How Many SSDs Do You Need for a Feature Film? A Pre-Production Calculation Guide

The Line Producer Who Bought Drives Twice

A line producer on a 20-day indie feature budgets for storage in pre-production. She estimates "about 20 TB" based on a rough per-day guess. She orders five 4 TB SSDs ($250 each, $1,250 total). On day six, the DIT reports the drives are 85% full. The camera is shooting BMPCC 6K in BRAW 5:1. At 6 hours of active shooting per day, that's approximately 475 GB per day. At 5:1 shooting ratio for a 90-minute film, 450 minutes of acquisition is needed. Actual total: 475 GB × 20 days = 9.5 TB raw, × 2.1 (backup + proxies) = approximately 20 TB. She budgeted correctly for raw storage but didn't account for the backup multiplier or the proxy tier. She orders two more 4 TB SSDs for overnight delivery, adding $500 plus a rush shipping charge to the storage budget.

The storage budget is calculated once in pre-production, correctly, or it gets calculated twice and the second calculation costs more. This post gives the exact method.

The Five-Step Calculation

Step 1: Calculate Daily Raw Acquisition

You need three inputs:

1. Camera model and codec
2. Active shooting hours per day (not total shoot day length -- camera-rolling hours)
3. Total production days

Formula:

Daily Raw GB = Bitrate (Mb/s) ÷ 8 × 3600 × Active Hours Per Day

Or use the Codec Storage Calculator directly. For a BMPCC 6K in BRAW 5:1 at 6 active hours:

• ~225 Mb/s ÷ 8 × 3600 × 6 = approximately 607 GB per day

Step 2: Calculate Total Raw Acquisition

Total Raw GB = Daily Raw GB × Production Days

For 20 days: 607 GB × 20 = 12,140 GB (12.1 TB)

Alternatively, calculate via shooting ratio:

• Finished cut: 90 minutes
• Shooting ratio: 5:1
• Total acquisition: 450 minutes
• At 607 GB per 6 hours = ~101 GB per hour
• 450 minutes = 7.5 hours total = ~757.5 GB raw

Both methods should agree within 10%. If they don't, re-check the shooting ratio or daily hours estimate.

Step 3: Apply the Backup Multiplier

The standard is two verified copies of all raw acquisition:

Minimum total storage: 12.1 TB × 2 = 24.2 TB

Full 3-2-1 redundancy: 12.1 TB × 3 = 36.3 TB

Step 4: Add Proxy Overhead

Proxy files for editorial (1080p H.264 or H.265 at 8-15 Mb/s) add approximately 10-15% of the raw acquisition volume:

12.1 TB × 0.12 = ~1.45 TB for proxies

Total storage required: 24.2 TB (2 copies) + 1.45 TB (proxies) = 25.65 TB

Step 5: Convert to Drive Count

Divide total storage required by the capacity of the drives you're purchasing:

For on-set and post use, 8 TB portable SSDs or HDDs are the practical sweet spot. At approximately $130-$180 per 8 TB portable drive (Samsung T7, WD Elements Portable), four drives cover the project with margin.

Drive Types by Production Phase

For productions that need fast on-set offload and high-reliability storage, SSD is preferred for the primary on-set drive. HDDs are adequate for the redundant backup copy that stays in a pelican case and is not frequently accessed. The Backup Strategy Calculator models the exact hardware configuration for your specific daily acquisition volume and offload window.

The Rent vs. Buy Decision

For short productions (5 days or fewer), renting drives through a camera rental house is often cheaper than purchasing. Drive rental rates are typically $5-$15/day for portable drives and $15-$30/day for high-speed SSD solutions. For a 5-day shoot, renting 8 TB drives at $10/day each costs $400 for four drives, versus $520-$720 to purchase equivalent drives that the production then owns.

For 10-day and longer productions, purchasing drives is almost always more cost-effective than renting. The break-even is typically around 7-10 days depending on the rental rate. Productions that shoot regularly should purchase drives and amortize the cost across multiple productions.

Multi-Camera Productions

For every additional camera running simultaneously, add that camera's daily acquisition volume to the daily raw total before applying the backup multiplier. Two BMPCC 6K cameras both shooting BRAW 5:1 for 6 hours: 607 GB × 2 = 1,214 GB per day. The backup requirement scales with total acquisition regardless of how many cameras are producing it.

For multi-camera productions, consider whether each camera's cards are being offloaded in parallel (requiring faster offload hardware) or sequentially (requiring more time in the offload window). At 600 MB/s SSD write speed, offloading 1,214 GB takes approximately 34 minutes in parallel with two readers, or approximately 68 minutes sequentially. This is a planning input, not a purchase decision, but it affects whether the offload window at lunch is sufficient.

Three Production Examples

Example 1: Solo Filmmaker, 5-Day Short

Sony FX30 in XAVC-I 4K (600 Mb/s). 5 active hours per day. 5 days.

• Per day: 600 ÷ 8 × 3600 × 5 = 1,350 GB
• Total raw: 6,750 GB (6.75 TB)
• With 2 copies + proxies: ~15 TB
• Drive count at 8 TB: 2 drives
• Cost: ~$300 purchased

Example 2: Indie Feature, 20 Days, BRAW

BMPCC 6K, BRAW 5:1, 6 active hours per day, 20 days.

• Per day: 607 GB
• Total raw: 12.1 TB
• With 2 copies + proxies: ~25.65 TB
• Drive count at 8 TB: 4 drives (32 TB total capacity)
• Cost: ~$600-$700 purchased

Example 3: Commercial, 3 Days, ProRes HQ

Two ARRI ALEXA 35 cameras in ProRes HQ 4.6K (~1.8 Gb/s each). 8 active hours each per day, 3 days.

• Per day per camera: 1.8 Gb/s ÷ 8 × 3600 × 8 = 6,480 GB
• Two cameras: 12,960 GB per day
• 3 days raw: 38.88 TB
• With 2 copies: 77.76 TB
• Drive count at 8 TB: 10 drives (minimum)
• This is a media rental scenario: renting high-speed SSDs from a rental house at $15/day each = $450/day for 10 drives = $1,350 total

The film production storage guide covers the complete media management workflow for commercial productions at this scale.

Pro Tips

Tip 1: Add 20% buffer to your calculated drive capacity. Storage calculations based on average bitrate are estimates. High-frequency scenes (crowd scenes, fast movement, natural foliage) compress less efficiently than simple scenes and generate more data per second than the nominal bitrate. A 20% buffer means you won't run out on the final day of a complicated shoot.

Tip 2: Never use the same drives for acquisition cards and backup drives. Production cards (CFexpress, CFast, SD) and backup drives are different tiers in the data management chain. A drive that is used as both a working card and a backup copy collapses the redundancy model. Keep cards and backup drives as separate hardware from day one.

Tip 3: Calculate your drive cost as a line item in the production budget alongside camera rental, not as an afterthought. A $95,000 production that treats storage as miscellaneous is one 4 AM drive purchase away from a budget variance. Storage is predictable, calculable, and should be budgeted precisely.

Frequently Asked Questions

Can I use consumer external drives (Western Digital Elements, Seagate Backup Plus) for film production?

Consumer drives are adequate for the backup tier -- the redundant copy that is stored offline and rarely accessed. They are not recommended for the primary working drive from which the editor is actively reading media. Consumer drives are rated for intermittent home use, not for the sustained sequential reads that NLE playback generates. For the editorial drive, use a drive rated for video workstation use (G-Technology, LaCie Rugged) or a portable SSD (Samsung T7, SanDisk Extreme Pro).

What is the minimum SSD speed for reliable 4K playback in DaVinci Resolve?

For real-time 4K ProRes playback from a single drive, a minimum read speed of 400 MB/s is recommended. Most modern portable SSDs (USB 3.2 Gen 2, 10 Gb/s) achieve 900-1,000 MB/s. For ARRIRAW at 4.6K, you'll need sustained reads above 500 MB/s. Standard spinning HDDs max out at 150-200 MB/s and are not suitable for high-bitrate 4K real-time playback without proxies.

Should drives be encrypted for a production?

Encryption is recommended for drives that contain footage of private individuals, sensitive content, or confidential production material. Most modern portable SSDs support hardware encryption. The tradeoff is a slight performance overhead and the risk of data loss if the encryption key or password is lost. For productions that require encryption, use the drive manufacturer's hardware encryption rather than software encryption and store the passphrase securely in a password manager.

Related Tools

The Codec Storage Calculator generates total acquisition volume for any camera, codec, and shooting duration -- the starting number for the 5-step calculation in this post. The Backup Strategy Calculator models the hardware configuration needed to maintain the 3-2-1 backup standard. The Cloud Storage Cost Calculator compares the cost of adding a cloud tier to your on-set drive workflow.

Conclusion

The storage calculation for a feature film takes 10 minutes and eliminates the midnight drive order. Five steps: daily raw volume, total raw volume, backup multiplier, proxy overhead, drive count. The numbers in this post give the formula. The Codec Storage Calculator runs the calculation for your specific codec and shooting duration without manual arithmetic. Run it in pre-production, budget the drives, and the storage question is answered before it becomes a problem on set. How close did your last production's actual storage consumption come to your pre-production estimate?