Recording with Fraps - What type of hard drive?

[Elemair]

When recording with fraps what is the best optimal choice to use when considering Hard Drives. Should I buy an SSD, install Fraps onto it and then record to an internal hard drive? or should I record to an 3.0 USB external hard drive? etc, etc. Please help me as I am not the most aware person when it comes to video recording. Also which hard drives should I use *specifics* for this program (Raptor, etc.)

[Vampyrr]

For fraps the most important thing is SPACE. if you are recording full screen you will burn through gigs like nobodies business. Fraps records in an uncompressed format.

[llDemonll]

a usb3.0 external drive should be fine to record to assuming you're connecting it via usb3.0 ports

otherwise any internal 5400/7200rpm drive will work. an ssd is a waste for fraps, all you need is a large drive to record to

[DeltrusDisc]

I prefer at least a 5900 RPM (7200RPM optimal) 600GB internal HDD.

USB 3.0 HDDs... can they really be good enough for Fraps already? O.o I have one, but I can't imagine such heavy work going over USB 3.0........

[Krawu]

An SSD for exclusively using fraps would actually be a bad idea, firstly because an SSD is actually inferior to an ordinary HDD when it comes to writing data - it only excels at accessing it, and secondly because for the price of a large SSD you can get at least two humongous HDDs. For frapsing longer sequences, as was said before, go for space only, speed or pretty much anything else isn't really important when using an HDD exclusively for recording. I'd recommend at least a 2 TB drive, Fraps really eats that space up like candy. Where you run Fraps from is not important, just where you record to.

[neghinitza]

I use 2x500gb WD Caviar Black set up in a raid 0 configuration. I didn't have any problems with it. On the old version 90 sec of footage at 1920x1080 was taking up a 4gb chunk, so the hdd should be capable of sustaining a 45mb/s write stream just from fraps. Im recording WoW, btw. Just a separate drive with plenty of space should do tbh.

[DeltrusDisc]

An SSD for exclusively using fraps would actually be a bad idea, firstly because an SSD is actually inferior to an ordinary HDD when it comes to writing data - it only excels at accessing it, and secondly because for the price of a large SSD you can get at least two humongous HDDs. For frapsing longer sequences, as was said before, go for space only, speed or pretty much anything else isn't really important when using an HDD exclusively for recording. I'd recommend at least a 2 TB drive, Fraps really eats that space up like candy. Where you run Fraps from is not important, just where you record to.

Wrong. SSDs can write much quicker than any HDD, unless of course you have like 8 HDDs RAIDed up...

I digress, per GB, it is indeed far too expensive, though they have come down tremendously.

However, being someone who Fraps on a daily basis, I can tell both you and the OP, that unless you record at 60 fps and above 1080p, you won't be eating your space that quickly. 30 fps@1920x1080 equals A LOT of raw footage per GB. Besides, say you're recording while raiding, you wipe? You stop recording, tab out, delete file, get back in, start recording again on the next attempt. You never run out.

[Noctua]

I found that fraps just took up terabytes of space, far too quickly, and was often recording inferior quality to Bandicam (which also takes up much less space).
</2cents>

[DeltrusDisc]

I found that fraps just took up terabytes of space, far too quickly, and was often recording inferior quality to Bandicam (which also takes up much less space).
</2cents>

That is because Bandicam renders the footage down to a lower bitrate actively while recording, and that can take a chunk more CPU power, thus getting you lower fps.

Raw footage master race!

[chazus]

I just make all my youtube subscribers stand outside my window and watch. Local police, hit me up with that collab!

[Tucci]

Here's a really good video you should watch.

You definitely want a huge HDD for storing the videos.

[Deleted]

I found that fraps just took up terabytes of space, far too quickly, and was often recording inferior quality to Bandicam (which also takes up much less space).
</2cents>

Don't really see how...
Seeing as fraps is (almost) raw.

[inux94]

Don't really see how...
Seeing as fraps is (almost) raw.

Because what he said wasn't true.

[Elemair]

Hey guys, thank so much for all the advice. I will probably be getting an SSD for my Windows, WoW, and Fraps, money isn't really an issue. Is there any specific Hard Drives that I should be getting that are better for video editing and recording than others. i.e http://www.canadacomputers.com/produ...item_id=048713

Thanks for everything so far

[Butler to Baby Sloths]

I recorded to an external 60 euro 1.5 TB western digital elements USB 2.0 drive with 30fps 1920x1080 without any noticeable issues.

[mojo6912]

I recorded to an external 60 euro 1.5 TB western digital elements USB 2.0 drive with 30fps 1920x1080 without any noticeable issues.

I don't see how. USB 2.0 is just too slow at max 35MB/s. In my experience I need at least like 70+ MB/s for it to record at 30fps 1920x1080 or else it slows down and only records at 20 something fps.

edit: I just checked my most recent league of legends game that I recorded at 30 fps 1080. Please correct me if my calculations are off here.

The file is 30 minutes and 52 seconds long. It is 151 GB in size. So 1852 seconds and 154624 Megabytes. 154624 divided by 1852 equals 83.5. So that is 83.5 MB/s right?

[Majesticii]

Don't SSD's degrade tremendously faster in comparisson to HDD's when constantly being written on?

[Butler to Baby Sloths]

I don't see how. USB 2.0 is just too slow at max 35MB/s. In my experience I need at least like 70+ MB/s for it to record at 30fps 1920x1080 or else it slows down and only records at 20 something fps.

edit: I just checked my most recent league of legends game that I recorded at 30 fps 1080. Please correct me if my calculations are off here.

The file is 30 minutes and 52 seconds long. It is 151 GB in size. So 1852 seconds and 154624 Megabytes. 154624 divided by 1852 equals 83.5. So that is 83.5 MB/s right?

All of the videos on my youtube channel (http://www.youtube.com/froll1999) were recorded in that manner, except the Stone Guards video.

---------- Post added 2013-01-14 at 02:14 PM ----------

Don't SSD's degrade tremendously faster in comparisson to HDD's when constantly being written on?

You have to write something like 500TB of data to a 120GB SSD to "break" it.

[Majesticii]

You have to write something like 500TB of data to a 120GB SSD to "break" it.

Think those numbers depend on the actual SSD. However, given the fact just a few minutes of gameplay can be gigs of raw data, those numbers are not that astronomically unreachable.

[mojo6912]

Yeah, they look pretty good besides the color darkness thing that fraps does. I don't know what to say. I don't know how you can do it with 35 MB/s.

I stopped using fraps a while ago and I use Dxtory with Lagarith Lossless Codec.