 2. Reliability, 3. Battery drain, how bad is it if any? On speeds, Ive heard great reviews just nothing on the ipad. Thanks in advance 🤝🏼
@@djp_video Hello thank you very much for your quick response, well i guess im going to take the dive and find out myself. I just ordered the x9. I hoping that being a newer drive it can do well. Ill be back with some info once i receive it. Thanks again
I just finished spending a few hours with this and I haven't been able to recreate the problem. As long as I format the 980 SSD using exFAT it just works. It sometimes takes a few seconds for the ATEM to recognize the drive, but it never fails to do so.
No, not yet. And if I'm being honest my hopes aren't high -- the overall trend is to use cheaper and cheaper storage, which means slower and slower speeds, but hidden by increasingly large buffers. Going from the T5 to T7 we saw a drop in underlying performance, and I wouldn't be surprised if we saw the same thing again.
I want to get the crucial drives but they are hard to get in Canada. And i can’t use Amazon 😢. I was hoping this would be ok then i could order from best buy
If you're using with Blackmagic devices, I'd avoid the Samsung SSDs. I hear about nothing but problems with them from people who watch my channel and comment in Facebook groups.
fantastic! I have several T7s but I don't record for more than a few minutes at a time. I havent experienced issues...but I guess it depends of the file size...I stopped using my sandisk extreme v2 because it gets TOO hot while recording/editing. The T7 stay cool...but now I want to try a Crucial X9pro-I want to make sure that I can edit directly to it with my m1pro laptop. I think so since I have edited directly to a samsung t7 before. My videos are usually under 1 hr long or less...I don't think I can take advantage of the X10pro fastest speed-my macs don't have the port needed....but how about the Samsung T9? which is twice as fast as the Samsung T7? Can Macs really get the most out of them? thanks
So I've been using the 2TB Samsung 980 Pro NVMe SSD in the Sabrent enclosure as a media source for my hyperdeck (as it was never recognized by the ATEM) for a while now. It works OK for recording but for playback of ProRes files i have a lot of dropped frames. For both capture and playback the enclosure gets incredibly hot so there could be some thermal throtteling going on. I had my hopes up for this producrt combo but I would not recommend it for anyone else. The numbers look good on paper but it's just not what I'm seeing in practise.
If that particular enclosure doesn’t have sufficient cooling for your workflow, you can try another. The 980 Pro itself is a fantastic drive for video editing.
If you use a properly built cable (like the one it comes with) and plug into a USB 3.2 Gen 2 compatible port, you'd be able to achieve the full 10 Gbps communication speed and the transfer rates wouldn't be any different than USB-C. If the USB port you plug into only supports USB 3.1 you'd max out at 5 Gbps. But with that said, since this video, I've discovered that the X6 slows down pretty dramatically as it fills up. Go with a Crucial X9/X10 instead. With those the USB-A adapter isn't included, so you'd need to supply your own.
Mostly for recording. But the same principles apply... the T7 is going to slow down on you significantly when you copy a lot of data on a computer as well.
Hi Doug, could you go thru the data rates of your video recording that you typically do and those that failed ? Are you doing multiple streams of 100 (mb/s or mbit/s) (=12.5 MB/s or MBytes/s) or higher recording? Just to be sure on the measurement units. Am I incorrect to understand that even at 5% low of 300 (MB/s or MBytes/s), it should be more than sufficient* to handle 10 streams of 100 mbit/s (125 MBytes/s) ?? * assuming for simplicity the writes speed for multiple files writing simultaneously is same as single file, ofc it will be must lower
In theory, yes. In practice, it's more complicated. If the recording device has a decent buffer, or the recording media has a good buffer, you might be able to pull it off.
Thanks for the video, I decided to get one after watching this. It was 2TB X9 Pro from amazon for 87usd during sale, but then undeliverable because it broke during transit. I can't reorder because it's now it's 129+ usd :/
Thanks for the insights Doug, didn't know there was more to test than a quick read/write speed. I just got me a stack of T7 2TB's. Might have to reconsider, I guess.. Will do some live in the field testing as well.
@@AndresArosemena Well so far they have been doing great.. We've used them on 2h+ shoots and full day timelapse, no problem. Only exception is shooting on higher framerates (> 30fps) full resolution in BRAW. Then they can't keep up! We use the X8 for that..
Wich test did you do here? I have very random results doing the test myself. Wich mode did you use? Mode Refresh R/W perf? Do you have "Write simulation" enabled?
Thanks for this video. But I have a question. Is the enclosure Sabrent also getting hot, while not using the SSD? I had several enclosures of a different brand, but without using them, I was able to fry an egg on it in 15 minutes. I don't want that to happen.
Doug video with the Hyper deck extreme 4k hdr how many cameras can i record in to HyperDeck. blackmagic released the atem television studio 4k8 with no iso option.
Hey, thank you for making this video. I have watched this video in past 10 days atleast 5 times. Amazing content. I was wondering whether you have the data for Samsung T7 Shield and Crucial X9 / X10 Pro.. Apparently, Samsung T7 Shield fixes the issue that Samsung T7 has, would have liked to see your data to confirm the same! Wish you a nice day :)
I finally got my hands on a T7 Shield and X10 Pro. Despite what some are saying, the T7 Shield absolutely does slow down and doesn't perform when writing a lot of data. The X10 Pro is an impressive drive. I was able to write a full terabyte of data to mine without it slowing down at all. It looks to be a great drive (so far).
@@djp_video super, thanks, there is one other thing that is confusing me - it is the password protection of both these drive. I am told/read that samsung t7 shield needs password protection switched off in order to be used on android phone or you need to use an app that is not very reliable. do you maybe know what is the case with crucial x9/x10 pro - does these devices work as expected when connected to an android phone with password protection on, or does the password protection need to be removed in order to be connected to and files shown on an android phone?
I don't know for sure, but my gut tells me that unless a drive has its own buttons/screen/interface to enter a password, the password protection will need to be turned off for all drives to be usable on a phone or tablet. Since password protection of that type isn't something that is part of the USB standard, it requires software to make it work, and I don't believe anyone is making drivers for Android to make that happen.
Hi Doug...So, I am going to be converting all of my svhs/vhs tapes to digital and want to store them all on one drive. Would the X6 be decent at handling this task? I believe I will be importing the footage through quicktime and then saving that file. Thanks!
It would store them okay, but if you're writing a lot of big files all at once you can run into a situation where you fill the buffer and it slows down to a crawl. All drives these days will do that, so you have to pick a balance between what you're willing to spend on a drive and how much patience you have when saving the files.
If you need consistent performance, the only way to achieve that is to assemble your own drive from a USB/Thunderbolt enclosure and NVMe SSD. NONE of the commercially available options that I've had the opportunity of testing offers consistent, high speeds when writing large files like we typically find ourselves managing in the video world. The ALL slow down quite a lot with big files. And, unfortunately, the situation seems to be getting worse, with price and capacity being the two things that manufacturers are focusing on, and performance being an afterthought. For example, in the Samsung "T" series, the T5 had the most consistent write speeds of the family, and with the T7 and now T9 they slow down even more than the T5 did.
thank you so much for the response. that is quite unfortunate.. 😢 do you still recommend the sabrent enclosure with the samsung 980 pro or do you have something better now? i have no problem assembling my own but i’m just worried the enclosure isn’t as hardy as i want it to be.
I don't know all of the technical differences, but I do know cost-cutting was involved. The newer drives also seem to have lower long-term write speeds with smaller DRAM buffers.
I always had good luck with Samsung T7 2TB = Price $109.00 including shipping to Korea.... It's less expensive for me to buy this product in the US and have it shipped than to purchase domestically.
Noob here. I assume that you are recording uncompressed video which is why the write speeds need to be so high. If I'm using multiple capture cards into a higher end mac, and doing H.265 compression as I record, the files are not that big. I'm recording 3 streams (2 camlinks and a screen recording) and averaging a combined 15.8MB/s. So in this scenario, any of the drives are going to be totally fine right? As long as my computer can keep up with the compression and I'm ok with the quality loss?
It's compressed video. In the case of recording directly from some models of cameras, it could be a RAW stream rather than MP4/MP5, but still lower bitrate than uncompressed. The problem is when the drives get 'busy' and can't keep up with the non-stop stream of data coming from the camera/switcher/recorder. If their buffer fills up, the delay while trying to empty it can cause the recording to fail, or at least drop frames. The fact that you're using a computer gives you a real advantage over dedicated recording devices, because the computer itself acts as a buffer, so you can get away with drives that might not work when connected directly to a recorder.
It didn't exist when I made this video. The X9/X10 Pro are very good SSDs and generally work fairly well for video. But, like all USB SSDs these days, once their SLC buffer fills up they slow down quite dramatically. If that is an issue you'll need to assemble your own with an NVMe drive and USB enclosure.
@@djp_video is it fine to use like backup storage I mean I shot whole day of vacation on phone then at the end of day copy to the ssd deleted from the phone and like this complete whole trip ? Then the drop frames etc should not be the case correct ?
With the Sabrent enclosure and 980 Pro drive I consistently see just under a Gigabyte per second. With a 20 Gbps enclosure, those speeds could be double when plugged into a compatible USB port.
Thanks for the video. One problem, My ATEM Extreme ISO doe's not see my Samsung 980. It works fine with my T7. The Samsung works fine with my Macbook M1 Pro, and Hyperdeck. Any updates/ solutions?
I just finished spending a few hours with this and I haven't been able to recreate the problem. As long as I format the 980 SSD using exFAT it just works. It sometimes takes a few seconds for the ATEM to recognize the drive, but it never fails to do so.
On your website, How is it that the 128 Sandisk extreme pro 200mb/s is so much slower than the sandisk extreme pro 170mb/s was there something messed up with your test?
I don't believe so. When you were looking, did you compare the results for both the SanDisk reader as well as the other readers? The performance difference is huge. I tested it with multiple readers, including one of SanDisk's own, and the results were consistent. Both models are UHS-I, which is limited to about 95 MB/sec, but those cards allegedly can be pushed to higher speeds using the official SanDisk reader (using non-standard extensions to the UHS protocol, which also means you'll never see those higher speeds in any devices). The bottom line is that those speeds aren't achieved following the UHS-I standard so you'll only get them on very specific models of card readers. But, at the same time, SanDisk has been one of the worst companies about exaggerating their performance. Between that and very poor compatibility with Blackmagic Design equipment, I don't buy cards from them any longer.
Hey Doug, I purchased the Crucial X6 4TB ssd during this year's prime day. I've been expering slow transfer speeds when I test this. It fluctuates between 200 and 800 MB/s, but mostly operates between the 200-350 MB/S range. Do you have any test results on the 4TB model? It's also possible that I just have a lemon. Edit: When I innitially speed tested the drive, it operated near the 800MB/s transfer speed. But once the drive had more than 1TB of used space, the speed dropped to the 200-350MB/s. I purchased this drive to record Pocket 6k footage and have experienced frame drops.
Thanks so much Doug for the generosity of your time and very practical knowledge. Greatly appreciated. Your advice on the T7 is spot on, only slower stuff works with them.
Like a lot of people I found out the hard way about T7's. I only bought it because I couldn't get T5's and the specs read better. I now use it on the ATEM and that has been successful.
I have heard that the T7 Shield does work for video though from more than one source.
I appreciate your time on this Doug. Update: I tried a couple of the Crucial X6 drives but kept getting errors when recording iso files from Atem Mini Pro Iso. The Samsung T5 has only has been pretty solid.
02:30 🚫 Common Mistake: Samsung T7 drive not recommended for video recording due to frequent issues like lost footage and dropped frames.
04:40 📊 Tested SSDs: Samsung T7, SanDisk Extreme Pro, Crucial X8, Crucial X6, and a custom Sabrent enclosure with Samsung 970 Evo.
06:15 📈 Crucial X8: Offers consistent performance throughout, recommended for video recording, and priced competitively.
08:24 🌟 Top Recommendation: Crucial X6 SSD provides excellent performance, reliability, and is cost-effective, making it a great choice for video projects.
10:19 💼 Build Your Own: Sabrent USB-C NVMe Enclosure with Samsung 980 Pro Series SSD is recommended for those seeking a custom and high-performance solution.
Doug I have to say you are absolutely 100% correct in your assessment with these drives. I recently bought an Atem ISO to record our City Council Meetings which can last from 2.5 to 4 hours.
On the first night, I though someone sent me an attack. Little did I realize that is was the poor decision to use the SAMSUNG T7.
Then I used the SANDISK EXTREME PORTABLE 2Tb and it lasted a little longer but started crashing around the 2.75 hr mark.
Then I got the crucial and no problems what so ever.
I have a few enclosures but they are mine and not the city’s.
So yeah, the constant need for writing and the drive never slowing down is spot on.
However I recorded a 5 hr event on the Blackmagic Studio 6K pro on the SANDISK and had no problems directly into the USB - C slot recording BRaw in 6K.
Thanks again for doing the spade work for us Doug. I use Samsung 980's in my main production machine but have just noticed that here in the UK they are selling, across the board, Samsung 990 PRO 2TB PCIe 4.0 NVMe for less than the 980. Getting one to check out.
We're seeing occasions (like Amazon Prime Day) where the 990s are cheaper, but we haven't officially flipped just yet.
990 PRO is a good choice for a DIY enclosure
Would you say the issues with 980 performance due to firmware issues are now long gone? Would definitely be interested in seeing the performance of 990s as the price point for 980/990 is very similar here in the UK
You should probably talk about the list of Blackmagic suppported drives which is - to say the least - a strange bunch.
Lexar sl500 the best
Doug, I literally canceled an Amazon order for a T7 Shield after watching 30 seconds of this video! I'll be ordering the Crucial now using your link. Thanks for your content!
Go for the X9 or x10 if you're getting Crucial.
Thanks, will do!@@djp_video
We went with the X9 Pro from Crucial, and it works flawlessly thus far. Record, unplug from HyperDeck, connect to Mac Studio, and edit! Saves a decent amount of time! Thanks, Doug!@@djp_video
Great review and SSD analysis. Can you also recommend the 4TB Crucial X8?
Yes
Hi Doug, I got the Sabrent enclosure and Samsung 908 Pro...formatted on MacOS but it is not recognized by the ATEM Mini Extreme ISO - via the USB C out where you can record all the inputs. No problem mounting on a Mac - any thoughts?
I just finished spending a few hours with this as long as I format the 980 SSD using exFAT it just works. It sometimes takes a few seconds for the ATEM to recognize the drive, but it never fails to do so.
Thank you and subscribed! Does this ranking apply to video editing too?
More or less. Editing isn't as write-intensive as recording, but having faster performance than you need isn't really a bad thing.
@@djp_video Too true! Thank you
Love the graphs and comparisons, thank you!
Thanks - Amazon had the X8 2TB insanely priced for its Prime Days sale under $80 - was less than the X6! Thanks to this video I could order with confidence knowing it will work for video work I am doing. I have some of the other drives you reviewed and you exposed their issues/limitations. A big help. - I also have the sabrent combination and that lives up to your recommendation and hype. Just a good education about these drives for anyone interested and doing video work. Thanks again.
SUBSCRIBED, thanks Doug! for taking the time to share your knowledge. I recently got the Crucial P3 Plus SSD 4TB formatted to exfat; to stick downloaded 2160p films onto so I could play them back on my 4K projector over the USBA port but .. endless buffering and stuttering playback. I´ve already ordered the crucial x10 pro so will try that out next
Crucial drives are my goto but the WB Black externals are a good buy when found on clearance.
Thank you so much for this video. I got very worried about my current sandisk extreme ssd due to numerous articles that these drives are failing because of soldering coming lose. Your video was the perfect answer to my search. I ordered today the Sabrent USB-C NVMe Enclosure and the Samsung 980 Pro SSD 2TB. Hope to receive them in a few days. I followed your links to amazon to sponsor you but had to search again on amazon in my own country :) Thank you for your great videos. So very helpful always.
I appreciate the support! The USB-C enclosure/Samsung SSD pairing works really well. I have heard from some people that they've had a hard time getting it to work with Blackmagic cameras and switchers, so if that's your intended use case make sure to test it well during your return window.
@@djp_video ohh? And there I thought you adviced these for combination with black magic? Anyway, It does work with the atem extreme but I have not tested it while feeding it with 8 active camera's because I want to add better heat pads first. Somewhere else I red that the sabrent house does not connect well with the lower part of the samsung 980pro and therfor can get to hot.
I did. I've never had any trouble with it myself. But perhaps Sabrent changed something, because I've gotten reports from a few viewers who have indicated that they were not able to get their Blackmagic devices to recognize the Sabrent enclosures.
@@djp_video I have no problem with Atem Mini Extreme ISO recognizing the samsung980pro 2TB in the Sabrent USB Type-C as can been seen on the photo I just took of it being connected and recording. I have only not yet tested it with recording a lot of camera's at the same time (The ISO functionality) www.janvalk.com/sabrent980pro.jpg
edit: I red a comment further down saying he formatted on a mac. I like to add that I did the create drive and formatting to ex-fat on a windows 10 computer.
@@djp_video mm it looks like youtube deleted my comment. maybe because I had a link to a photo is which I show the atem mini extreme connecting and recording with the samsung980pro in a sabrent enclosure exactly like the one you show in this video. So I can say that mine does work. janvalk(dot)com(slash)sabrent980pro(dot)jpg
Crucial X6 4TB had a pair for one year, more than happy, Mac user, if no power, the ssd still rocking!! I’m a VDJ!!
actually Doug no longer recommends the X6. Read the video description.
Such a useful video - I'm sure that people invest in the Samsung t7 with blind faith that it will be one of the best external SSDs on market. So it is a surprising and useful to know that it is not!
I been ditching the sandisk portable SSD drives and Van building my own nvme drives with the enclosure like you do. They are so much faster and cheaper to build. I've been using Western digital, crucial, and Samsung evos
Well... just lost 1/2 of our show from a Samsung T7 record used with ATEM xtreme iso. This happened after I stopped and started the record 1/2 way through. Don't make this mistake yourselves! Will be sure to use "Doug certified" drives moving forward.
Details: we ran numerous tests with no issue. 1 hour and 1.5 hour tests with 6 iso's. On show day we ran 1 hour 6iso's no issue. Then stopped and restarted recorder. Thats when issue happened. No warnings on atem xtreme. Just the data amount was not changing. Tried to stop records after 2nd hour to find device had not recorded anything.
I have been really happy with the SanDisk PRO-BLADE ecosystem. It started off with a fairly heft price premium, but has come down to be much more in line with other offerings at similar storage capacities. It has >800MB/s sustained writes, ~2400MB/s reads (when using the Thunderbolt 3 dock -- which is admittedly expensive but gives you four bays for concurrent offloads). And the mag format makes them super easy to swap in seconds without having to unplug/replug any cables. I use them to record ProRes 4k30 from Blackmagic Video Assist 12Gs and have never had them drop out.
Have been using these too. Was hoping Doug had one of these in this review.
The channel doesn't quite bring in enough income to buy every type of drive out there ;) And recording directly to USB-C devices isn't normally part of my workflow (I primarily use SD cards or SATA SSDs) so I kind of have to make a point of buying and testing devices separate from what I normally do when working for clients.
@@djp_video All good Doug. Appreciate you anyway for what you do for all of us! Hope I didn't come off as putting you down for it. Was just excited to possibly see someone using the PB's as they are pretty new and I was very impressed with what I have seen from them. This Vid was awesome anyway! I record 4-6 hrs at a time and have had issues w ssd's. this vid explains why very well. Thank You Sir!
A very well put together video! That said, I have been using Sandisk Extreme (non-pro) 1T’s for video editing exclusively for four years now without any problems whatsoever. I am presently on SSD’s # 13 and 14 (I make a backup copy of each disc after every use). I work almost exclusively in 4K 24fps so maybe that’s not enough bandwidth to bump into the thresholds you describe? It’s interesting that by your technical analysis, which is clear and concise, I would avoid the Sandisk Extreme like the plague, yet by my practical experience I would highly recommend the same in terms of both performance and value.
Same here. I had good results with the sandisk extreme non pro BUT recent articles show the sandisk drives can and do fail due to design errrors (soledring) so from that moment on, I no longer would risk it or recommend any sandisk portable ssd
Nice roundup of the options available, the sabrent enclosure in a test with, say a samsung 980 vs a 980/990 pro would be interesting to look at, as the nvme drives are getting so cheap at the moment with the introduction of pcie5.0 drives.
Here's the 980 Pro test: www.djprod.biz/diskperformance.php?id=iRVMxFPo3KK9DlIUqYAVPgc
And the 990 Pro test: www.djprod.biz/diskperformance.php?id=TNlWDGt4BtK2ErQb4ndy-o
Check out my website for more test results. www.djprod.biz/diskperformance.php
If an atem iso extreme can record each input up to 80 megabits per second + program stream quality, that would be a theoretical max of 720 megabits per second, or about 90 megabytes per second. Speeds don’t seem to be the issue, rather variance and wait time between buffered writes that might cause the atem to error out recording or recordings getting corrupted in general. But yes, technically speaking, the more stable and faster writing drives will give you the least amount of problems, but it’s just a side effect of them writing faster (less variance and faster flushes to nand) rather than the write speed itself.
Sustained write speed is often an issue. A lot of consumer SSDs can’t keep up that rate for a long period of time.
When I was setting up my last project I could not get the T5 and I knew the T7 were not good so a friend recommended the OWC Envoy Pro FX and it has been rock solid. 7 channels of ISO plus program with no issues. I think the Sabrent USB-C NVMe is the way to go. I want to try the SanDisk Pro-Blade they look like a great system.
T5 is a great, easy option. But an SSD with and enclosure is faster if you get the right SSD and enclosure.
The fastest SSD I currently own is the SK Hynix Platinum P41 2TB with an ORICO NVMe SSD Enclosure 40Gbps.
My Crucial 4TB is fast as well, but not as fast as the Hynix in Blackmagic drive tests.
The problem with the T5s is that they haven't been manufactured for some time now, so you're either buying old stock at inflated prices, or a used drive with unknown history.
@@djp_video agreed. This is why I’ve switched over to buying SSDs and enclosures. The biggest issue at this point is finding an enclosure with fast throughput. Advertised speeds of 40Gbps aren’t always accurate and oftentimes just a straight up lie so you need to be careful. I’d like to see someone do a side-by-side test of a fast SSD using different enclosures. Maybe I’ll do one?
Subscribed. Excellent content and presentation. Thank you.
Gracias, the storage is a big trouble in video work. I just got my laptops ssds full. Is a real pain.
Any update on the X8? Does it still perform quite well and consistent? Read a few reviews that were discouraging on the long term high speed performance
In long, intense write operations it slows down to about 60 MB/sec. But all modern drives slow down at some point. Virtually all drives utilize a high-speed buffer to cache write operations, and once that buffer fills up writes slow down to the native write speed of the underlying storage cells.
The big difference from one drive to the next is how large the buffer is. In the case of the 2 TB X8 that I use and tested, it was around 160 GB before it slowed down. Filling an entire 2 TB drive took around 6 hours.
I recently performed a re-test of the 2 TB version, and the results are here: www.djprod.biz/diskperformance.php?id=H8TJQNQFJdiu9-B1IfwHe. The drive was half full. And you can see where the write performance drops at 160 GB, then speeds up again as it reaches the empty portion of the drive about half way.
I've also tested an X10 Pro since this video. Results here: www.djprod.biz/diskperformance.php?id=6E6HU8s1Gs6u-dTe72Ul82I. The overall performance is considerably better. But it does start buffering earlier -- around 50 GB. It did recover periodically and would cycle back and forth between buffering and writing. That would indicate that it has a small buffer, but the overall storage write speeds are considerably higher.
Keep in mind that you have to push either of these drives pretty hard to get the buffer to fill. Like if you're copying data from another high speed drive. For many workflows, like recording on a camera or ATEM, you'd probably either never fill the buffer. or it would take a very long time.
When compared to drives from other manufacturers, both of these are better than other drives in their price class.
You can't avoid buffering altogether, but going with a high speed NVMe drive in a USB enclosure gives you your best bet of not having the buffering impact your ability to use the drives for operations that require consistent high speed. Like the Samsung 980 Pro / USB enclosure recommendation I made in this video. www.djprod.biz/diskperformance.php?id=iRVMxFPo3KK9DlIUqYAVPgc (Sabrent enclosure) or www.djprod.biz/diskperformance.php?id=R896PzWPPbeBSlCuFbAm (ORICO USB 3.2 Gen 2x2 enclosure).
@@djp_video Thank you so much for this response. I really appreciate it. By your assessment, is a write speed of 60MB/sec still sufficient for recording from the ATEM? Also, do you reckon getting a similar behavior to the X10 pro on the X9 pro? Sorry for the bother, it's just I'm about to decide between getting the X8 and the X9 pro (as I don't have the ports to take advantage of the X10 pro speeds and both have reduced prices) and I want to know if the sustained performance of the X9 Pro is worth splurging a bit more
You'll never hit that issue with the ATEMs. They don't create enough data to ever fill the buffer.
The X8 will be plenty fast for what you're doing. You can get an X9 if you want something newer, but it won't be any more reliable when used with ATEM switchers.
Thanks for the great comparison. I don't know why it wasn't working but I bought a Samsung 980 Pro SSD, but it in a 10GB Selore docking station (hub) and tried recording from my iPhone 15 Pro Max, Prores 422, 4k and it hung up and dropped frames every time within a few seconds. Just to note, I also had a 65w Anker powerbank hooked up to power the hub. I also tried it hooked up to my Macbook Pro, dropped in two layers of Prores 422 to see if it could edit video without dropping frames and it failed again, just playing back a simple single-layer timeline. I thought I might have gotten a bad Selore hub and/or drive so I purchased both again, so I had two sets to compare and the same thing happened. The 10GB Selore hub and the Samsung 980 Pro SSD failed to record and playback even one stream of Prores 422(4k) I tried formatting the drive to both APSC (for my mac) as well as XFat. Nothing worked so I returned all the units. Am I missing something? This sounds like it should have been a slam dunk for recoding iPhone ProRes and/or editing Prores from the computer.
I'd try a different USB-C to NVMe interface. There seems to be a compatibility issue going on there. You could try the one I mentioned in this video, but it seems that some users are having compatibility issues with it too. Another one I've tried and had good luck with these: amzn.to/40yTOmy or amzn.to/3SuEXYl
Interesting. I have a couple of T7s that have done fine, no issues at all with recording the ATEM. I haven’t stressed it though, admittedly. Good info, thanks Doug!
I use a T7 for my ATEM Mini Extreme ISO recording in ISO mode and haven't run into issues yet but now I'm kind of afraid.
Thanks Doug. Great video. Just ordered the iPhone 15 Pro Max so this is incredibly handy! Just to be clear - you would recommend the Samsung 980 over the Crucial X6?
Yes. But based on the feedback I'm getting from viewers, I'd steer you away from the Sabrent enclosure. It seems that a lot of people are having issues with it. Also, since this video, I've gone back and re-used a couple of my X6 drives and it seems like they really slow down a lot after the first full write cycle, so I'm withdrawing my recommendation for that model.
Thanks Doug, this explaines whats been happening to our 2hr plus shoots.
have you ever reviewed wireless headphones? I just watched you video on external SSD and was very impressed. Would LOVE to hear you review wireless headphones!!!
I started down the path to try to do a roundup of headphone options, and bought more than a dozen models of both wired and wireless variety, but it was so disappointing that I never finished that project.
I'm also not sure I'm ready for the amount of vitriol that would come from such a video. People have such different tastes and strong opinions. And every manufacturer's interpretation of 'good' sound is so wildly different.
For example, I bought a pair of Sony WH-1000XM4 headphones a couple years ago based on the fact that they were getting just phenomenal online reviews everywhere. And I absolutely hated them. They sounded awful! They were the worst pair of headphones I'd heard outside of budget (basically disposable) models. Audio sludge. The low end was just a muddy disaster and vocals were nearly indistinguishable from everything else in the mix, and the noise reduction had a tinny ringing that was painful to listen to. I haven't been impressed by any other models that I've tried, from any manufacturer, either. Plus, with most using Bluetooth, the audio quality is only ever going to be so-so, and it's always going to have quite noticeable latency, making them suitable only for casual listening. I've stopped trying and just accept that a wire is going to be a reality for me. The best bang for the buck I've found there is the Sony MDR-V6 (not the 'similar' but not nearly as good MDR-7506) -- it's too bad they were discontinued. I also like the Philips Fidelio series, beyerdynamic DT 770 PRO, and most everything I've heard from Grado. But I still haven't heard a good pair of wireless headphones -- the trend in the last decade or so has been way over-boosted, muddy bass and overly bright, harsh treble, and at thes same time burying vocals so deep they can barely be heard less understood, and I can't stand any of them.
In terms of in-ear models, I've tried a whole bunch from some pretty reputable companies and keep coming back to the Shure SE215. Phenomenal quality for the price. Even the Bluetooth version is really good.
I don't use the earbud style that much because they just don't stay in my ears very well, but when I do I've landed on the Anker Soundcore Liberty Air 2 Pro just because I can't justify spending any more than that on something I'm probably going to lose. The sound quality is just okay, but at that price point that's about as good as you're going to get.I've heard that the Galaxy Buds+ are also quite good.
@@djp_video FYI - Having had my MDR7506 for over 15 years, when I read your comment that Sony discontinued them I immediately did a google search. I'm happy to say that Amazon sells 3,000 per month and has 1 day shipping so I immediately ordered a second pair... just in case LOL and occasionally it's nice to have a second pair to loan out.
Hey Doug, what would you say is the minimum recommended MB/s a drive should have to be considered "safe"? Naturally, I own a couple of Samsung T7 (1TB and 2TB models) and so far when I record in BRAW 12:1 or ProRes 422 LT (for podcasts) and have my camera and recorder set to notify me of drop-frames, I've not yet experiences issues (thankfully). That said, I obviously don't ever want to run into this issue and would hope to avoid that. I think I'll pick up an NVMe solution. Thanks for the advice! What would you recommend the minimum ballpark figure to shoot for write speeds? Would 550 MB/s be good enough for straight up RAW?
It isn't so just about the raw MB/sec, but whether the drive has a big enough buffer to be able to cope with momentary spikes as well as the longer-term sustained writes as well. The spikes are where the T7 fails, and the Blackmagic recorders produce spikes regularly. Without a big enough buffer on the drive, it will eventually fail to keep up.
@@djp_video that’s really good to know, Doug. Thank you. I appreciate the insight. I wonder why Samsung went backwards with this model. I’d better get a different drive. For now I’ll use my Hyperdeck (with EVO drives) and avoid using the T7s.
Thanks for the video. Would have been nice to show the performance of the Samsung 980 Pro in the Sabrent enclosure the same way you did the other drives.
It's on my website: www.djprod.biz/diskperformance.php?id=iRVMxFPo3KK9DlIUqYAVPgc
T7 works fine here with Atem Mini - 4 channel ISO recording multiple hours, but fails instantly on HyperDeck Studio HD Plus 4K 30p PRORES recording!
When connected to Mac Mini M1 T7 offload speed from Sandisk SDXC Pro-Reader hovers arround 40-50 MBytes/sec compared to offload to internal M1 memory, the speed is 150MBytes.
The ATEM Mini is recording in h.264 which requires a lot less bandwidth than the ProRes you're using on the HyperDeck. If you had a faster drive, like the Crucials I mention in this video, you'd be able to keep up on the HyperDeck in ProRes as well.
Thanks for this! I’m looking for an SSD to use with my S5iix. I’ve been using the Panasonic recommended t7 shield. What do you think of the crucial X9 Pro or X10 Pro. I also use an M1 MacBook Pro to edit.
The X9 and X10 drives are great!
very helpful and understandable comparison of the speed performance of these drives. Not sure whether the long term reliability differs - do faster drives generally fail sooner ?
Not necessarily. Cheaper drives tend to fail sooner than more expensive models, but faster doesn't seem to equate to shortened lifespan.
Greatly appreciate your wealth of knowledge
Thank you for this. It was really helpful. I am considering going with the Samsung 990 Pro 4TB in the Sabrent enclosure you suggested. Any thoughts on going with the heatsink version of the 990 versus the one without the heatsink? Any idea if the heatsink version will fit in the Sabrent enclosure?
If you're putting it in an enclosure, get the version without the heatsink. The enclosure it self serves as the heat sink. And the version with the heat sink wouldn't even fit.
For much better performance, consider a USB4 enclosure, which (depending on the port you plug it into), could give you up to 40 Gbps. Here's one I've used and know to work well: amzn.to/4fI6azw
@@djp_video The14% negative reviews on that enclosure are troubling--overheating, fan failure, random disconnects. Having dealt with a OWC Envoy enclosure that behaved like this (and cost me days of down time), I find myself hesitant to go this route.
I'd bet a large percentage of those aren't using thermal pad that comes with the unit. So the heat has nowhere to go.
Great video Doug, I wish I'd watched tis 2 days ago! I just shot a bunch of stuff on my S5iix yesterday to a T7, I haven't reviewed the footage yet. Fingers crossed it worked! Have you had a chance to check out the new Crucial x9 and x10 drives? If they're as reliable as the x6 and x8 I might grab a few to replace my T7 and T5 drives. Many thanks for all of your great videos!
I haven't tried an X9 or X10 yet. And nobody has submitted any performance data using my software tool. I'll get to them eventually, but I already have more drives than I need.
Doug, I just got the 2T PCIe and put it in the sabrent enclosure. It will mount on my M1 mac mini and my macbook pro, no problem - but no matter how I format it, it will not mount on my 6Kpro or my atem extreme. I've tried formatting it every way possible there is... Same results! I've used a number of hard drives with both the atem and the 6K pro. never had this issue. I'm researching to figure out what's going on, but if you have any clues, I'd appreciate it. Thanks! Your channel is awesome.
Have you tried formatting on the 6K Pro?
It appears that there is a firmware issue and requires updating of the firmware through “Samsung Magician”… which only runs on PC.
From the research I’m doing so far, the Samsung 980 pro looks like a dead end for Mac users, as there’s no way to update it. Strange that it will mount on a Mac, but not on the ATEM or 6K pro.
Yes I tried formatting in the 6Kpro. I’ve tried everything! I’ve discovered there is a ton of information on line discussing the need to update the 980 and 990 firmware. I want it to work! But it seems that it’s just easier to return it and go with the crucial X-6 if you own a Mac. At least that’s the way it appears to me right now.
Expanding on your question… the 6kpro will not even see the 980 pro, so it’s impossible to format it
This is excellent, thank you so much!
Do you have buffer/write performance for the Sabrent enclosure + Samsung 980 Pro?
www.djprod.biz/diskperformance.php?id=iRVMxFPo3KK9DlIUqYAVPgc
Interesting to say the least. I have been using the Samsung T7 for over two years. I have 12 in rotation and I haven’t seen failure or dropped frames with my ATEM MINI EXTREME ISO since the first failure day 1 that led me to discover on my own that it was a heat related failure. I added a cooling fan and have successfully used the T7 for up to 6 hours with no issues that I’m seeing. Curious at what ambient temperature you did the testing and would you have seen a different result with a fan cooling system. I’m definitely not saying I wouldn’t change to something else I’ve just been either lucky or keeping the drive and the ATEM properly thermal managed has led to my experience that they seem to work just fine. Thoughts?
Most of the complaints I've heard are coming from people who use the T7 with Blackmagic cameras, where they're recording RAW, or people using them with HyperDecks. They just can't keep up with those kinds of speeds. The ATEM Minis record at a much lower bitrate, and the T7 might be fast enough for that application. They're still not a fast drive, though.
@@djp_video so I’ve probably been lucky with mine. I will replace as needed based on your recommendations if & when I start recording RAW. Right now I’m 1080p/30 most times out of my Extreme ISO. All 8 cameras, program and audio. The key for me was adding a fan to my rack to keep fresh cool air blowing over both the T7 and the Extreme. My first use I had the lock up issues that everyone talks about and I identified that the T7 was hot enough to fry an egg on. Keeping it cool has resulted in favorable behavior but I can see how it might not do well with higher transfer speeds. Thanks for staying on top of these issues! If you’re ever in Denver hit me up. I’d love to give you a tour of my production setup for live performance videos.
Great information.... Thank you!! You're an incredible resource!!
Great info. Thank you.
I'd like to know what the speeds are for the Sabrent enclosure?? I would definitely do this, but I'd like to know the speed difference between the prebuilt compared to the build your own....
I've seen speeds upwards of 1000 MB/sec fairly consistently
Thanks Doug, loved your video. Loved that you looked at realistically ...., we all want good stuff at as low as price possible. So many people on You Tube are looking at the best of the best (regardless of price). But there is no point buying a car that can do 200MPH, if the fastest I am allowed to drive is only 100MPH ...., what's the point(if you know what I mean - using car an anology). X6 is getting great reviews for lots of people..., and was thinking of getting one as scratch disk for my FCPx editing. But I know that uses QLC Nano - Do you think that will be a problem considering the size of video and therefore the amount of rewrites the drive can deal with? Am I getting sucked into the marketing spin about TLC, SLC and MLC's . I assume you would get a few hundred editing jobs out of a typical X6?????
The X6 has been discontinued now. But the replacement X9 and X10 product lines would work pretty well for that task as long as the number of writes you are doing is reasonable. These drives, like most others, have an SLC cache to make the drive responsive, but once it fills up the NAND flash is much slower so writes to the drive slow down until the drive has the chance to flush the cache.
@@djp_videoThanks for that - really appreciate it. I went for the X9 pro 4TB in the end, as it was only an extra 50euro...., I was getting a TLC Nand (so hopefully a little better) .
What about the Crucial X9? Does that work good?
Thanks for an informative video, Doug! Unfortunately I am another person who cannot seem to get ATEMs to recognize the 2TB Samsung 980 Pro NVMe SSD in the Sabrent enclosure. I have tried three different ATEM Mini Extremes as well as formatting the SSD on both Macs and Windows boxes in various ways. The SSD is running the latest Samsung firmware and works fine on computers. Any thoughts?
It seems that this isn't that uncommon. I haven't experienced the problem myself so I haven't taken any time to troubleshoot (the 980 Pro has worked okay for me).
I'm in the same situation. Doesn't register at all with the ATEM.
I have the problem as well with two BMD mini record decks that have the alpha output. I have 4 mini records that have the SDI loop through and the 980s work great
UPDATE: My problem was NOT the 2TB Samsung 980 Pro NVMe SSD, but rather the Sabrent enclosure. I moved the Samsung SSD to a KingWin NVMe enclosure and it works great on both ATEM Mini Extremes and a Mini Pro. It is too bad because I really like the Sabrent enclosure Doug recommended and I will use it elsewhere, but not with the ATEMs. I suspect Sabrent has changed something in their firmware or chipset to make the ATEMs not like it. Anyway, I hope this helps somebody. Thanks for the video Doug.
Hi there. Seems like this discussion is about SSDs for use with real time video work. What would you recommend for use as a Mac back up with Time Machine? I intend to back up my entire Mac and don’t want to use Sandisk due to reports of their failing recently. Thanks!
This may seem counterintuitive, but I'd consider looking at a model a couple years old, preferably new in box if you can find such a thing. Newer drives use a different generation of technology which packs the data in more tightly into available space and it makes them both less reliable and much, much slower. If you can get your hands on a TLC (triple-level cell) drive from Samsung or Western Digital or Crucial that's likely going to be your safest, and maybe fastest, option.
@@djp_video brilliant. Thanks for your response. Much appreciated 👍
So...how about the X9 and X10 from Crucial/Micron? :)
Great video, great info!
I haven't had a chance to test them. They came out just days after I released this video.
Blackmagic Design also has found the T7 being unreliable. Problem is the write cache ... once its saturated the write drops too much and the Pocket Cinema Camera stops recording. The T7 Shield however works, as it can uphold the write speed needed. Tested it recently on a live gaming tournament, recording both on the ATEM and BMPCC4K with two T7 Shield 2 TBs, both worked flawlessly. The T5 seems to work fine, but avoid the T7 like the plague. T7 Shield is ok.
/Edit: The event lasted for almost 8 hours, where we were recording non stop. I also tested recording at UHD@24 FPS in BRAW 3:1 for up to four hours non stop, without dropped frames. So in that case I trust the Blackmagic Design media compatibility listing for the T7 Shield actually is accurate.
Using both the T7 and The Evo 970 with an Acasis Enclosure. In Both cases they get very hot when stressed. Tough, The Acasis enclosure gets even hot in idle, which is very strange.
All of the SSDs out there will get warm under heavy use.
Have you been able to test the Samsung T9 drives?
Not yet. But from what I'm hearing, I'm not optimistic about them.
Thanks. I've had a couple of T7's and haven't had any problems with them but maybe I've not been pushing them very hard.
Eventually you probably will. I literally see people complaining about losing recordings multiple times per week on Facebook, Discord, email, etc.
The video is very good! Thanks
The Crucial X6 1 Tb SSD costs around €65.
The Sabrent box costs around €38.
The Samsung 980 NVME SSD is very expensive, because it is very good!
Do you know of any NVME SSD, for video processing, that has identical performance to the Crucial X6 and is cheaper than the Samsung 980?
Thanks
There are definitely SSDs out there that cost less than the 980 Pro, but it's kind of a "you get what you pay for" kind of thing. The cheaper SSDs will slow down drastically on large file write operations, just like ALL of the portable USB SSDs do.
The main reason I recommend the 980 over other options is that it goes a lot longer on write operations before it slow down than nearly anything else I've tested. In a lot of cases, you'll never see that slowdown. That said, the new Lexar NM790 series ( amzn.to/49Q0LnA ) has performed amazingly well in my testing -- better than the 980. And it's priced similarly, or even a little bit lower, than the 980 Pro.
This is one of those areas where you don't really want to go cheap if you have a choice. You do get a lot more by spending a little bit more.
One note---there seems to be a number of people that are having issues with compatibility with the Sabrent enclosure, especially when used with video production equipment. This enclosure ( amzn.to/3QK3jL2 ) seems to be better about compatibility.
I have several of the T5s and i have been very happy with them. i primarily record using the BMPCC6KPro @ 6k resolution and usually 30 frames a second. Black magic approves the much newer T7 shield, but i have yet to get one for testing. it does have a 2tb version. but as of yet nobody is making a good holder to mount it to my camera. have you seen or heard much about these T7 shield models?
The T7 Shield models are better, but still not as good as the Crucials I mention in this video.
For my BMPCC4K I have a small rig cage and there is a T5/T7 holder for it, which can hold both the original T5 and the T7 shield. I think its the SmallRig SSD Mount 3272.
@@FSdarkkilla I have the tilta cage, but i am happy to look at the small rig holder. thank you
@@jadefinchscene5644 I guess the small rig SSD mount should be compatible just fine on a tilta cage as long as you have a screw hole left to screw it into. So good luck/have fun with trying the SSD mount, I'm sure it'll work.
@@FSdarkkilla i still need to buy a t7 shield first, but will likely order both at the same time.
Thanks for the excellent video! 🙂
this is pretty great, but you missed the reason for why the drives "fail". whats happening is the internal buffer is filling up and then it has to write directly to much much slower nand. the t5=slower but consistent, t7=faster but small buffer ~40gb, t7 shields= faster and consistently fast.
Also weird that your findings showed a buffer in the sandisk extreme pros. most DIT's were defaulting to those for years for very good consistent performance and good speed. at least that was until a whole batch of them started failing without any info from sandisk.... and now we're all onto the t7 shields. although apparently theres now an x9 and x9 from crucial that are promising looking
I’m guessing you’re certainly aware of these and perhaps deliberately not mentioned them, but do you have any thoughts on Sandisk’s Professional (not to be confused with the’Extreme Pro’ nomenclature) G-DRIVE Range of SSDs, or LaCie’s ruggedised Models for that matter? I realise there’s a significant price premium over the options you’ve discussed here, but, if you happen to know much about them, would you rate the performance and reliability of such drives as highly as your suggestions this application, or would it be fair to say the massive price of such products is largely for the sake of the brand name? Coming from more of a filmmaking background, I’ve spotted the highly visible orange SSDs from LaCie on sets many time-perhaps because that’s just what many in the industry have grown to trust and so stick with it like so many other tools of the trade-but I’m not sure if they’re particularly commonplace in the live multicam environment anywhere near as much. I’d be interested to know your opinion on these seemingly higher-end options.
I haven't tested them. In my mind they don't seem worth the price premium.
previous sandisk ceo sanjay mehrotra is now micron ceo driving low cost manufacturing in micron..guess whats happens next to crucial or transcend ssd
When read and write speed drop dramaticly - does that meen that you will drop frames if bandwith isnt enough?
At a minimum you'll drop frames, or repeat frames, but it could also cause the recording to just fail and stop altogether.
Thanks for the info Doug.
You left out the OWC Envoy Pro.
I wonder what about Samsung EVO 970 for my Ninja V? Didn’t have any problems with them so far, shooting 4k ProRes LT 30 fps
The Evo 970 and its Plus variant seem to do pretty well.
Please could you recommend any fast USBC cables for video edditing?? I'm pretty sure I've got a decent external ssd but the cables might be the bottleneck..
If you want a cable that you can feel confident is always going to work, you can go with a Thunderbolt 4 cable. They're designed for the higher speeds of Thunderbolt, so they work really well with the slower speeds of USB. amzn.to/4bUT13N
Hello there nice video and very useful information. I have a question since im in the process of getting an external ssd for my ipad. Ive heard that the sandisk extreme and the samsung t7 drain a lot of battery when editing from the drive in apps like lumafusion that lets you edit directly from the drive. Now with the information you give us here about frames drops etc. I have discarded these 2 drives. I was looking into the samsung t5 since i have seen good reviews about battery drain and no heating issues, but i cant find the t5 anywhere anymore. So O just stumbled into the crucial brand, and to be more specific, the new Crucial x9 pro which looks very promising. I seen a lot of videos and very good reviews about this new drive, but all fail to mention the ipad, I would like to know its performance on the ipad. Im more interested in 1. Heating issues, 2. Reliability, 3. Battery drain, how bad is it if any? On speeds, Ive heard great reviews just nothing on the ipad. Thanks in advance 🤝🏼
I don't have an X9 yet, and I typically don't spend much time doing intense projects on my iPads, so I don't know if I can be of much help.
@@djp_video Hello thank you very much for your quick response, well i guess im going to take the dive and find out myself. I just ordered the x9. I hoping that being a newer drive it can do well. Ill be back with some info once i receive it. Thanks again
I have also found the ATEMs dont seem to recognize internal ssd's in a external housing. Any idea why?
Not sure. I’m going to look into it.
I just finished spending a few hours with this and I haven't been able to recreate the problem. As long as I format the 980 SSD using exFAT it just works. It sometimes takes a few seconds for the ATEM to recognize the drive, but it never fails to do so.
Doug. Have you tested the new T9
No, not yet. And if I'm being honest my hopes aren't high -- the overall trend is to use cheaper and cheaper storage, which means slower and slower speeds, but hidden by increasingly large buffers. Going from the T5 to T7 we saw a drop in underlying performance, and I wouldn't be surprised if we saw the same thing again.
I want to get the crucial drives but they are hard to get in Canada. And i can’t use Amazon 😢. I was hoping this would be ok then i could order from best buy
How are you intending to use it?
With my bmpcc 6k and atem iso
If you're using with Blackmagic devices, I'd avoid the Samsung SSDs. I hear about nothing but problems with them from people who watch my channel and comment in Facebook groups.
fantastic! I have several T7s but I don't record for more than a few minutes at a time. I havent experienced issues...but I guess it depends of the file size...I stopped using my sandisk extreme v2 because it gets TOO hot while recording/editing. The T7 stay cool...but now I want to try a Crucial X9pro-I want to make sure that I can edit directly to it with my m1pro laptop. I think so since I have edited directly to a samsung t7 before. My videos are usually under 1 hr long or less...I don't think I can take advantage of the X10pro fastest speed-my macs don't have the port needed....but how about the Samsung T9? which is twice as fast as the Samsung T7? Can Macs really get the most out of them? thanks
So I've been using the 2TB Samsung 980 Pro NVMe SSD in the Sabrent enclosure as a media source for my hyperdeck (as it was never recognized by the ATEM) for a while now. It works OK for recording but for playback of ProRes files i have a lot of dropped frames. For both capture and playback the enclosure gets incredibly hot so there could be some thermal throtteling going on. I had my hopes up for this producrt combo but I would not recommend it for anyone else. The numbers look good on paper but it's just not what I'm seeing in practise.
If that particular enclosure doesn’t have sufficient cooling for your workflow, you can try another. The 980 Pro itself is a fantastic drive for video editing.
Didn't you go recommend the Sandisk extreme for Amazon prime day?
Extreme Pro, yes. And it does work just fine.
if i would use a USB A adapter what would the performance on the crucial X6 be??
If you use a properly built cable (like the one it comes with) and plug into a USB 3.2 Gen 2 compatible port, you'd be able to achieve the full 10 Gbps communication speed and the transfer rates wouldn't be any different than USB-C. If the USB port you plug into only supports USB 3.1 you'd max out at 5 Gbps.
But with that said, since this video, I've discovered that the X6 slows down pretty dramatically as it fills up. Go with a Crucial X9/X10 instead. With those the USB-A adapter isn't included, so you'd need to supply your own.
@@djp_video i just have usb 3.0 .. better internal ssd i guess
@@sandalero Internal is better if it’s an option. But USB 3.0 is still 5Gbps, which is more than 500 GB per second, so it’s nothing to sneeze at.
@@djp_video all my 3.2 sticks only do 120 MB/sec
thank you very much for this great help.
This is for live recording, as opposed to storage and editing right? I use the T7 for editing, but not recording.
Mostly for recording. But the same principles apply... the T7 is going to slow down on you significantly when you copy a lot of data on a computer as well.
Hi Doug, could you go thru the data rates of your video recording that you typically do and those that failed ? Are you doing multiple streams of 100 (mb/s or mbit/s) (=12.5 MB/s or MBytes/s) or higher recording? Just to be sure on the measurement units.
Am I incorrect to understand that even at 5% low of 300 (MB/s or MBytes/s), it should be more than sufficient* to handle 10 streams of 100 mbit/s (125 MBytes/s) ??
* assuming for simplicity the writes speed for multiple files writing simultaneously is same as single file, ofc it will be must lower
In theory, yes. In practice, it's more complicated. If the recording device has a decent buffer, or the recording media has a good buffer, you might be able to pull it off.
Thanks for the video, I decided to get one after watching this.
It was 2TB X9 Pro from amazon for 87usd during sale, but then undeliverable because it broke during transit. I can't reorder because it's now it's 129+ usd :/
Contact Customer Support. They should be able to replace it for the same price.
😱😱😱😱
Thanks for the insights Doug, didn't know there was more to test than a quick read/write speed. I just got me a stack of T7 2TB's. Might have to reconsider, I guess.. Will do some live in the field testing as well.
How did it go?
@@AndresArosemena Well so far they have been doing great.. We've used them on 2h+ shoots and full day timelapse, no problem. Only exception is shooting on higher framerates (> 30fps) full resolution in BRAW. Then they can't keep up! We use the X8 for that..
@@simonanne_com good to know! thanks for the reply and recommendation.
Wich test did you do here? I have very random results doing the test myself. Wich mode did you use? Mode Refresh R/W perf? Do you have "Write simulation" enabled?
I use the Refresh mode for these tests.
@@djp_videoDo you have "Write simulation" enabled? I have completely different results enabling this switch
No. The Write Simulation option turns off all writes entirely (to avoid overwriting data), reading data from the disk instead.
What do your results look like?
Great video!
How does an ssd drive compares to sd cards (in Hyperdeck)? The av pro v9 sd card outperforms my T5 and T7. T5 and T7 record only H.264 in my setup
Depends on the model. You can compare using my Drive Tool software (djp.li/drivetool) to run tests for yourself if you'd like.
How do you record video over USB? Don't they all use SD cards?
HyperDecks? All current models can record on USB drives as well.
Thanks for this video. But I have a question. Is the enclosure Sabrent also getting hot, while not using the SSD? I had several enclosures of a different brand, but without using them, I was able to fry an egg on it in 15 minutes. I don't want that to happen.
They all get hot under heavy use. If you're seeing them get hot while not really being used there might be something wrong.
Doug video with the Hyper deck extreme 4k hdr how many cameras can i record in to HyperDeck.
blackmagic released the atem television studio 4k8 with no iso option.
It records a single video source, just like all of the other HyperDecks.
@djp_video ok, thanks
Hey, thank you for making this video. I have watched this video in past 10 days atleast 5 times. Amazing content. I was wondering whether you have the data for Samsung T7 Shield and Crucial X9 / X10 Pro.. Apparently, Samsung T7 Shield fixes the issue that Samsung T7 has, would have liked to see your data to confirm the same! Wish you a nice day :)
I finally got my hands on a T7 Shield and X10 Pro.
Despite what some are saying, the T7 Shield absolutely does slow down and doesn't perform when writing a lot of data.
The X10 Pro is an impressive drive. I was able to write a full terabyte of data to mine without it slowing down at all. It looks to be a great drive (so far).
@@djp_video super, thanks, there is one other thing that is confusing me - it is the password protection of both these drive. I am told/read that samsung t7 shield needs password protection switched off in order to be used on android phone or you need to use an app that is not very reliable. do you maybe know what is the case with crucial x9/x10 pro - does these devices work as expected when connected to an android phone with password protection on, or does the password protection need to be removed in order to be connected to and files shown on an android phone?
I don't know for sure, but my gut tells me that unless a drive has its own buttons/screen/interface to enter a password, the password protection will need to be turned off for all drives to be usable on a phone or tablet. Since password protection of that type isn't something that is part of the USB standard, it requires software to make it work, and I don't believe anyone is making drivers for Android to make that happen.
@@djp_video thank you for providing us with this updated data. :) very helpful!
Hi Doug...So, I am going to be converting all of my svhs/vhs tapes to digital and want to store them all on one drive. Would the X6 be decent at handling this task? I believe I will be importing the footage through quicktime and then saving that file. Thanks!
It would store them okay, but if you're writing a lot of big files all at once you can run into a situation where you fill the buffer and it slows down to a crawl. All drives these days will do that, so you have to pick a balance between what you're willing to spend on a drive and how much patience you have when saving the files.
I'm going to go with your last recommendation of the enclosure with the samsung HD. Thanks! @@djp_video
So if you can't recommend the Crucial X6 anymore, which one do you recommend?
If you need consistent performance, the only way to achieve that is to assemble your own drive from a USB/Thunderbolt enclosure and NVMe SSD.
NONE of the commercially available options that I've had the opportunity of testing offers consistent, high speeds when writing large files like we typically find ourselves managing in the video world. The ALL slow down quite a lot with big files. And, unfortunately, the situation seems to be getting worse, with price and capacity being the two things that manufacturers are focusing on, and performance being an afterthought. For example, in the Samsung "T" series, the T5 had the most consistent write speeds of the family, and with the T7 and now T9 they slow down even more than the T5 did.
thank you so much for the response. that is quite unfortunate.. 😢
do you still recommend the sabrent enclosure with the samsung 980 pro or do you have something better now? i have no problem assembling my own but i’m just worried the enclosure isn’t as hardy as i want it to be.
What's the difference between t5 and t7? I have the t5 and haven't had any issues with BM devices... Yet. 🤞
I don't know all of the technical differences, but I do know cost-cutting was involved. The newer drives also seem to have lower long-term write speeds with smaller DRAM buffers.
Nice work sir, thank you.
I always had good luck with Samsung T7 2TB = Price $109.00 including shipping to Korea....
It's less expensive for me to buy this product in the US and have it shipped than to purchase domestically.
Noob here.
I assume that you are recording uncompressed video which is why the write speeds need to be so high.
If I'm using multiple capture cards into a higher end mac, and doing H.265 compression as I record, the files are not that big. I'm recording 3 streams (2 camlinks and a screen recording) and averaging a combined 15.8MB/s.
So in this scenario, any of the drives are going to be totally fine right? As long as my computer can keep up with the compression and I'm ok with the quality loss?
It's compressed video. In the case of recording directly from some models of cameras, it could be a RAW stream rather than MP4/MP5, but still lower bitrate than uncompressed.
The problem is when the drives get 'busy' and can't keep up with the non-stop stream of data coming from the camera/switcher/recorder. If their buffer fills up, the delay while trying to empty it can cause the recording to fail, or at least drop frames.
The fact that you're using a computer gives you a real advantage over dedicated recording devices, because the computer itself acts as a buffer, so you can get away with drives that might not work when connected directly to a recorder.
Will the speeds vary on the X6 depending on the size of drive I purchase? I’m thinking about the 2tb one after watching this?
Typically larger capacity drives tend to be faster
how about crusial x9 pro?
It didn't exist when I made this video. The X9/X10 Pro are very good SSDs and generally work fairly well for video. But, like all USB SSDs these days, once their SLC buffer fills up they slow down quite dramatically. If that is an issue you'll need to assemble your own with an NVMe drive and USB enclosure.
@@djp_video is it fine to use like backup storage I mean I shot whole day of vacation on phone then at the end of day copy to the ssd deleted from the phone and like this complete whole trip ? Then the drop frames etc should not be the case correct ?
Correct. Practically any SSD would work for that.
Wait, so whats the stats on the NVME setup? Worth it?
With the Sabrent enclosure and 980 Pro drive I consistently see just under a Gigabyte per second.
With a 20 Gbps enclosure, those speeds could be double when plugged into a compatible USB port.
Thanks for the video. One problem, My ATEM Extreme ISO doe's not see my Samsung 980. It works fine with my T7. The Samsung works fine with my Macbook M1 Pro, and Hyperdeck.
Any updates/ solutions?
I’m going to look into this. I haven’t seen this behavior myself.
I just finished spending a few hours with this and I haven't been able to recreate the problem. As long as I format the 980 SSD using exFAT it just works. It sometimes takes a few seconds for the ATEM to recognize the drive, but it never fails to do so.
On your website, How is it that the 128 Sandisk extreme pro 200mb/s is so much slower than the sandisk extreme pro 170mb/s was there something messed up with your test?
I don't believe so. When you were looking, did you compare the results for both the SanDisk reader as well as the other readers? The performance difference is huge.
I tested it with multiple readers, including one of SanDisk's own, and the results were consistent. Both models are UHS-I, which is limited to about 95 MB/sec, but those cards allegedly can be pushed to higher speeds using the official SanDisk reader (using non-standard extensions to the UHS protocol, which also means you'll never see those higher speeds in any devices). The bottom line is that those speeds aren't achieved following the UHS-I standard so you'll only get them on very specific models of card readers.
But, at the same time, SanDisk has been one of the worst companies about exaggerating their performance. Between that and very poor compatibility with Blackmagic Design equipment, I don't buy cards from them any longer.
Hey Doug, I purchased the Crucial X6 4TB ssd during this year's prime day.
I've been expering slow transfer speeds when I test this. It fluctuates between 200 and 800 MB/s, but mostly operates between the 200-350 MB/S range. Do you have any test results on the 4TB model?
It's also possible that I just have a lemon.
Edit: When I innitially speed tested the drive, it operated near the 800MB/s transfer speed. But once the drive had more than 1TB of used space, the speed dropped to the 200-350MB/s.
I purchased this drive to record Pocket 6k footage and have experienced frame drops.
I've seen that happen on the X6 as well since I made this video (never before). If you can, return it and get an X8 instead.
What about WD Passport?