Video Editing SSD Capacity & Workflow Planner

1TB vs 2TB NVMe Allocation, RAID-0 & Headroom Simulator
Workflow Presets
Project Parameters
Footage Resolution & Cameras
15 hrs
150 Mbps
3
Generate Editing Proxies Render ProRes / DNxHR lightweight proxy files
Drive Grade / Budget Tier
“Leave working headroom rather than keeping the SSD almost full. SSD write performance tanks when free space drops below 20%.”
Scratch Required
450 GB
Render cache + timeline proxies
Total Headroom
1250 GB
62.5% free on 2TB
Recommended SSD
Single drive or RAID-0
Estimated Cost
$165
Balanced PCIe 4.0 street price
2TB NVMe Internal Partition Model (2,000 GB Capacity) 750 GB Used / 2000 GB
OS & Apps (300 GB)
Scratch (450 GB)
Headroom (1250 GB Free)
OS & Premiere/DaVinci Install (~300 GB)
Cache / Scratch / Active Proxies
Working Headroom (SLC Cache & Wear Buffer)
Architectural Recommendation Validated Quora Bay Standard

2TB NVMe single drive or dual 1TB NVMe in RAID-0 recommended for optimal 4K headroom without bottlenecking USB-3.2/PCIe slots.

Single 1TB NVMe Tight Headroom
Usable Scratch ~700 GB Max
Remaining Free 250 GB (25%)
Read/Write Bandwidth Up to 5,000 MB/s
Bottleneck Risk SLC Cache Drop
Dual 1TB in RAID-0 Peak Speed
Total Capacity 2,000 GB Striped
Sustained Speed ~9,500+ MB/s
PCIe Slots Consumed 2x M.2 Slots
Fault Tolerance Zero (Scratch Only)
⚡
Bus Interface Match: PCIe 4.0 NVMe runs at ~7,000 MB/s, whereas external USB-3.2 Gen 2 enclosures bottleneck at ~1,050 MB/s, and mechanical HDDs cap at ~180 MB/s. Never use mechanical HDDs for 4K multicam timeline playback.
Grounded in editing bay practices from Quora: Which is better for video editing, 1TB or 2TB SSD? Local engine • Zero telemetry lag

Scratch capacity thresholds and inconsistent larger-drive labels

Read the explanation

The saved SSD planner uses a scratch-rate table, rather than the entered footage bitrate, for its main capacity arithmetic. Multicamera four-K chooses ten gigabytes per hour with proxies and thirty without. Fifteen hours times three active projects gives four hundred fifty gigabytes with proxies, or one thousand three hundred fifty without. Bars compare at four tenths of a pixel per gigabyte. These are entered workload assumptions, not measured media, codec files or storage traffic. The bitrate slider is retained in configuration but does not alter this compute function. No disk is inspected, written, benchmarked or purchased by the planning arithmetic. The source reserves three hundred gigabytes for operating system and software. It selects two thousand gigabytes whenever scratch plus reserve exceeds seven hundred, otherwise one thousand. Default four hundred fifty plus three hundred equals seven hundred fifty, so selected capacity is two thousand and computed free headroom one thousand two hundred fifty. Bars show scratch and headroom using the same four-tenths scale but different quantities. The seven-hundred threshold is an authored rule, not a drive-performance limit. Price depends on entered budget tier and selected one- or two-terabyte capacity using fixed amounts. It does not consult current prices or verify whether USB, PCIe or software bottlenecks would be avoided. Turning proxies off at the default workload raises scratch to one thousand three hundred fifty. The text recommendation becomes four-terabyte NVMe because scratch exceeds twelve hundred. However the source capacity variable stays two thousand, estimated cost still uses its two-terabyte table, and headroom remains two thousand minus three hundred minus thirteen hundred fifty, or three hundred fifty. Bars compare scratch and this calculated headroom at four tenths of a pixel per gigabyte. The discrepancy is preserved original behavior, not repaired or interpreted as real four-terabyte capacity. Native indie preset, full JSON report and reset preserve exact outputs while hardware recommendations, RAID safety, throughput and actual storage adequacy remain unverified.

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