temp and download folders location

IronicMan

I was reading thru a topic titled SSD Bad…I didn’t understand much of it but it seems that using streamfab is stressful to a hard drive. So instead of leaving the streamfab temp and download folders location on a large expensive drive, I thought i would just move them to one of my external Western Digital passport drives that connect to the computer by USB…except I don’t know if I should move both the streamfab temp and download folders there, or just one of them. I"ll probably just move both of them, but does anyone here know which folder handles most of the work? I think maybe the temp folder but I don’t know. Thanks

KidJoe

IronicMan
Are you using MP4, or MKV as your file format?

My understanding is that StreamFab is only stressful on MP4, if outputting to MKV its fine.

I use MKV, my WD Black SN850x is 1yr 102 days and 18hrs old, and is 98% Health. I use MKV, and my log and temp are on my this SSD. My SF Output is on a spinner.

0xFeedBeef

based on my grossly unscientific measurements (basically creating a vhdx disk and mounting that as a TEMP folder then seeing how much the VHDX file balloons when downloading a ~ 25GB movie):-

the TEMP folder requires roughly 3x the final MP4 size.
the OUTPUT folder, depends, if you’re outputting mkv, you should be fine, if you’re spitting out MP4, you have a faststart problem* but that might be resolved in the imminent future.

*https://github.com/mifi/lossless-cut/issues/1654

Sebastian001

I strongly advise against using external USB hard drives for editing. I used to use them myself, but back then there were many inconsistent downloads. It might have been a coincidence, but one series was completely corrupted.

DarkSkies

I would also recommend not using NAS / Network Attached Storage as a SF location for temp, logs, or output - it’s not worth any time savings you think you might gain if the NAS is the ultimate location for the completed output file.

(I originally had the three location settings pointing to different folders on my NAS with the logic that I’ll be moving the final files from SF Output to its permanent location on the NAS and I would save time moving the file to it’s final location. I did save time moving the files - near instant on the NAS, but it wasn’t until I did some troubleshooting a few months ago and moved everything to my D: drive that I discovererd how much faster analysis, downloading, and remuxing was when everything was “local”. Yeah, it then took longer to move the files to the NAS than if the files were created there, but I more than made that time up in timesavings for file creation locally. YMMV, but I learned my lesson!)

Stan001

I looked for the fastest spinning HD I had, moved the temp folder to that drive, it lasted not even an hour as processing took forever.
So for now, temp folder is back to my NVMe C: drive. (I still luckily have 96% Health Status on it, and >3 years old.)
I am now looking into a separate SDD drive, but it will take time till I can find a decent one and get the money together.
I have one, but it’s only 1TB, and down to 76% health status.
I always tend to lean towards WD drives as they have yet to fail me.
Seen one WD SSD for >$300, but waiting to see about getting the money together and maybe a sale.

0xFeedBeef

Stan001

Like I said in the other thread, the only reasonable choices for TEMP are either SSD that you’re prepared to throw away (having said that, Amazon UK were selling Samsung 990 PRO 1TB at 76 quid inclusive of VAT prior to the Black Friday fleecing) or a RAM disk 🤷‍♂️

0xFeedBeef

KidJoe Depends on how much you’re downloading, right? and temp and output are different things… I don’t think temp (ab)use depends on the output format (but I’ve not measured it)

MrGrackle

KidJoe Are you using MP4, or MKV as your file format?

My understanding is that StreamFab is only stressful on MP4, if outputting to MKV its fine.

The download process itself is stressful to both formats. I guess anything that “segment” downloads is stressful to a drive.

My thought is that if someone is using an SSD, remember that it’s more stressful to use the SSD strictly as a Temp drive, because the same cells get overwritten over and over again. The smaller the drive the more write cycles the cells get. Use it more like a Hybrid situation. As a temp folder drive AND as drive to store the final file. I use an older 2 TB Sata drive just for stuff like this. As the drive gets fuller (say less than 250 GB free space) I start moving files and folders to a more permanent location.

IronicMan

thanks for the help… for about a year i’ve had the temp folder on a 10TB internal drive and the download folder on a larger NAS drive. I just use mp4 files, since that was the default setting and being a familiar format, i didn’t think there might be a reason to change it. I’m just putting shows on plex for watching later, as I never know when a streaming service might decide to remove a show.

It would be difficult for me if one of those drives malfunctioned, mainly because of the replacement cost but also because of the time to fix it. I see some comments on how fast or slow streamfab might download and process a show depending on where those folders are located, but it doesn’t matter to me if a show takes 15 minutes vs 2 minutes to complete. I just add about 10 or so shows a day in total including tv episodes.
So I think I’ll try putting both the temp and download folders on a western digital passport drive by way of usb connection, because I could deal with the expense and time to replace that drive. That doesn’t mean one of my other more expensive drives won’t fail anyway, but I don’t want to think that using streamfab might end up costing me a lot more money and problems than i thought. I’m already at about the limit I want to spend in time and money on having these shows on hand to watch.
Also I guess I could open task manager (ctrl-alt-del) and watch what happens with streamfab when I download an mp4 compared to an mkv file, to see if i should maybe try mkv instead.