Need help with beginner RAID info

So I wanna get into gameplay recording for fun. Sure, I could just go and buy a 140$ 4TB HDD and that would be that. However, is that single HDD fast enough for 4K gameplay recording? Would 2-4 HDD in RAID be a better solution even if a bit more expensive? I've never used RAID, but I feel like not only does it increase speeds but also adds a bit of data security (depends on the RAID type).

But the main question is - can a single HDD do 4K60 recording? And even if so, should multiple smaller drives in raid be considered?

 

RAID simply helps with when you have a hard drive failure by granting you time to replace the failed drive(s) before your data is lost (except for RAID 0, but that runs the risk of having a higher chance of data loss). RAID doesn't do anything for data security; that's a function of AV/malware software, error detection & correction, backups, and computer usage best practices.

A typical HDD these days can perform somewhere in the vicinity of 150MB/s to 250MB/s sequential write speeds. That's far, far more than what you'd need to record a high-quality 4K stream to the drive. That said, if you feel like somehow that isn't enough performance, you would be better served with a SSD than multiple HDDs.

 

Well I have an old 3TB WD Red but it seems like it may not perform as great as i'd like it to, I'll have to find out when I get my AGA and plug the 1080ti in. Though the WD Red I have is one of the ****ty ones..it's also likely a 5400RPM drive, since its about 4 years old.

I thought RAID was also used to just combine the speeds of same-type HDD to reach better HDD speeds?

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard_RAID_levels

RAID (except RAID 0) is about mitigating the risk of data loss in the event of one or more drives in the array fail (depending on RAID type). You could use a RAID array to improve read and/or write performance, but that isn't the primary purpose of RAID and you can improve I/O performance more effectively in other ways (SSDs, for example, especially NVMe or PCIe SSDs).

 

Thanks for the info. Yeah I know SSD is a option but I was going for price-to-performance and since you've confirmed current HDD's are more than enough, I'll just stick with those then. But I do appreciate the link, cuz I may consider RAID0 regardless since if I upload a video when finished, then a drive failure would be nothing more than a small inconvenience.

 

RAID 0 is a valid performance option, just be aware of the disadvantages I mentioned. If you don't care about the data you put on there, or if you make it a habit to frequently back up the data on the array, it would be a decent budget option for I/O performance.

 

Drives failing are uncommon, but not to the point where you wouldn't want to back up data stored on a array, as for a HDD for 4K recording, a newer one (something with 100MB/s+) should be fine

 

Do you guys thing that would still work fine over USB 3.0? I did a bunch of tests over the past week and I ended up ordering a NVME SSD for a reason that I think wasn't a reason at all. When I was recording to my SSD, viewing the video in VLC showed green corruption and choppiness as well as a fast-forward and rewind effect. But after uploading it, none of it was in the upload. I thought it meant not even my good SSD was good enough for 4K recording at 80bps. I think VLC is a very bad player for 4K. I have about 3 weeks to cancel the SSD order but I needed a new one anyway so I may just keep it.

It's likely more due to my 3TB HDD being 5400RPM, but that surely isn't quick enough, it like causes the game itself to lag. I guess due to holding up shadowplay from saving the data which is being used to process said game?

 

As the others have said, the sequential transfer rates of modern HDDs are more than sufficient for UHD video recording. A video game relies more on random access, which is where HDDs fall short due to mechanical movement, and it's why you're getting lag spikes. The green artifacts are indeed unrelated to the storage medium and were likely due to the codec used not being compatible with the video. VLC is easy to set up, but I'd recommend MPC-HC or MPC-BE with madVR as the renderer. Getting the most out of the upscaling options available requires some research, but if you care about rendering quality, it's well worth your time.

 

Ok I tried MPC-BE and it is so much better than VLC. Yeah, VLC was and always is meant to be simple and just works. But the video player blacks look grey and dull as well as constantly showing green corruption and laggy 4K videos. I just simply don't experience any of that in MPC-BE. Interestingly I never heard of MPC-BE until now, however MPC-HC was always a favorite, I just didn't think VLC was bad until now (for my uses at least)