Match each drive to its job
Creators get the best results from storage split by job. A fast internal NVMe drive holds active projects, cache and renders; a portable SSD handles offloading cameras and delivering files to clients; and large hard drives or a NAS keep finished projects and raw footage. Each drive is doing what it is best at, and no single drive fills up and slows everything down.
Is PCIe 5.0 worth it for creators?
PCIe 5.0 drives such as the Samsung 9100 Pro read at up to 14,700 MB/s, roughly double the fastest PCIe 4.0 drives. That helps with very large file copies and some cache-heavy editing, but a good PCIe 4.0 drive like the Samsung 990 Pro is already faster than most editing timelines need. PCIe 5.0 also needs a PCIe 5.0 M.2 slot on the motherboard and a heatsink, so check your board before paying extra.
How fast footage fills a drive
Storage needs depend heavily on the codec. At 100 megabits per second, typical for 4K camera H.265, an hour of footage is about 45GB. Apple ProRes 422 HQ at 4K 29.97fps runs at 707 megabits per second, or roughly 318GB per hour. If you shoot ProRes or RAW, plan storage in terabytes per month rather than per year.